Homeschool, Day 2

Today was the second day we officially homeschooled. Yesterday was the last full day of 'regular' school for the kids. Both children have been begging me for the past week or so to 'do homeschool,' but I have put them off because I thought going to school all day and then trying to homeschool in the evenings was too much.

So, they came home from school again yesterday begging to get started and I relented. My daughter ran an errand with my husband, the youngest was napping, and my son and I decided to do the first lesson in his Saxon Math 1 book. It went extremely well. Of course, the first few lessons are pretty simple, but he was able to pay attention the entire time and he completed all the work with very little prompting from me. We had a lovely time with each other.

When my daughter and husband returned later that evening, she and I sat down and did her first lesson in the Saxon Math 3 course. It was a piece of cake for her, too. At that point, my son wanted to do another lesson and cried real tears because it was too late for us to start another one.

This morning I decided to plung right in and start following the schedule I had setup. Even though we had an appointment in the late morning, we just did as much as we could.

Of course, it wasn't without a minor glitch or two. My daughter wasn't able to sign on to her online Powerspeak12 French course and my son balked at the idea of using the online reading site that I had planned for him to use, but we improvised and it worked out fine. We did complete each of their second lessons in math. When we returned from their appointment this morning, they each sat down and completed the second part of their math worksheets with only one reminder from me. Shortly thereafter, my daughter did her French lesson (by that time we had the problem straightened out) and my son used some of the Scholastic computer math software to 'play' math. The TV remained off until after 3 PM. It was amazing!

The other significant thing I noticed today is that they were more well behaved than usual. My children are usually well behaved, but they know how to push each others' buttons and they can get each other wound up quicker than quick. I didn't notice so much of that going on today. I wonder if it is because they each had my undivided attention for a portion of the day. Whatever the reason it was a great day. I hope they are all like this! I'm amazed by how easy it all turned out to be and can't believe that I didn't decide to do this a long time ago.