No Longer Confused

Well, it's been 4 1/2 months since I've cared to post and share my life with anyone. But it's been a week now since I've had to teach at school and decided it's about time. I want to read all of your blogs and start participating again. I love you all and I miss you.

So, most of you know by now that I took my children out of school on my last day. We are officially homeschoolers, or home learners as Darin and I would like to label ourselves. We are not doing school at home. We are not bringing school home. However, we hope our home will be a place where learning flourishes--whether by study, experimentation, writing or play. Already the girls have shown me how motivated they are to learn. Anna found a Readers Digest book on North American birds at the library in the adult section. It is basically an encylopedia of birds. I assumed it would go unread. How wrong I was. Both girls have spent hours pouring over the book. Aliese just printed her third newspaper. Her most recent edition has two articles and the weather forecast. One of the articles is the second in a series about birds. The other article is about the Boston Tea Party spurned on by the reenactment of the Boston Tea Party that occured this past week. She spends hours researching, writing, rewriting, and typing her paper. Anna requested a math assignment today. Anna wrote a story yesterday for the Reading Rainbow contest. This is all with grandparents visiting!

I realize that it won't always be wonderful, but these last few days have been so wonderful. They are already playing together better, and laughing more. Some of you might like to know my plans for curriculum. Well, I'm not altogether sure. This much I know, for now while we detox our systems and minds from the pressures of school, it's going to be pretty laid back. They both read and write all day. I'm going to insist on music every day. Eventually I will probably adopt a math curriculum, but I'm not ready for that yet. Until then we will concentrate on math facts, money and telling time when they are in the mood for math. I've been very unimpressed with their math experience this far, and I think we need some good drilling in the basics. Otherwise, for now, I think all of the other subjects will easily be covered if I am here to help my children learn what they are interested at the moment. For now the interest seems to be birds and Aliese is particularly interested in the Great Depression. We have two libraries to go to and we will check out as much of whatever they want every week.

I am really, really excited. I probably read 1000 pages last month about homeschooling. The more I read, the more convinced I became. With each book I had more clarity of thought and more love and warmth for my children. I really really really hope that our home learning will last along time. I have a completely different perspective on it than I did last time when we did it with Aliese. I also have a different perspective on being home and working outside the home. I realize now how truly wonderful it is to be at home. I know now how awful it is to work outside the home. I appreciate my husband so much more than I ever did before. I'm so grateful he goes to work everyday without complaint even though he would rather be home with us or out golfing. I really hated working and I was not a happy person when I got home either. I, with the girls, took at least an hour to enjoy being together after a long day at school. The longer the evening went on, the better we got along. The further we were away from school the more we liked each other. And then we'd have to get up the next day and do it all over again. Now we wake up liking each other, and we get to be together all day liking each other!

I'm getting tired of typing. I'll fill you all in more later.
Love you all.