Five Things That Surprised Me about Home Schooling

(this is just a mom, writing about homeschool & what's kinda working for us at the moment. I'm not getting paid to plug anything. I'm just sharing.)

Good grief.

I don't know why I thought homeschooling would be easy. I mean, seriously. I researched and plotted & planned until I thought my head would explode. I thought we were ready & I thought it would be a snap!

Uh. Yeah.
Not so much.

For some reason, I neglected to take into account that I still had to work on other stuff (hello, blog!), keep up with house work, keep up with commitments outside the house... oh, and deal with my incredibly strong-willed child. Unstoppable force? Meet immovable object.

And, so, I've neglacted to share a  lot about our homeschool journey on this blog... you know, the one that's (in part) about homeschooling??? I just didn't want to admit how hard it is. Or how much we struggled those first few days (hours, weeks, months).

I have to say, I WISH I had gone ahead and bought the kindergarten curriculum that I was thinking about buying way back in the summer. Truly, I could kick myself. Piecing together a coherent curriculum has been hard. Like, really hard. Like, the death of me hard. Chalk it up to a serious lesson learned.

I did, however, find something that has really saved this experience for us. We're using ABC Mouse. (cue the choirs of Angels...) It's been heaven sent.

Jacob and I were running into a big problem. He detests 'copy-work' and worksheets. Like, with a fiery passion in his heart. But it was all I had. And we were quickly having daily confrontations about his school work. Both of us were getting tired and frustrated. And that's not how I wanted this year to go. We backed off. Totally. And I went back to the drawing board.

He loves anything to do with the computer, so I saw that as my window. We tried a couple of different websites before finally settling on ABC Mouse. And, it's been fantastic. He loves it! He's got a guided lesson path that I can customize & monitor.

So, I've found myself leaning heavily on ABC Mouse & adding quite a bit extra.

And now, I present to you...

The Top 5 Things that Surprised Me About Homeschooling

1) how stubborn my off-spring is. And how pissed off irritated I get when he doesn't do his best.
The child is so dang smart. He picks things up like lightening. But. He's pretty much only interested in learning what he wants to learn. Period. And little things like... oh, learning to read, aren't that interesting to him. Up the wall, it drives me.

2) how much I would lean on 'computer' learning. Wow. But, I've decided that if he will sit and soak it up in this form, I'll use it. 

3) how much I've detested coming up with a curriculum all on my own. Yeah. Not my gift.

4) how much I've had to decimate my prior expectations. Like. Wow. There's been a whole lot of me having to realize that maybe my sweet boy just isn't ready for hardcore Kinder learning. And that's okay. What's really important is to create in him a love for this learning thing. 

5) how much fun we can both have when we're on the 'same page.'