Last year was our....my worst year of homeschooling to date. The first year was pretty horrible too, but I think that is allowed. I was still learning a lot, Robert was deployed, we were living in a new state and I had no friends and I didn't know any homeschool moms to learn from. But last year 2018-19 it was more, just me. I struggled all year emotionally. It was the longest I had gone without being pregnant in 14 years. Bug crossed the threshold of being the oldest child we have ever had without a new baby following up and I couldn't find a rhythm. I didn't know how to do this new normal. Granted, an easier, more freeing "normal", but still new. I think I struggled with despair a lot in parenting last year and when you homeschool, that is the brunt of parenting, so homeschooling took a nose dive. Every action regarding teaching my kids was like walking uphill with a boulder on my back. I did not want to do it, not even a little bit. I wanted to be selfish and do what I wanted to do. I continually repented of that longing and kept fighting against my desires and praying continually so that I could serve my family and be faithful, but it never got better. I hated last year, I hated homeschooling, and I dread this year because of that.
I continue to pray for the Lord to give me a heart for educating my children. To give me a desire to have only older children who I can really invest in because there is no baby to distract me. I remind myself of all of the benefits of our youngest being potty trained and almost not needing a nap time. I am just trudging on, knowing that the Lord is faithful. I will wait on Him and keep asking for His help. Meanwhile, we have started our school year despite my fears of it being a repeat of last year. So far, (just a couple of weeks in) it is better. I am thinking about trying to update the blog every week to share what our week of learning looked like. I used to do that and maybe it would help me. Plus, it would help me to remember to share pictures more often for our family far off. Tender: Tender is a Sophomore this year! She is taking English at Ivy Tech this fall. It is her second dual enrollment class and she is very excited. I am too, because it means that she is getting an English credit for high school and college and so I don't have to oversee her learning English this semester! I am waiting to see what that teacher assigns as reading before I determine what I will assign. I bought her a curriculum for Economics and Government. She will be doing those alone, as they are a high school level. I will only be checking in with her and grading her on those subjects. She continues to study Chinese as her foreign language. We have been taking her on Fridays for her lessons but that may change this fall, we are still working out that schedule. She will continue her Biology curriculum too. Her Math curriculum is still Life of Fred. Hurricane: Hurricane is in 7th grade this year! She is officially starting formal English using Analytical Grammar. And her, The Boy, and Wild Man will be working through Beautiful Feet Books' Modern America and World History. We will probably be working through that for this year and next, as I typically set he pace slower on that curriculum. She also continues to work on her penmanship and has a flare for creative writing that you may see the fruit of here on the blog. She will have books to read that I assign her. We switched Hurricane over to Teaching Textbooks last year because she wasn't crazy about Life of Fred, so she will continue with Teaching Textbooks for Math. The Boy: The Boy is in 5th grade this year! I am trying him on a Rod and Staff English curriculum to help him with writing a little. He is doing the same History as Hurricane. And will be reading a list of books that I prepare for him(its not finished yet). For now, The Boy is using Life of Fred for Math but I'm considering doing Teaching Textbooks for him when he finishes the elementary series of books. Wild Man: Wild Man is in 3rd grade this year! He may repeat this grade. I find that 3rd grade is quite a speed bump for kiddos and if it is for Wild Man (since I started him a little early), we will just repeat it. I will likely face the same decision with Hulk, as they have the same birthday. He is really behind in penmanship, so he will continue to work on that. I switched him over to cursive last year and that has seemed to help so we are continuing that. His reading is going well! I wouldn't say he is totally done with reading lessons, but he is very close. He reads his bible every night in his bed before going to sleep. He just skips the big words. I believe that he will be an independent reader by the end of the first semester this year. In Math, he is mastering his multiplication tables for the first few months of 3rd grade and then he will go back to Teaching Textbooks. Hulk: Hulk wants to be in Kindergarten! My last blog post was about him and Bug so I won't repeat all of that. Since Hulk has a little brother right behind him, I am most likely going to just "do kindergarten" with him two years in a row, that way him and Bug are back to back in grades. It will make it REALLY easy to homeschool them that way. They will just do everything together right up until, just about, high school. ALL: Here are the things that I do with all of the children, what we call "Group learning". We do Bible lessons and memorization together first thing in the morning. Right now we are reading through A.W. Pink's Attributes of God. I read it aloud to them and assign bible passages to the four older children. They have to look up the passage on their own and read it aloud when we get to it in the book. We are doing the same kind of memorization that we have been doing for years (I think that I've talked about that before). At this moment we almost have 2 Corinthians 9:8 memorized. We study different composers, artists, and poets together as well. We are starting our year off studying Domineco Scarlatti, Grandma Moses, and Robert Browning. We are working on memorizing and better understanding the Periodic Table this semester. I bought a poster and a game and I'm having the kids do the memorization game on sheppardsoftware.com, which is the same website we use for geography(I highly recommend it).
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