Well, the Duncan family has officially embarked on a new adventure. An exciting new adventure. A fun new adventure. An educational new adventure. A challenging new adventure. This week, we began homeschooling.
When Jacob was a baby, if you'd asked me if I was going to homeschool, I would have given you a definite "NO" for an answer. "Me? Homeschool? Are you crazy? Seriously, you're joking, right? Have you seen my organizational skills? Do you really think I am capable of teaching my child? It's hard enough just figuring out what to feed him." Well, four years later, my feelings have changed. And believe me, I am just as shocked as some of you who are reading this right now.
I can honestly say, I never planned to send Jacob to preschool. I knew I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and Heath and I planned on our precious little boy being home until he was old enough for kindergarten. We were comfortable with our decision. But then, I started feeling the pressure. When he was around two years old, I began hearing questions like, "So, where is Jacob going to preschool?" or "Have you signed him up for preschool yet?" To any of these types of questions, my answer was always the same: "I'm not planning to send Jacob to preschool." And the response I was given was, also, always the same -- a blank, yet surprised, "Oh." I started to second guess our decision.
Heath read a couple books about preschool (and education in general) and I skimmed through them. After his thorough reading, my skimming, and a lot of discussion, we stood firm in our decision to keep him home. However, even though we knew we didn't want to send him to school anywhere (yet), we knew we needed to take advantage of Jacob's eagerness and willingness to learn. That's when the homeschooling idea popped into my head.
There are several homeschooling families in our church. I've always admired them. I've always thought, "Wow. That's great that they can do that, but I could never do what they do." My thoughts haven't changed any, but for preschool, I am giving it a try. I mean, if I want to try homeschooling, shouldn't starting with preschool be a little easier than, say, second or third grade? After all, the government doesn't mandate that my child attend preschool. If the homeschool thing doesn't work out, we're still ok. Jacob can go to kindergarten in a regular classroom next fall and everything will be just fine. BUT, that being said, you can be sure I am going to try my ABSOLUTE best and hardest to make homeschooling work for us. We'll just take it one minute, one hour, one day, one week at a time and see what happens.
Day one of homeschooling didn't go exactly as I had planned. Actually, it didn't go...at all. Sunday night, Jacob developed a fever and by Monday morning, he was SICK. I took him to the doctor thinking he may have an ear infection, but found out he had a virus. Poor Jacob. He had been looking forward to this day -- his first day of homeschool -- for over a week. Everyday, he asked, "Can we do homeschool now?" Now, on the day when my answer was finally, "Yes we can!", he didn't feel up to it. Even though he felt horrible, he begged to have school, so we attempted. We made it through the pledges and prayertime, then he sat at his little table, shivering because of the fever. I told him he needed to go rest and he cried because he wanted to do school. We continued. We made it through the Bible story, then Jacob finally agreed he needed to rest. He walked over to the couch, I gave him his blanket and pillow from his bed, and he didn't move for six hours. Despite giving him Tylenol around the clock, Jacob's fever hovered close to 102 degrees throughout the day. Day one of homeschool would have to wait until tomorrow.
Side note: Annabelle took full advantage of her brother's sudden illness and took that opportunity to be as crazy as she could possibly be...and play with Jacob's toys -- especially the ones he NEVER lets her touch.
I did a ton of research before settling on a homeschool curriculum. I talked to people, looked online, browsed through several catalogs, and went to a homeschool conference. I finally decided to enroll Jacob in Classical Conversations. I think he is going to love it. One of the things that most appealed to me is, he gets to attend a class once a week, which I think is a wonderful thing. Since he was sick, he missed his first class, but I'll keep you posted on how it goes. Besides Classical Conversations, I am using Hooked on Phonics for Reading and Math-U-See for Math.
We're on our third day of homeschooling and so far, so good. I am amazed at how much Jacob has learned already. I have to be honest, though. Tuesday (our actual first day), I had a little meltdown. I realized my planned schedule wasn't so great after all. Jacob was determined not to learn the correct way to write a lowercase "A" and I was just as determined to MAKE him write it the proper way, whether he wanted to or not. Forty minutes later, I gave up. I didn't even realize we'd been sitting there for that long until I glanced up at the clock. So much for those " no longer than twenty-minutes" lessons. As far as scheduling goes, we still have a few kinks to work out, but we're managing. Yesterday and today have gone much better.
Annabelle hasn't been quite as cooperative as I would like her to be, but I didn't have high expectations. :) While I'm working with Jacob, she works dilligently to divert my attention away from him and onto her. Her scheming works. As she well knows, I can't just let her climb up onto the kitchen table and dance as she pleases. I try to involve her as much as possible. She has a pencil box with crayons just like Jacob. She has coloring books to color in while Jacob works in his workbooks. She does not have her own gluestick, however, and this does not make her happy. She stole Jacob's the other day and smeared glue all over her face before I realized she had even taken it. She loves to watch the Hooked on Phonics videos, which they've been viewing during snacktime. She loves the songs and she repeats the letters and sounds along with Jacob. All in all, she's been fairly well-behaved (for her).
For the record, Jacob is not allowed to have Mr. Monkey's cousin (his monkey blanket) with him during school. He must have grabbed him while I was looking for the camera.
I realize we're only three days into it, but right now, I couldn't be happier with my homeschool preschool decision. I am definitely looking forward to the year ahead!
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