Question

Why is it that even though I homeschool my kids and they are home with me all week, my house gets way messier on the weekend? I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I am lazy on the weekend and spend way too much time on the computer and do not keep any kind of schedule - "Oh, small children, you want lunch? I guess it is almost 3pm..."

The spinning is slowing

I started homeschooling four years ago when my oldest was kindergarten age. It was my husband's idea, but I figured I couldn't mess up kindergarten too much. I bought Teach Your Child to Read in 100 lessons and Comprehensive Curriculum K workbook. I had been a preschooler teacher in a previous life, so I had unit style lesson plans that would work for kindergarten. We met another family at church that was also homeschooling a kindergartener and had younger kids similiar in age to my younger two that we hung out with. Except for the fact that I was babysitting a baby full time and had a baby of my own, it was a lovely year. First grade rolled around and I bought the 1st grade workbook. I stopped babysitting in December and found out about the What You ___ Grader Needs to Know series. I bought the kindergarten and 1st grade books and zipped through them by June. The following fall(oldest would now be in 2nd grade) now that I wasn't babysitting and stuck at home full time, I decided to join the local homeschool group. Boy, did my life get crazy - park days, field trips, and finding out about the many, many curriculum resources out there. My head has been spinning every since. That was almost 2 years ago.

I just had no idea all the resources out there. I did not know there were different style of homeschoolers. I have spent the last 2 years reading books and searching out stuff on the internet. I discovered Yahoo groups, Blogs, and more curriculum choices than I could ever dream of. Finally, finally, I feel like my spinning head is slowing down.

I have discovered that I lean towards a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. I have at least a plan of what curriculum resource I plan to use (more on this in an upcoming post) and a schedule that is working most of the time (I will post about this later, too).

Sometimes I miss the easier days of homeschooling before I knew what was out there. I didn't spend hours on the computer reading blogs and yahoo post or stress out over the best math curriculum and how much money I am spending on school stuff that I didn't even know existed before. But now that I know what's out there and what works for me... at least for right now, I feel like I can move on with our homeschooling life with a little more knowledge and little less head spinning.

I need more time

Sheesh, I just can't seem to find the time to blog regularly. I suppose if I didn't spend so much time reading other people's blogs, I might have time to mantain my own :) I have also been working on a project of complying book lists from a variety of sources. It started a year or so ago when I got Rebecca Rupp's Complete Home Learning Source Book. I took notes by making a lists of books for each topic. I have added to these lists as I have come across books on each topic. Recently, I decided to go through lists I had bookmarked, so that all of the books on each topic would be together when we wanted to learn about a specific topic. It has been a major undertaking. I am almost finished. Maybe when I am done with this I can devote more time to blogging...I am a little old school right now and have all the lists hand written. I hope to type them up and put them on this blog at some point.