Homeschooling

I feel like I’m back at square one with homeschooling. Or maybe square four. Kindergarten was super easy for me – we just kept doing what we were doing and Alice still learned! I know, amazing right? 😉

This year first grade started out great. We started early in anticipation of taking time off when the baby arrived, which was good because we’ve taken off about three weeks with all of the issues we had and his death. My Mom being the fabulous educator that she is talked to me about setting up a different way of homeschooling, we have structure and much as Alice loves worksheets, I didn’t feel she was getting as much as she could. I don’t view sitting at a desk and filling out forms as education – I could send her to public school for that! (Okay, that may be a bit harsh.)

So I’ve talked to my step dad (star curricula writer he is) and more to my Mom, in addition to doing a ton of searching online. I found a great site that had objectives and such listed, which I’m going to use as a guide for myself. I also am a fan of Kate over at I Think Therefore I Blog and she is a fellow homeschooler. She has been doing a weekly resource list with awesome websites and has many other observations about homeschooling on her blog. Yesterday I looked through her archives and opened every website she listed, closing ones that didn’t click with me practically instantly (just a few). I then saved them all and picked a couple to go back to today. I am going to take the weekend and look at all of them, along with the rest of my bookmarks. I plan on deleting and reorganizing – I still use my bookmarks and have a great system that works well. I’ll take the next few days, probably until Monday, to write up a months worth of what we are going to do. I have lesson plans but this is going to be different.

I’m scared and excited now. I know my Mom and Stepdad can help if (or when) I run into problems or questions so it isn’t that. I think it’s more the oh my gosh am I doing the right thing? Do I know what I am doing? I’m sure I am and this is just a moment I’m having.