So here we are at the end of week one of homeschooling. I would love to blog a bit about this adventure so that we have recordings of what this year was like for our family. Our plan is just one year, but we're keeping open hearts to what the Lord's plans may be for our family.
- I love this.
- The kids love this.
- Some days we do school until 3:00 or 3:30, same days we've finished by noon. I love the flexibility and the uniqueness of each day.
- Marco is so much more into school than I expected. He wants to do more and more and stays engaged in most activities and read-alouds.
- Lucia keeps pretty busy and her favorite thing to do is to color on the white board.
- I often resort to nursing Lucia while sitting at my teacher's chair because she gets fussy and complains and asks for it so the easiest thing to do is sit down and nurse her. It works for us :)
- The children make a great team during school by helping each other out (Diego helping Alexia or Alexia helping Marco) and are very patient with me having to put Lucia down for naps, etc.
- We have learned so much in just 6 days of school.
- The biggest challenge is when one child needs peace and quiet to work, another child has a question, another child needs his/her lesson explained and another child is about to fall off the table she just climbed on top of. We are all being stretched in our patience!
- This has been a wonderful transition from summer days. On typical summer days when we were all at home, I kept busy mostly cleaning and cooking and the kids did their own thing. Now I am solely focused on them until we finish school. This has been so good for all of us as they love the mama time and I love having no distractions taking me away from pouring into them.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
HOMESCHOOL!
I know I am supposed to be putting captions on all of those pictures, but I need to take a post to write about our first day of homeschool! This is a day that Ricardo and I have been talking and praying about for over a year (we've talked about homeschooling way longer than that, but it's been over a year now since we started this very serious conversation of "should we do it this year!?"
We are using a curriculum called My Father's World. It has a family learning cycle so Diego and Alexia study the same Bible, Geography, Science and Music/Art. They have individual Math, Spelling, Handwriting, English and Reading.
The children have been sooooo excited for our first day of school. We returned from Seattle on Sunday and they were pleading to start school on Monday. I needed Mon and Tues to do laundry, buy groceries and just settle back in before we started school. On Tuesday we went to Catch Air for our last day of summer fun day. We had planned to go to the pool, but it was a stormy day. They had an absolute blast there!
So Wednesday, August 19 was our first day of Lopez Academy. The kids had chosen their outfits the night before (per their request) and had them all laid out. I set my alarm for 6:30 to be up and showered and ready. Ricardo canceled his morning meeting so he could stay home and have a special breakfast with us. We had pancakes and fruit and everyone was just so giddy to get into the classroom. We started school at 9:00. My plan had been to wrap up around 1:00, but they wanted to keep on going so we continued on until 3:00! I have a babysitter that will come to help me every Wednesday which is an incredible blessing! It was great to have here for our first day. She played with Lucia when she was fussy, she helped with breakfast and lunch dishes and was around all day to help in any way I needed. I had thought about putting Lucia in a preschool but the logistics of dealing with that were just too much for me right now. And I really don't think the other 3 could handle any amount of time without baby sister around - we would just miss her way too much.
So we started at 9:00 and did our Bible and Math work. As part of our Bible work we went out for a walk and prayed for our neighbors. The children really loved this and so did I. It really creates an awareness of who's around us and how the Lord can use us to touch their lives, even if just through our prayers. We prayed out loud with our eyes open and when it was Marco's turn, he said "Dear Jesus, thank you for your life. Thank you for our neighbors. Please keep our neighbors safe and...WAIT I SEE A ROLY POLY!" Of course he had to stop and stoop down to play with the bug and observe a few other things while he was down there and then he stood back up to finish his prayer. Precious! And as we were getting closer to our house, I was pushing Lucia in the stroller and he was behind me and called out for me to come back to where he was. Diego offered to take the stroller so I went back to see what Marco had found. He found a tiny cricket and was so amazed by it. He picked it up and gently carried it all the way home. It jumped out of his hand when he was in the front yard, but I just love how he stops and takes the time to discover all the things around him. He absolutely adores animals and nature and is so observant.
When we returned home we hit the books for another hour and a half or so. The children did all of their work so well, they asked great questions and did not bicker at all (which they've been doing a whole lot lately!). We took a 30-minute lunch break and then headed straight back to the school room. Since we started on Wednesday, we had some catch up work from Monday and Tuesday (the curriculum is laid out by week) so I was planning on spreading that out over the next several days, but they wanted to haul through! We wrapped up around 3:00 and it was amazing to have no carpool pick ups to think about or homework to complete! We even had an epic game of tag and hide n seek after dinner...because we could! After I put Marco and Lucia to bed Diego and Alexia asked if they could do some more work so I gave them some assignments and they finished the night off with schoolwork :)
Several times throughout the day, I heard "Can we homeschool forever?!" "This is the best!" "I love homeschooling!"
Ricardo has only seen the kids at Wednesday breakfast this week so I know they are going to be dying to show him all of their work this weekend. He has had a crazy week at work and the busyness will continue for another month or so and then we'll have him back! :)
I told Ricardo that this is surely a honeymoon stage that will wear off and he said, "It doesn't matter if it wears off, what an incredible memory to have your first day of school be so amazing!" I agree! We will take it one day at a time and depend on the Lord to strengthen, encourage and equip us. This is all Him, not me!
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