Today is officially the first day of school! A few weeks ago we decided it was time to tell the kids that we would be home schooling this year. It’s a terrifying thought for me, but it is something that I have been wanting to do, and putting off for several years. With all of the problems we were having with Tyra last year, being problems that had just built off of problems the year before, I decided that I didn’t want to have another year that was just worse than ever because it was building off of the problems of multiple years before it, and therefore it was time to just kick myself in the butt and do this home school thing!
The kids had various reactions. Ethan was VERY upset about the concept of home school, probably because Ethan is a creature of habit and when things suddenly change from what he is expecting he does not like it, no matter what the change is. Tyra was upset as well, but mainly because “I will miss my friends”. So she is upset about missing out on the social aspect of school. Jeremy, just shrugged his shoulders and said “ok”. He doesn’t seem to be upset about it at all, but he isn’t excited either. I kind of wonder if maybe he was being picked on at school. He used to ride his bike to school, but then one day he REFUSED because it had training wheels on it. So we took them off, and tried to help him practice learning to ride without but he hadn’t got it down and just refused to ride his bike to school ever again, which is what makes me wonder if someone picked on him for having training wheels or something. Dinah also wasn’t very excited about the home school idea, but she wasn’t sad either. I did preschool with her and a group of other kids and each parent took turns with the teaching, so sometimes the preschool was here, and so learning at home isn’t really a new concept for her.
So I was determined to make today special even if they weren’t going to the public school. I made special crepes for breakfast:
I decided we would kind of take it slow to begin with because I am still figuring out what I am doing and the kids need to adjust to the idea of this is home school, not extended summer vacation. I didn’t want to just jump in and try to do a million subjects every day and burn myself and them out, so today I just explained the concept of ‘copy work’ and had them do a bit and we called it good. Hopefully we can make that part of our morning routine and then add something else after a bit.
Here they are on the first day of school:
My big school kids:
I am glad that they aren’t so mad about home schooling that they at least smiled for the pictures. 🙂