Back to School!!

Well we have officially been back to school for 2 weeks now. The first few days was extremely difficult. I am homeschooling both Nate and Eli. Nate is in 1st grade and Eli in kinder. The first day Nate cried a lot and was telling me that he thought school was stupid. I told him he needed to get his attitude right. He has to go to school, so he gets to decide if he wants to go to school at home or go to the "big school". I found a great website for homeschoolers. homeschoolspot.com It has been a lifesaver. After our first day I got on the forum and told them about my horrible first day and asked for advice. They reminded me that the great thing about homeschooling is that we don't have to sit in a desk for 3 hours at a time. Some one suggested writing everything we had to do down on individual index cards and writing fun activities too. Then we choose a card from the work pile and do it, then choose one from the fun pile. Continue doing that until all the work is done. I adapted that into something that works for us. I have a chalk board in our office. I drew a line down the middle and wrote work on one side and fun on the other. Our fun things include: bingo, reading a book, playing with legos, video games (20 minutes), computer time (really counts as school but shhhhh!) and a coloring page. This seems to be working really well. We usually break for lunch around 11am. Our day starts around 9am when Greg goes to work. In that two hours we work until the kids starting getting restless then we pick a fun thing (usually bingo first) then we work a little more, then we have lunch. After lunch Eli and Sam lay down and Nate finishs school. He usually doesn't need a break in the afternoon. He is able to work much faster without Eli around. Then its free time for the rest of the day. Really its working out great!! I love that I am able to teach my children.