I've heard it said many times...so I was wondering, was it?? Cause our first year wasn't, not at all. Is that weird?
No, this year was fun! But I was only HSing one of my kids and "facilitating" the older one in a cyber charter. I expect this coming year to be more of a challenge because DD10 will be homeschooling. Although they'll do some lessons together, I worry about trying to schedule each day so that each kid gets individual math time with me.
No. But there are many factors involved in that. 1) My kids have never attended a "regular" school, so they had no expectations or experiences to go on. 2) I had been "gently" homeschooling Rachael informally since I had quit teaching two years earlier. So it was seen as just adding a little more work. 3) My background is a teacher, so I had a handle on some of the stuff. 4) I really did panic at first, so I sat down and wrote Rachael an IEP, because it's what I did in my classroom. I wrote down what she COULD do in each subject (mostly math and reading), and what I realistically expected her to be able to do by the end of the year. Like for math, she could rote count to 100, and could count objects, so I would expect her to do one-digit addition and subtraction. In reading, she knew her initial/ending sounds. I expected her to be able to read "survival vocabulary" (ie: signs such as STOP, DO NOT ENTER, etc.), and also to decipher CVC words, to identify long/short vowel sounds, to be able to retell a story. But in all honesty, I think the big reason it went easy was the first one!
Not after Christmas when I read several unschooling books and began to relax. We are not totally unschooling but the books really helped me let go of having to do every work sheet, have a rigid schedule, etc. So I guess what I'm saying is we had a bumpy start but it really ended up being a good year. 2nd grade btw.
Nope, other than jumping from one curriculum to the next to figure out what style and level we needed. It was fun.
Not really. I almost let it become stressful, but the ladies on here calmed me down and told me to relax and let my kids relax and start enjoying each other again. It worked and they are such great friends as well as sisters now.
No, the first year with my daughters years ago was a relief to take them out of ps. And the same with dgs when he was in second grade, it was a relief. I remember he was coming home with a stomache almost every day. Dgd 1 only went to kindy in ps and used to skip school to homeschool. Dgd 2 will never step foot in ps, she has been pre-preschooled since she was about 3 at her own request. lol
I guess I'm alone here, but my first year was definitely tough and frustrating. My son didn't learn at the expected rate and I was going through the curriculum as instructed and it caused him to really dislike reading. I jumped ahead and his attitude changed and over time he grew to love reading. I ended up unschooling the second half of Kindergarten and doing formal testing at the end of the school year that gave me information on how my son learned. It was also frustrating because I believed phonics and reading skills were supposed to be commensurate with each other. I didn't know what to do when the distance between my son's phonics skills and reading skills began to increase. And there was the hatred of math. My sister (a former elementary teacher) told me that sometimes a child won't enjoy everything. That didn't sit well with me. Math was a big deal and I didn't want to just settle for a hatred of math. This was a child who loved to learn and was so hungry to learn more. I switched to another program that was much better the next year, but it has only been this year (our 4th year) that my son now really loves math. I sure learned a lot that year and never wish to repeat it. Since then I discovered that my son was a whole to parts learner and choosing curriculum and getting resources together with that in mind has made a huge difference.
Honestly, no, our first year was easy. We had fun, and enjoyed what we did. Now move forward to the time of finding message boards where everyone is always talking about the next great thing, and things started to fall apart. I started to worry that we weren't doing the right thing, what we were doing wasn't good enough, etc. I started trying to keep up with the Jones' and we all started hating what we were doing. I'm trying now to go back to our roots, but I am still drawn to boards, and am still finding myself thinking I need to use this curricula or that.. and am still buying things! I want to go back to our roots where I found real books that covered the topics I wanted to cover and we read them. We used a few simple CHEAP (think Spectrum and The Complete Book of books and Comprehensive Curriculum books) things as our spines and we enjoyed our days. I'm trying hard to not go to some of the other boards and read, because they or well that ONE is a very bad influence on me!
You're not alone Embassy!! My first year was tough and the second and part of the third. We both struggle with OCD, so homeschooling gave me something else to obsess about. He had been to private/public schools until 7th grade. I thought we should do things just like a school. I did NO research. I jumped in with virtually no guidance. In fact, I didn't start looking for help until after the second year. I planned on signing him up for a local charter school halfway through the first year-but there was a waiting list. **Things are much better now. I understand we don't have to be like a school. I am accepting that my son has a harder time with things I used to think he should get very easily. I also see that he is very intelligent, but hates to sit and do worksheets and really anything that looks like schoolwork. I haven't thrown all the papers away; we do a lot less though.
This is how I feel.:wink: It was 13 yrs ago but if I recall the first year was a breeze, but I suppose it's all relative when I compare it to home schooling high school.
The first five months were wonderful. We did as much as we could outside and my kids just loved "school". (We started our year in July.) Then we had a house fire before Xmas which caused us to have to live in a hotel for for 8 weeks while our house was being repaired. We were blessed that we didn't lose much, but hs'ing in a hotel is difficult to say the least! When we got back in our house I discovered I was pregnant (good news) but unfortunately I quickly became as sick as a dog, sleeping or throwing up most of the time. So, yes, we had a challenging first year. BUT I choose to view this year as proof that anyone can homeschool in almost ANY circumstance! God willing, next year will be much easier
Our first year was awful ( 2nd grade). He was coming out of public school trying to unwind and I was creating school at home. He hated school, he hated reading, and all he could say was "I can't"! I had to use the timer on the stove for everything!! As we come to the end of 3rd grade this year, I feel like I have a much better handle on how to educate him. He is happier than I have ever seen him and now he loves to read! At times I still have to set the timer, but that is to get his nose OUT of the book! lol One of my favorite things is listening to him talk and noticing his vocabulary and how it ( in my opinion) is much improved from his school peers. I am so thankful for the internet and seriously wonder how the pioneers of homeschooling did it!
We are finishing our first year this week and it was easier and more fun than I expected. Of course we have some of "those days" where we were both unhappy and I was ready to call the local school to take him away, but those days were few.
Overall it's been much easier than I expected it to be. Of course I only had my oldest home, so next year may be a totally different story when I have all three home full time. They're 10, 8, and 3 The hardest part for me has been letting go of the school teacher in me and being able to relax and go with the flow!
