This is our first year homeschooling.  Sometimes I feel very overwhellmed.  Other times, I just feel fine going with the flow.  Our hardest obstical seems to be me getting off my butt and making them do some work.  I think it wouldn't be as hard if I wasn't babysitting my 6 month old neice.  She doesn't sleep on a consistant schedule and I never know how long she will stay down.  I may be kidding myself, but I can't help but think I could get more accomplished, not just on the homeschool level, is she wasn't a full time involvement.

I have 3 wonderful children.  Dillon, 7, is a high needs, sensitive child.  He is also the first one to stir up trouble by teasing and picking fights with his sibblings.  He is also the reason I decided to heck with public school, lets give hs a try.  PS was no good to him.  I do know that we are spending a lot of our time de-schooling as well.  He absolutley hated PS.  He never wants to go back, and I see no reason to send him back.  In some ways he is a big hs challenge, in others he is the easiest.  1) he is gifted.  He picks up things very quick 2) he hates to write, I've found ways around it and it works for us. 3) he can read, so I can have him do some things on his own.  4) he doesn't seem to want to "do" much of anything.  All in all, we have our up days and our down days (and weeks LOL).

Emily (just turned 5) wouldn't be able to go to ps this year.  Our local ps age cutoff for kindergarten is 6 days before her birthday.  However, I see signs of her being just as gifted as her brother and is picking things up super fast.  I have been working on Letter of the Week program with her and math.

James, 2, hangs around for the ride.  He already knows many shapes, most colors, and is learning to count.  He loves mommy time.  The few times I've sat down with him on some little toddler workbooks I have, he isn't really ready for it.  He likes to be a part of our Units, so I usually give him some printouts and he often hangs out with us when I do things.

Then, my 6 month neice, Serenity.  She is very much a hold me baby still.  She isn't crawling yet, and will only sit for a few minutes to play on her own, even if I am right there with her.  I keep praying, and keep hearing, wait.  I hope that once she is able to crawl that I may be able to get schoolwork in progress when she is awake.

I am doing a make it yourself curriculum.  We don't have a set schedule.  I had tried to plan it all out, but was not able to stick to it.  I've never been good with stiff schedules.  We have a few workbooks, some outline type books, and math.  We had started with Math U See, but it didn't work for Dillon.  It was also a little advanced for Emily.  So we are now trying Singapore.  Both kids love it.  When given a choice of subjects, they both want to do math now.  Much nicer then the groan LOL.  I want to do more Unit studies.  I have attempted some, but they were more built for classroom, so I did have to modify them.  I have tried to make my own, but didn't feel like they covered much.  They were fun, and the kids loved it, I just needed it better planned.  I'm going to try a pre-made Christmas one after Thanksgiving.  I hope it will go well.  Maybe after doing a few pre-made ones I will have a better idea of how to make them myself.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shannan