Teaching is such an interesting experience. I feel like as a teacher you spend hours planning and prepping and researching in an effort to create the perfect lesson full of learning and love….only to five seconds before you begin your lesson throw everything out the window and wing it because your lesson is irrelevant to their needs that day. Then the funny thing is, you will do THE EXACT SAME THING THE NEXT DAY. You will plan this amazing lesson only to get to the moment of teaching and then wing it. This leads you to feel like you are constantly flying by the seat of your pants unsure if what you are doing is working or getting through. Every once in a while though, your child will randomly tell you something you taught a couple weeks ago and you get this feeling of elation! All your hard work is paying off, they ARE learning something and maybe you just might survive the year! And then always right after that, you ask them something super simple and easy like what letter “A” is and they say “Ummmmm 10?” AAANNNDD we are back to square one. Despite this craziness, you keep teaching even though you feel like you might end up in an insane asylum because of it. Why? Because of those rare moments where you see the light come on in their eyes. You see the spark of their love for learning grow. Because you love them and want them to become their best selves and save the world.

I taught English in China for a year to elementary children. I have never loved little children as much as I did those little ones in my classes. It’s so true the saying that says you love those you serve. One of the greatest ways to serve another is to teach them, because knowledge is power. That being said though, it was challenging, so much so that I promised myself I would never homeschool. Well, never say never. I am four days into homeschooling for our second year. I have a daughter in kindergarten, a daughter in preschool, and a roaring toddler who wants to be a part of everything and brings all that chaos with her. I have found that it’s easier to try to harness her powers for good and find ways for her to participate rather than trying to distract her into doing something else. It has been quite the learning experience for me as a mother, teacher and person.

Last school year was my “trial” year since my oldest was in preschool. I wanted a year to have the space to fail and try different techniques to see what worked for us best without the pressure of “real school” age requirements. One of the biggest things that I learned was that you can absolutely over plan and try to fit too much into a day. The only thing that comes from that is frustration for you and them. Now I know I’m only four days into this school year, but this school year is already going SO much better because I have learned to meet their needs instead of trying to achieve my expectations. I’ve learned a lot on our homeschooling journey and I’m excited to share our journey with you. Hopefully it will be entertaining and helpful!

The MVP of this week was without a doubt yoga balls. My girls have SO much energy, they are like little energizer bunnies. Trying to channel that energy was half the battle most of the time. I was always saying things like “guys FOCUS” or “come on sit down for like FIVE SECONDS and tell me if this is uppercase A or lowercase a” etc. etc. So going into this year my main concern was “their focus needs more focus” and “how was I going to accomplish that??” Then I found my answer! Instead of trying to stop their movement I would encourage it! I know I know, that sounds pretty counter productive, but it really has worked! I figured I spent a year trying to fight it, I might as well see what happened if I embraced it. So I got three small 12-inch yoga balls off of Amazon and BOOM life changing. We still have plenty of practice with sitting still like when we are doing arts and crafts or work in their workbooks, but if it’s circle time or story time or flash card time, basically anything that could reasonably be done with movement then they are on their balls bouncing. There is lots of movement, laughs and giggles but also learning and absorbing and FOCUS. It’s been amazing.

What I’m really excited about from this week, and was a crowd favorite, was reading aloud from a Junie B Jones level chapter book. I grew up reading Junie B Jones books and loved them. I had the idea to read to my girls every day two chapters (sometimes more because we have to find out what happens next) from a little chapter book after snack time and recess. We all sit down on our school rug and they bounce on their balls, lay down, or snuggle on me while I read a riveting story about Brianna the tooth fairy and how with the help of her human friends she gets back her magical items that help her be the tooth fairy from Jack Frost and his goblins who stole them. I wasn’t sure if they would like it or not, but they have absolutely loved it! I love watching their eyes light up as we go on the story adventure and I love watching their love of reading grow. One of my daughters made the comment that it’s more fun and exciting than watching TV. We have talked about who the main characters are, what are their strengths, who are the bad guys and how are the main characters going to solve the problem they are facing. It started out as something I wasn’t sure would work and worried they were too little for, and now it’s something I will continue to do for as long as they need me to and until they can soar independently on their own.

Another big change that came this week, but didn’t hit me until 1:30 am Monday morning as I laid down to finally go to sleep after prepping my lesson for the next day, was that I needed to do a 180 and change the program I was using. I had been using Abeka and I LOVED it. However, I found it really hard to condense down to fit our timetable AND it was hard to combine it with the preschool program I was using. I fought so hard to make it work, but I’ve known for a while that we needed to change our program. It is just such a great program and I so wanted it to work. I finally let it go though and found another program that is PERECT for my girls. It’s called The Good and the Beautiful. It’s such a simple yet powerful program. I ordered the kindergarten program and am super excited for it to come. They offer the whole program for free download as well, but I didn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of printing.

I also started using Toddler Lesson Plans: Learning ABCs and Numbers, The Ultimate Toddler Activity Guide and Toddler Lesson Plans: Colors all if which are by Mrs. Autumn McKay. She is AMAZING and her lesson plans are simple and fun yet very powerful in teaching. Through her lesson plans we have sampled different types of apples and counted their seeds, colored and cutout/glued alligators, found uppercase A and lowercase A on an airplane (we learned about A this week can you tell?) went on name hunts and played chalk shape hot lava outside.

It’s crazy to think that we are already wrapping up our first week of school. It’s been wild, but despite everything I have absolutely loved it and loved watching my daughters eyes light up with the love of learning. Don’t tell 20 year old me that though