another struggle is the time that i have to put in. i spend a good bit of time preparing lesson plans and laying out their work for the next week. basically i spend about 4-5 hours at some point in the week preparing for the week ahead. i know it doesn't sound like a whole lot, but i don't really have a whole lot of time to spare {as you can tell by what i'm doing right now ;)}. when i talked to people initially about homeschooling my kids, somehow no one ever even mentioned the time i would have to spend in preparation.
kylie's lesson plans are the most difficult, because they are much more detailed with much more paperwork...these are the lesson plans for one whole week |
kenzie's lesson plans are much easier but still take a little bit of time to prepare |
one of the biggest challenges that i'm facing right now with lesson planning has to do with my curriculum...i use abeka curriculum, which i really do love; however, they are not very creative in their approach. because of that, weekly i'm having to come up with some creative ideas for both girls. i have gotten a ton of ideas from this blog, but it is still time consuming to have to print, look up ideas, etc. i guess a good way to look at it is that it has forced me to be creative in my approach to teaching...
i also try to be sure that kenzie has things to do {some fun, some more challenging} while i have "teach time" with kylie...
i bought this dry erase booklet at wal-mart...i also bought little tabs to put on all the pages that i want kenzie to work on while i'm teaching kylie |
another challenge at this point is the lack of a good space to do our schooling in. we have these nifty desks {which the girls love} that you see in the picture above, but we just have to move them in and out of the den...that's where we do our seatwork. i teach at our kitchen table, then we move to the den to do our writing work {that way the person doing their seatwork is not being disrupted by my teaching at the table}. we're just having to make do with what we have right now.
when all is said and done, i love homeschooling. i know it's what i'm called to do for our kids, and i love the time i get to spend with my kids. i love that i don't have to be without my kids for eight hours a day. but it ain't without its challenges. just trying to keep it real...
love this post! you are doing an awesome job as a homeschool momma! isn't confessions of a homeschooler an awesome blog! i get lots of stuff from there as well for preschool.
ReplyDeletehope that you are doing well. call me sometime!