Balance

We're through our first six week homeschooling session for this year. We're actually almost done with our "off" time and ready to get back to it tomorrow. Before we do, though, I wanted to take a moment to ruminate on things...

- Mostly, things followed "the plan" and we tackled our varied curricula just fine. I'm happy with most of our choices and dropped a couple things that I decided were just busy work. :) (I find, too, that I'm very appreciative of curricula with clear instructions...ran into a couple that drove me batty, having to flip back and forth between numerous sources to figure out what the day's lesson was supposed to include. I also can't stick with a program with poor grammar...where reading things aloud to the boys requires me to edit as I go. Ugh.)

- I found, though, that I was distracted. With the combination of Noah getting older (7th grade) and a number of our homeschooling friends opting to switch to public schools this year, I found myself doing a lot of thinking and comparing and worrying. I started trying to add more structure to our days...trying to illustrate to the boys how public school might be and trying to convince myself that I was crossing all my "t"s, if you know what I mean. In doing so, though, I discovered that I was overlooking the point. Yes, I do want to prepare them for the world and some public school ways will help with that. But. I want to do it *our* way...that's part of why we homeschool, right?  

- So. I'm going to work during this next session to make sure to add the fun back into our studies and take advantage of the opportunity to direct studies and exploration to the interests of each boy...to focus on each boy's strengths rather than just worry about their weaknesses...to try to rediscover our balance and enjoy the time we have together. To that end, each year, I ask them for a list of things they each want to learn. Having filtered the lists (I'm *not* teaching Noah to drive quite yet, thank you very much, lol) and such, we're going to try to add electronic gadgetry studies for Noah, clarinet for Asher and astronomy for Micah. 

- (Actually, Asher started clarinet lessons at the start of September. He's loving it and is picking it up really well! He has his first recital at the end of the month. Feeling pretty fortunate that we were able to find lessons next door to karate and at a time just before karate class, thus saving us a trip each week.)

- I'm learning that trying to assign more individual work to Noah (essentially "homework") means more of my time...not only during the "school day" but also at night when he's working on his own stuff. Duh, right? ;) I can see that now, but it was a revelation at the time, lol. Trying to adjust...

- As I've been trying to communicate to the boys, I'm finding that every assignment I give actually has (at least) two purposes...the material at hand AND the importance of time management and responsibility. While I'm not yet ready to require as much work as public schools, I *do* want them to learn how to deal with due dates and personal motivation and tackling things that aren't always fun. I think/hope that I'm getting through to the younger two, who are usually pretty good about this and are diligent workers. Noah's more stubborn, lol. I suppose that comes from waiting to really push this until he's almost 13, right? ;) Lovely. (Yeah, we were butting heads pretty good at the start, but it's getting better as he's seeing that I'm not going to budge. Wish us luck!)

- Along those same lines, I'm realizing that I need to do a better job of letting them fail on occasion. I know myself well enough to know that I have a tendency to make things easy/smooth for everyone...it makes life simpler and less crazy and I appreciate that. :) But. Keeping track of things for them doesn't give them the opportunity to learn to do it for themselves. Working on it. Ugh.

- I'm continually thankful for how generally cooperative my boys are in the first place. I get it. They're pretty good. It's a large part of what makes this work for us. :)

So. Those are some of the things that have been floating around in my head of late. Whew.