The January Blues

Well, with a break from science, geography, and special units during the month of December, January's return to a full school schedule was kind of a shock to our system. I'm not sure why it was such a hard month, but it probably had something to do with the fact that we were coming back after having such a lovely Christmas break, not to mention the fact that Mason dropped his morning naps this month, and that Spencer officially started his Kindergarten reading track. Up until now, Maddi and Spencer have done almost everything together. All of their math, science, geography, and special unit work has been combined. Even much of their penmanship work they have done together. Maddi has, however, been on a more advanced reading track then Spence. Where Spencer has still been doing a lot of review of reading and writing all of the letters, Maddi has been tackling weekly spelling words, sight words, writing assignments, and daily reading requirements. This month, however, it was finally time for me to take Spencer to the next level with his reading work. It was finally time to put him on my self-designed reading track and welcome him to the wonderful world of readers. While he has done exceptionally well this month, and proved to be every bit as bright and capable as his big sister, it has still been a very taxing task. After all, it means one big thing: more time spent schooling. In addition to our combined classes, I now have two children (if you don't count the little preschool exercises I do with Emmie) that need quite a bit of one-on-one time. And this will continue to be true as the gap in the reading ability widens, and as Maddi gets into math work that is more advanced than I want to go with Spence quite yet. In truth, this month I began really homeschooling two children, verses just homeschooling Madison and having Spencer and Emma participate on the side. It has been hard, and taken some adjusting to, but adjust to it I must. It is my current lot in life to home school, and hard as it is, it is an unavoidable fact of life. This month almost drove me to spend what little savings we have and actually hire some help; but, gratefully, after a lot of frustration and struggling, I think we've re-found our balance and we are going to push forward on our own. I did decide, however, that while we started school in June of last year, we will be having a true summer vacation this year. We will still raise our tadpoles and other fun science projects, but otherwise, it's going to be a break from school. Our vacation may only last a month, as I want to avoid the usual forgetting of information and necessary re-teaching that occurs every summer and fall, but still, a month is a month. And I can't wait.