Thoughtful Thursday ~ Our Homeschooling Journey ... So Far (Part 1)

Thoughtful Thursday ~ Is going to be a new addition to my blog. It will hopefully be a way to get me back on here and blogging more. I need a place to put down my thoughts and Facebook isn't really ideal because I can be quite long-winded. ;) And lately I have had a lot on my mind. So I plan on sharing it ... to whoever it is that actually reads this. This may or may not happen every week. It just depends on how much I have to say. For today I will be blabbing on and on about our homeschooling journey ... so far.

PART ONE:

Homeschooling is a wonderful thing and I enjoy it immensely. Jake and I agreed long before our first baby was born that we would school our children at home. And having only one child for almost 3 years made it fairly easy to instill the early learning skills. And honestly I didn't really realize I was teaching her anything until she had already learned her alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, had memorized a few books all by the age of 2.5. Around this age I started teaching her the letter sounds which she picked up just as quickly as everything else.

Then almost a month shy of turning three her little sister was born and things happened a little slower after that. We still worked on some stuff and read a lot of books but I wasn't actively teaching her anything new. This was also when we lived in the dreaded "moldy" house. We all got really sick and that didn't help things.

We did do some workbooks while she was 4 but not anything super consistent ... or at least I can not remember. Then at about 4.5 I bought a Hooked On Phonics set from Target. We worked everyday and she was reading before she turned 5 and hasn't looked back. At 6.5 years old and in 1st grade she is reading at a 5th grade level ... though she doesn't necessarily understand the words; she can read them. =) And that seems pretty good if you ask me.

Now that Delia was 5 I started to get a little bit more serious about homeschooling. I wish I had been more serious earlier but the circumstances didn't allow for that I suppose. There are so many homeschooling moms in my church that I have tons of help and information and answers to my many questions from ladies I look up to and who have been where I am and have homeschooled their children (some through high school) ... and have done it well. So I talked to a few of them. Got a bit of advice and couldn't grasp any of it! I was SO not ready to learn about ALL the different styles of homeschooling. I just could not wrap my head around it. It was all so overwhelming.

I can remember borrowing a book and barely glancing through it because it was so overwhelming. I didn't know where to begin. I didn't know what I was reading. There were words I had never heard of before. "Trivium" was one of them. "Classical" was obviously one I'd heard but without looking into it I judged it and assumed it was old and didn't see why I would use it. In my sleep deprived mind I couldn't figure it out. So I didn't.

Keep in mind that at this point we had moved every year or less (and still have). This greatly impacts how things get done and every time you move it messes up the whole equilibrium of your house. I think I've been behind on laundry for the last 3 houses ... but that's another story.

Less than a month after we had moved for the 11th time in 7 years Jude was born. Madie was 26 months. It was her 3rd move. Delia was 5. It was her 7th move. I never really felt like we moved into that house. In fact I was so stressed about it that I had to go in for monitoring because my blood pressure was high and normally it is quite low. I realized why my blood pressure was high later after the stress put me into labor 3 days early. But again. That is another story.

(stay tuned for PART TWO)