Pictures of My Cuties

Sammy

I know I don't seem to post anything about Sammy, but only because he's three and we have chosen up until now to have no structured school time for him. He has his own "school work" that he chooses to get out and play with sometimes, but I never make him do it. Well, I have noticed lately that he loves to play with the manipulatives that came with Cameron's Right Start Math Level B program. This made me think about the Level A kit (kindergarten level) that I am loaning to a friend and I realized that he is totally ready to start that, and I think he would love to do it. So we are planning to start Level A in January. I will let you know how he likes it after we start.

Flexibility

One of the greatest things about homeschooling is the flexibility. Here's an example: Cameron has a tendency to grumble at me when it's time to do school work. Our current schedule has us doing his work after lunch when any little I am watching are napping. The other day I got especially frustrated with him because he was not being cooperative and was complaining about how unfair it is that he has to do school work while his 5-year-old friend (who I watch periodically) gets to do whatever she wants. I explained to him that she does not have to do school work when she is here because she comes from her kindergarten class where she has spent 3 1/2 hours doing school work. Anyway, I realized that we needed a little change in our schedule if I was to maintain my sanity, so I made Cameron a deal. I told him that from now on I would wake him up at 7:00 am to eat a little breakfast and immediately work on Math and Language Arts. Those 2 subjects seem to be his least favorite, so I figured if we could get those out of the way then we can do the fun subjects at naptime. We just started this 2 days ago and it seems to be working.

I realized that something like this wouldn't happen if he was in school. Our schedule would be dictated by his school, not by what works for us. Maybe lots of people would be OK with that, but I am definitely not a rigid schedule keeper and absolutely love the idea that we can be flexible and change our schedule to fit our needs at the time. Another confirmation that we were meant to homeschool.