A Good Day

Today was a good day. You know, I go back and forth all the time about this homeschool thing. Always second guessing myself. Wondering if I'm making the right decision for my boys. But today was definitely a day that I felt good about it. Christopher has never really read for me before. He always says that's school work and, unless it's assigned to him to do, he's not doing it. lol Mind you, he doesn't say it in a rude way. He just honestly believes that's how it is.

Without going into great detail, last year we tried getting it worked into a routine that he would be "assigned" to read at home at least a few nights a week. Long story short, we had a hard time getting this to happen on a regular basis and this was one of a handful of issues that resulted in our decision to homeschool.

To explain a little bit of background with digressing too much (lol) Matthew knew right away when we decided to homeschool, in fact we spoke with him a lot before making our decision. He had a big say in whether or not he was going to do it. He actually wanted to try it last year but he had a really good teacher for 4th grade and we found out he would get him again for 5th grade so he stayed in his school. Many people have asked me if I'm sure I'm making the right decision with Matthew to try homeschool. He's a very outgoing, social kid. I've said time and time again, if he wasn't wanting to try it so bad I might not have even thought of homeschooling him but from the first time he heard me talking about it with my mom on the phone he wanted to talk about it with me. We went through all the pros and cons we could think of, even looking online at everything we could find. His only concern was sports and seeing his friends. Well, thankfully that was an easy thing to accommodate since we only live a few blocks from the Youth Center. He already plays baseball through them, now he can also get a full basketball season and they offer karate, which he's been wanting to do. The only sport he won't get that he wanted is football but, I must admit, I'm fine with that! lol A lot of his friends also have memberships to the Youth Center like he does so he'll still get to see most of them on a regular basis.

Christopher, on the other hand, is a different story. For him to go to school where he had to, it required a bus ride there and back. He loves the bus but wasn't crazy at all about the length of the rides. In the mornings he was awake and long gone on the bus before I even had to wake up the other two boys. In the afternoons, he usually fell asleep on the way home. He has his routine that he HAS to stick with each and every morning so that required waking him up early enough to do everything he needed to do before the bus came. If the bus came and he wasn't ready...the bus had to wait...and so did all the vehicles waiting behind the bus. I laugh about it now but boy we had some stressful mornings of me pleading with him to hurry and him just not understanding why he needed to. lol He is slowly getting a good understanding of what homeschool means. We've been talking with him for most of the summer, answering his questions (the main one has been how will he get more girlfriends! lol) We're going to work with getting him playdates with his close friends so he can still see them and there is a pretty big homeschool group here on base I want to get them involved with. He is actually excited about getting to "go to school" with his brothers!

But back to today :) I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to get him to read for me now that he'll be home for school. Explaining things to Christopher is a lot like explaining things to Ryan. They are kind of on the same level in a lot of ways. So I've just not been sure how much he is understanding what homeschool really is. Well, to my wonderful surprise he came up to me today with a book in hand and asked me to read with him in the recliner!! He knows that, in a way, I'm going to be his teacher (he doesn't understand fully how this homeschool really works with him having an assigned teacher that he will get to skype with and all that stuff) and he knows I want him to read at home...so he just decided today was a good day to start! Woo Hoo!!! It was awesome! It was so great to get a peek into what he can do! It definitely made me feel good about our choice today!!

Jenny :)