Just as if I Knew No Better...

So this past year with school has been a big beating for me.  With the younger crowd getting older - they are now 5, 3 and 16 months - the demands on my time grow with them.  Hard when I've also got an older crowd doing full-blown school.  With the new demands comes the need to flex and think further outside the box in order to get things done.  The tough thing for me is that I was so engrossed in the daily needs that I didn't realize my situation until this past month.  We've been homeschooling for 11 years now, but I think I pulled out every single rookie mistake in this past year.



Sophia - 2008
They don't stay in the ExerSaucer forever, do they?

 When we started homeschooling our oldest, who is now 15, I made the rookie mistake of trying to cordon him off for homeschooling.  It was frustrating because I kept trying to occupy the younger two in order to keep them away from Ben and me so we could get school done.  I was frustrated, Lydia and Jack were frustrated, and I noticed a frustrated tone creep into Ben's voice when speaking to his brother and sister.  Something had to give, and I stopped trying to do public school at home, and became a KONOS user.  It was just what we needed!  We four studied together (they were 7, 4 and 2 when we started) using the great unit studies found within KONOS.  We had a lot of fun, went on a lot of field trips and the frustration level was way down.  We wound down with KONOS when I discovered we were becoming more interested in the reading than the activities.  From there I moved into the Guerber histories from Nothing New Press that have GREAT reading lists in the back which we faithfully followed.  For Language Arts we used Sonlight, and misc. for math.  It too, was great.  We had a daily plan that we all knew and followed.  Everything worked like clockwork. 

Then we had Henry, Sophia and Grace.  And this year Ben was off doing his own high school curriculum - with Darin and me trying to facilitate that with him, but not doing such a great job of keeping up because of all the stuff we had to keep up with.  I tried to continue with the ol' "daily plan" that was so cozy and comfortable, but with three littles running lose, it wasn't working.



Ben & Lydia - 2004.  Love them.

 ROOKIE MISTAKE #1: I panicked and decided to put Jack and Lydia into their own individual curricula.  My reasoning was that they are now old enough to do most of the heavy work themselves.  They're certainly not total slackers, but it didn't work the way I thought it would.  First of all, they were used to us all spending a lot of time reading together, so they would both bring me books from their curriculum (Sonlight) and ask me if I would read them with them.  I wasn't about to say no.  I love spending time with them and reading good books has been such a bonding time for us.  So there I was, reading to two kids three or four different books each day on top of what I was trying to accomplish with Ben, on top of what I was trying to accomplish with Henry, Sophia and Grace, mealtimes, and laundry (forget the rest of the house).
RECAP: I had three different kids in three different curricula.  Only a complete crazy woman would do something like that.  Sigh.

More later.  It's my bedtime now (related to my rookie mistakes of the past year ;-)