Faulty

I had really high hopes for this school year. I think what I absolutely love the most about homeschooling is that we determine what we are going to study and how. What we do is what we do and there isn't anything wrong with that. My high hopes were set on getting out of our books more and into some really great unit studies about the things we wanted to study. Well, so far, it's been books, books, books. But I'm changing that.

Part of what has thrown me off was the big girl's algebra. The curriculum we had been using just didn't seem to be enough for her. I have to say that after looking at some of the lessons, she was right. And it goes back to that saying, you get what you pay for. I wasn't even going to buy her math. She was going to do all of her math online. Then our desktop died. That leaves us with one computer. Mine. Although I was willing to share, I hated the thought of her online on my computer. It's really more of a territorial thing with me. Because it's mine. The curriculum we have now is working just fine for her, thankfully. It was a jolt to my confidence. I know every homeschool parent is going to have that at least once on their homeschooling career. That doesn't make me feel any better about it, though. I have tons of confidence in many areas, but I don't like when that's challenged, if you know what I mean. Specially where my kids are concerned.   I started thinking that if I screwed that up, am I messing up in other areas of our school?

Then the boy, who is my little math genius, started having problems with his math. It's the same math we've been using for him. Well, there goes another chink in the confidence. Between solving for N and division, he was all turned around. I have to say, though, that wasn't the curriculum. We took a break for a couple of days to work on solving for N. That seems to have worked well and we haven't had but a couple of minor stumbles since. Now we work on division for a couple of days. This should be interesting.

I will say it seems to have made me cling a little tighter to our books. It also makes me glad that I lesson plan in pencil and have a very big eraser. My lesson plan book has never been this busy. Is it me? A little, but it's also that the skills they are learning aren't getting any easier. It starts to get really hard now. I have one who is in her last year of middle school and one in his last year of elementary school. It's prep time. Does that mean we have to stay in the books? No, it doesn't, not for everything. It means we focus on what we need to focus on and get out of the book as much as we can.

Next week is a fun week. I have a couple of fun Halloween studies we are going to do. I even have one called "Halloween in Spanish". That's going to be fun. We are also going to make some fun Halloween recipes for lunch a couple of days. While searching for those, I found some great Autumn and Thanksgiving studies I have. I found an ebook of scary Halloween stories on my school flash drive, and one about Halloween and the history. And, of course, there is the obligatory ebook with mazes and word searches and what have you.

And although we haven't found our groove this year, we are starting to settle, I think. Our days away from the house are starting to get easier. I have to give some of the feet dragging credit to me. Ok, most of it. The kids are ok with it, it's my failure to launch that's getting in my way. I'm working on me. I'm also working on loosening my grip on the books. At least my knuckles aren't white from gripping so tight anymore.

Have a great day.