I don't know if I shared in a previous post or not, but we have decided that Sweet Baby will not be attending public school in the fall. When we began the process of home schooling this year, I had decided that she would attend 1/2 day kindergarten this coming fall so that she could get a good strong reading background. However, as the day has approached to sign her up, a few things have happened, which have changed my mind.
1) Conversations with Sweet Baby. Initially when I asked her if she wanted to stay home and do school with mom her answer was, "No, I want to go to school. Come on mom, I've been with you enough days already." This response just makes those of us who know and love her laugh out loud because this is her attitude with most things. However, a few months ago she started declaring that she changed her mind and didn't want to go to school because she didn't want to be away from me.
2) Conversations with dear home schooling friends who have been encouraging me. I didn't think I would have the time to teach Sweet Baby how to read in addition to keeping the other girls on task. However, I realized that I didn't have to wait to start to teach her how to read in September. I can start the process this summer when I don't have to be so scheduled with the other girls and have a good jump start.
3) The near abolition of half day kindergarten in our district. I discovered that the district is trying to do away with half day kindergarten all together and there was no guarantee that it would be available to us at all next year.
So...the decision has been made, the workbooks that I need to go along with the program a dear friend is loaning us have been received and I have a child who is excited and ready to go!
The other girls workload is winding down so I thought that today was as good a day as any to get Sweet Baby started. We started with writing her name. She has been able to write the letters to her name for a few months, but not on lines or even consistently. What I learned about her is that she is going to be tough! She has been a bit tougher in all areas than her sisters were but she is quite a perfectionist when it comes to writing and drawing. She was very angry with the fact that her letters did not look like mine and proceeded to throw her pencil down and cross her arms. In addition, one of her sheets told her to color the bus yellow. She looked at me and said, "I don't want to do that. I'll do the next page." I said, "No, you'll do this page because that is what you are supposed to do and if you don't do it today, you'll do it for school tomorrow." Her response was, "I don't want to do school tomorrow." Not a bad first day....SIGH!!!!
I wish I could share the picture of her when she completed writing her name (but it has her full name on it), when it was finished, she was so proud of herself and was grinning so big!
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