Tomorrow!!!!

Tomorrow is the big day! We begin school and the girls are quite excited. Tomorrow I'll take pics of our day and post them to share.

I mentioned that I had been very nervous. I'll explain why...I never notified anyone in the school that our girls would not be returning to school (we live in Michigan and it is not required), so last week we began receiving bus schedules, teacher assignments, a postcard from the 1st grade teacher to my daughter telling her how much fun they would have in 1st grade. Thinking about what I am "taking away from my girls" was driving me batty. I would break down in tears and several times felt like I would be sick. Luckily I have a few people in my life who offered up some wonderful words of advice and prayers as well. I keep trying to tell myself that I'm not actually taking anything away from them, instead I am giving them things that many kids will never have - the opportunity to grow closer as a family and have fun learning.

The first thing that set the anxiety off was learning that both of my girls would have the teachers that I feel are the best ones for their grade. In addition, the make up of the class that my 4th grader would have had is filled with children she was in class with for 1st and 2nd grades, and they are wonderful kids. If you remember, part of what spurred us in this direction was the lack of control in her class room last year. She was in a class room filled with children that didn't know how to behave and when I approached the principal about this fact (on three different occasions) I was told there is nothing that can be done. So, knowing that she would be in a class that was much different made me feel like maybe this coming year in school would be different. BUT then I remembered that Satan knows where I am weakest and that no matter when I promised God that I would listen to Him when He called me to keep the girls home. I promised I would listen until I felt that call change.

SO...away with the fears and on with a new adventure!

It's Coming....

The first day of school will be here in just one week! I'm so nervous! My girls are still very excited to be home schooled (the 9 year old specifically). I sat down last week and requested ooodles and oooodles of books to use with our studies, specifically related to history. I've now got a book shelf in the dining room for all of our goodies (though I can tell we are going to outgrow it rather quickly). I've also been searching for some things that our 4 year old can do to be busy like lacing cards, alphabet cards, etc. We are spending these last few days having some kids over today, Wednesday and Thursday to play. I'll be back later on to share about the anxiety I have been having and how Satan has been all over me to throw in the towel before we ever even start!

Home School Planner

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/BackAtTheRanch/574287/?#c1124325 Check out this link to be entered into a contest to win a Home School Planner and get all the details...It sounds great to me. Since this is our first year home schooling, I'd love to see some ways to help me be organized!

Notebooking and a Great Site

One topic I have found while getting ready to start homeschooling is "notebooking". This is something that I think will be great fun for the girls. I originally thought about doing "lapbooking" because it is so similar to scrapbooking and I thought that I would like doing it, but then I admitted to myself that I have a tendency to want to have the girls projects look perfect and I try to take over and that is NOT what this is supposed to be about! SO...I decided to do notebooking instead because this is about their writing. The things THEY write about. PLUS I have a 1st grader who LOVES to write so I thought notebooking would be right up her alley. I stumbled upon this blog the other day: http://www.notebooklearning.com/ and I LOVE it. There are so many FREE pages that you can download and use at any time. I love all the resources I have found for free out there that help make homeschooling easier and this is one of those sites!

Fears....

Some days I am quite confident that this decision was the correct ones, then other days I am so fearful of hindering my kids. I've been working on lesson plans and I didn't pick the correct curriculum. The Portraits of American Girlhoood is proving to be a lot of work for me. I wanted something that would tell me what to do each day and was pretty self contained. This program is written like that but when I looked it over I felt it was seriously lacking in some areas - like Science and some aspects of Language Arts. So, I decided to mainly use this program as a history guide. But, that means I have to add in science, add in certain aspects of language arts, add in math, so I am now drawing up week by week/day by day lesson plans and it is over whelming because I sit and look at it and wonder if I am covering everything. I'm still struggling with believing that the exact things that the girls public school counterparts will be studying isn't necessarily what we HAVE to study. Yes, we need to do math, spelling, reading, science, language arts, handwriting, etc. but just because they are studying electricity in science doesn't mean we can't study the solar system. So..here I sit stressing! And chocolate hasn't helped!

THEY ARE HOME!

Last day of school was 2 days ago! When our Kindergartner got off the bus at 11:30 I literally was jumping up and down and as she crossed the road and reached me I grabbed her and screamed, "It's your last day of school!!!" I proceeded to come inside and cry! I cried because another milestone has past. I cried because I am still fearful of our year to come. I cried because I was happy to have her home where she belongs. I am hoping to be relatively consistent with this blog as it is a journal of our journey and I don't want to forget any of it!

Last Day of Public School!

Tomorrow is the last day of public school for my girls. Will it be forever? I don't know..When I finally decided to home school I said that I would not predict that I will do this forever. What I will do is admit that I will continue to listen to God. I don't know the plans God has for our family. For the school year of 2008-2009 God has directed me to keep the girls home and begin home schooling. He may change our direction in the future. I'll wait on Him.

Meanwhile I am watching the days slip away and I am realizing that our voyage is about to begin....I'm nervous but excited at the same time!