Friday, September 11, 2009

School Is Now In Session

Josiah started Kindergarten! I can't believe it. It wasn't an emotional day for me or anything, mainly because we're homeschooling. I guess if I had to drop him off somewhere I would have cried like a big baby. He was so ready to start and had been begging me for a while so we started one week earlier than I wanted to on August 24. He really is doing great and for the most part enjoys everything we're doing. We have some rough patches every once in a while but I guess when mom is the teacher this is expected. I have to confess that I never ever wanted to homeschool but I really don't have too many options. Some days I feel an incredible amount of pressure to be the one responsible to have to teach him how to read, math, writing, etc.!!!! What if I can't teach him the basic things he needs to learn? It is really scary but we get through it each and every day. Oh, and today he read his very first word all by himself! I'm glad that it was me and not a stranger that got to hear! I guess that makes it all worth it at the end.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

awww so cute!!

Karla said...

You can do it! I'm sure you've done your research, my sister in law who is an excellent teacher and is very passionate about education recommended "The Well Trained Mind" by Jessie and Susan Wise. She and her husband are missionaries in Nepal so she homeschools their kids.

Natalie said...

Thanks for the book recommendation Karla. I just wrote it down on my
"books to buy" list for next summer.

Kempiz said...

Natalie, I can vouch for the book mentioned by Karla. The Well-Trained Mind is a book that uses the "classical" approach to home educating your children. The Classical method been around for a long time (Abe Lincoln and Ben Franklin were educated with this method) going back all the way to the time of the ancient greeks. It got replaced by "modern" education a little more than a hundred years ago, but before that it's the way all children all over the globe learned. Anyhow, it's the method I use and this book is one of the best instruction manuals on the classical approach - it's just excellent. My kids have benefitted beyond what words can express from using this approach - I've been doing it this way since my oldest was starting Kindergarten. Now I'm teaching the three boys with it and it's just amazing.