Monday, August 5, 2013

Summer??

We missed summer. Well I did anyway. Our twin girls decided to make their debut a little too early and ended up with a 6.5 week hospital stay. I was with them the entire time, and feel like I completely missed out on summer with my older kiddos. That and because I think it's just the way it should be, we won't be starting school here till September! ;) That'll show em! I'm taking back summer!!! :) Today is the first day of school in our area for the kids. August 5!! So sad. Seriously it does make me sad. Those poor kids. It also at the same time makes me thankful for the opportunity I have to keep our kids at home and make those decisions about when to start school (at a reasonable time) and end our school days at a decent hour as well. So really, I've come a long way from where I was mentally last year at this time, ha! This year will be interesting as we are adding a video K-4 program for our second son. He will be 5 in October, but I didn't want to start him off too early in school. However, he is SO ready to be learning and begs constantly for more school. I'm not sure he's really MY child, ha ha ha! So I abandoned my original plan of just doing preschool worksheets with him for another year and we took the leap into an actually structured school day program with him as well. He's beyond ecstatic and can't wait to start! He got his kid-safe headphones from UPS the other day and was thrilled beyond belief to have them. He asks multiple times a day if his videos have arrived yet, and reminds me that a "few weeks" is too long for school to start. This program that he is doing is an actually 4 year old kindergarten, not just a preschool program, so I know that he will be challenged not simply entertained. I'm looking forward to that. Our oldest is in first grade this year, and I'm a little concerned about his response to the longer school days. He wasn't too into school last year and we had many go-rounds about getting it done. It's an experiment. Sorry, oldest child, but you get to be the guinea pig in the family. Once I moved him out to the living room to do his work things seemed to get better though he did still like to complain about school. He seemed interested in his "new" DVD teacher however, and I'm hoping that having his brother "in school" as well will give him a little more motivation to apply himself. We'll see how it all goes. For now we are going to enjoy the rest of our summer and pity our poor friends who have to be in school already! :)

3 comments:

  1. Well, we are starting school on Monday in this house! WE started late last year, and with my surgery, the move, and everything else we got so far behind and did school well into June. I hated it and so did the kids! So we are starting school a little early this year in plans to be able to relax and have lots of vacation days! I, too, love that about homeschooling. I love being able to decide some days to just skip school. Oh, what type of headphones did you get and where did you get them? We are in need of some since we now no longer have a seperate room for school and we again have two doing videos.
    I hope first grade goes well. I will say there is a TON more seatwork which I really think is a lot of busy work, so I ended up not making L do it all every day. It is just too much, in my opinion. And since we don't have three whole reading groups to get through each day, I don't see the point in making him do all that work. So just a tip - maybe whittle down the seatwork some for him.
    I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer. You definitely deserve to push the date back! :-)
    Emily

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    1. Thanks for the tip. I probably will "whittle" back the seat work. I did some of that this year even too. There is a lot of busy work, but I know too that he needs writing practice! Still, I'm not going to do it all every day for sure! We got the headphones off of amazon. They are called Kidz Gear Wired Headphones, and they're great because they come with a little extension piece that won't let the volume go above a certain level. I think they're around $20.

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  2. Great! Thanks, I will check them out. We tried school today and it didnt go the best - too much distraction! I think headphones will help. I hope! :-)

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