Oh goodness, how are we three weeks into January already!?! So much for already being so organized by this point.
We had a low key rest of the week last week. The last of our friends didn't fly out until Monday afternoon, so we didn't get home ourselves til late Monday night. Tuesday is my busiest/longest day (because I teach most of the day) so I didn't really get to unpack until Wednesday or finish laundry until Thursday! So really, counting preparations for and after, it was a very long "trip".
I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the week at home and for the most part I think we were able to make that happen. We even got to spend a lot of time with Seth because he took some time off work. It was nice to get that family time in.
After Bible Study on Wednesday morning the boys and I spent a good hour exploring the grounds of the church that we meet at. We had a few hours before we had to be somewhere so I let Ezra lead us around and show us all sorts of bushes and trees. Isaac is most content to do whatever Ezra is doing so he was quite happy to point at the bushes and trees Ezra had just pointed at, even though he didn't have anything to say about them. I need to pull out a book on the flora and fauna of this area and brush up so that I can answer Ezra's questions. We mostly just talked about deciduous trees.
On Thursday I had to make up some lessons that I had missed earlier in the week, lessons that I get to take the boys to. They play pretty well in the living room where I teach or, if they're feeling adventurous, go upstairs to play with the kids who aren't taking lessons. This is a family that I've been teaching for six? years and they've graciously welcomed the boys to come tag along. We actually ended up staying there for several extra hours, so I could talk curriculum with the mom and brainstorm a bit about what I want to do school-wise with Ezra. She's been homeschooling for many years but also loves looking at curriculum and had a lot of great ideas for me.
We're definitely not planning on "always homeschooling" or "never homeschooling" all of our kids. I don't anticipate that we'll ever subscribe to a "one size fits all" education policy. I grew up with too many homeschool apologists, insisting that homeschool is the only way to go, to ever subscribe to that mindset myself (even though I greatly appreciated my homeschool experience!!). Seth is pretty set against sending our kids to public school and I probably am too. I just have less familiarity with the system and am therefore not as disillusioned. And we both had positive private school experiences and have identified local possibilities, but we're not set on sending the boys to any of them either. What we are determined to do is take the needs of each year and each child under consideration before deciding what to do that year. I definitely feel well-equipped to homeschool, especially with Seth's help in math, so it's hard to justify other options without giving homeschool a pretty good look.
I started doing school work with Ezra at the beginning of the school year but after about a month and a half it became obvious that we needed to focus more on his attitude and obedience and so for the most part we just read a lot for our "school". And then the holiday season was pretty busy and this month has been focused on getting the house cleaned and organized and paperwork done and visiting with our friends at MBR, so we have yet to start our new semester. I did get a new workbook for him that I think he'll really like and he is so ready to formally work on phonics. He's constantly asking what this word or that work starts with and beginning to figure out a lot of the sounds himself.
{I didn't take many photos, but I'm having a hard time attaching the few I did take so I will work on that another day and send this instead of waiting to attach photos.}
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