Trials of Homeschooling

     After a trip to the school board and bookstores around town, we were ready, we thought.  You see up until this point in the lil one’s life I had been at home with her for the past 2 ½ years, and daddy had the opportunity to draw his unemployment and spend extra time at home with us; in a nutshell, she had gotten spoiled to having us around all the time.  We had given up a strict schedule and embraced the fulltimers lifestyle of doing whatever you felt like, whenever you felt like it.

      It didn’t take long for the lil one and her new best friends, the adopted grandparents, to find more homeschooled kids in the park.  She now had friends from FL, AL, TN, and VA.  With this many friends that were homeschooled it was pretty easy to have a leverage piece if she didn’t do her schoolwork.

      We soon got into a schedule that kind of worked for us.  The major issue was the lil one taking after her daddy more by staying up most of the night watching TV, movies and infomercials, then sleeping until late in the morning.  No matter how hard I tried to wake her, she would not budge some mornings. 

      We soon had to implement some rules with consequences, ‘No work = No play’, simple as that, or was it?  At first it was easy, it was still hot and the pool was the main prize.  After it cooled off, it got more and more difficult to get her to concentrate.  It was espeicially hard with the windows pulled open enjoying the warm salt-tinged Florida air, was hard for the teacher to concentrate on many of these days too.

      She had new friends move in from Colorado, and yes all three of them were homeschooled too, they were older than ours by a few years but they all got along great.  They too, had a ‘no play before work’ rule in their household, it helped us tremendously for her to have them as role models.

      The lil one immediately made a turn around, she had new friends to play with after lunch, that was when most of us would get through with the schoolwork.  She would ask to be woke up at a certain time and we would work on one or two letters a day, a new number a day, along with repeating everyday the things we had learned previously.

      It was the most wonderful feeling to know that I could do this, I could be there to witness the first time that that lightbulb goes off in their minds and they ‘get it’. You know, when it all those monotonous days of repeating the same stuff over and over again finally just CLICKS.  That light that shines in their eyes with pride at themselves is priceless and I feel so privileged to have a husband who has offered to work and sacrifice for me to be able to stay at home and raise our daughter and teach her along the way.  I feel very blessed for all of our blessings we’ve had over the years.

To all the past, present and future teachers out there; I’ve never really understood why or how you could possibly do what you do and stay sane.  Then I was the reason for our lil brain learning and absorbing and ‘getting it’; I ‘get it’ now, to be the reason and witness that spark of light in their eyes is magical.  Thanks for all you have done and are continuing to do.

Until next time……

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his    influence stops. ~Henry Brooks Adams