Redefining a successful school day

I promise you that homeschooling three kids was never my intention. Homeschooling always seemed ridiculous to me. But the birth of each subsequent child has furthered my realization that any judgmental thought I have about someone else's parenting I allow to cross my lips will eventually come back and bite me in the ass. I remember snickering with work friends about the hippies putting cloth diapers on their babies to protect them from absorbency chemicals and plastics. Less than 4 months later I was laundering diapers for two babies and had a growing and expensive 'fluff' addiction. After openly mocking parental negligence, I am now the mom who has lost her son a the grocery store, let her daughter fall off the bed not once but three times, and set hot gravy too close to her grabby 7 month old. So as to not further digress or give you more ammo with which to call child protective services, I'll get back to homeschooling. When we first moved into this house, the basement room was set up as the previous owner's school room. I just knew that mom was nuts. Why on Earth would she homeschool her son? We can see two of the four highly accredited local schools from our back deck. The other two are walkable within 5 minutes. And now here I am, less than 5 years later, with all three of my offspring home for school.  You see, I have come to realize we are all doing the very best we can for our kids at any given point in our lives. Judging gets you no where because you have no idea what that other parent is going through at the time.

But anywho, yesterday went well. Completely not according to plan, but well. As I had mentioned in the previous post, the kids were super excited for their first day of homeschooling and had been ogling the worksheets and tasks list that awaited them in their respective school folders. The initial thought was to go through our calendar and daily chores exercises after they all woke up, dressed, and ate breakfast. Sports Nut was up early, showered, dressed, ate, and then SAT. Waiting on the couch for his two sisters. Whoops. We couldn't get in to his other school work because he was leaving shortly for first hour band class at the middle school. As an impending 6th grader, Sports Nut was excited about playing the trumpet in band. When we decided to homeschool, I was excited that Sports Nut could still take band at the local school. It worked out perfectly that band is first hour so he'll be home by 9:45 and then we'll have the rest of the day to ourselves. So he and I sat and talked about the very first book he's ever read cover to cover, The Hunger Games. (Remember the above comment about not judging?? This is a kid who has never wanted to read. Two weeks ago he was given this book and has been reading it. Content aside, I'm elated) Eventually Drawing Diva and Mini Marvel made their way downstairs and we rushed through the calendar and chore chart before Sports Nut ran off to the middle school. We also had a lovely extra child for the morning. A friend's son was starting kindergarten yesterday and moms were expected to stay for the first couple of hours. I had the pleasure of snuggling their 10 month old while they were gone. Of course Drawing Diva and Mini Marvel were excited to have a guest and focused their energy on keeping Baby entertained. By the time Sports Nut was home and Baby returned to her mother, it was almost time for the local homeschool group's Tuesday park day. Unfortunately it was raining here, so the park day was out. During my somewhat obsessive every-five-minute check of Facebook, I noticed that a friend on the west side of the state mentioned the weather near Lake Michigan was beautiful. Feeling giddy, I suggested a field trip to the beach. Sports Nut and Mini Marvel jumped for joy; Drawing Diva burst into tears. What about the worksheets? What about the SCHOOOOOOL???? Enter: compromise. We all sat down to do some worksheets and free writing and accomplish some of the day's chores. When Drawing Diva was satisfied that enough work had transpired, we packed up and headed to Lake Michigan. The afternoon was perfect. The kids had a great time in the sand and waves and sun. It was wonderful to watch them and felt deliciously naughty to be there the day after Labor Day.
We got home late last night,(late for a school night), but on my drive home I realized that was okay. No one had to be at school early the next morning. Another homeschooling friend also pointed out that we hadn't played hooky, Tuesday was just gym day.  So I just reveled in what the day had brought without letting guilt spoil it. Not a bad feeling.

Begin at the beginning

Today marks a monumental first in our family. While all the children of Michigan march back into school buildings this morning, my three offspring will be sitting in our newly Christened school room, expectantly waiting for me to learn them up right. I feel like that's the picture people have when I tell them we've decided to homeschool our kids after 6 years of sending them to public school. In actuality, I'm planning to do more living in the world than schooling at home. Please let it be known that we are not teacher-haters. We know many wonderful teachers who do amazing things with and for their students. Our concern stems from how restricted those teachers are by funding cuts, paperwork, overcrowding, under staffing, and how it was personally affecting our children. Also, when I say we know many wonderful teachers, I must also point out that our children have actually been able to land said amazing teachers roughly 28.5% of their combined school years. But this is not a blog about the trials facing conventional schooling, this is a blog about our first year of learning together, at home and abroad. First days bring excitement and nervousness, and we are feeling that, too. At this point I am planning to take more of an unschooling approach to learning, letting the kids dictate the direction we move in. In order to give them more freedom, we don't have a set curriculum. I do have a few books that we are going to use as guidelines and this turned out to be sound foresight as my first child-led directive was to get them some worksheets to fill out, stat. That is called irony, dear children. Let that be your first lesson.
I call this blog Three Steps Closer to Crazy in honor of my three children. We have two type-A first-borns, Sports Nut and Drawing Diva. They are 5 years apart and of differing genders, thus the anomaly of having two first-borns. By the third child I figured out a way to effectively clone myself; enter Mini Marvel. Mini Marvel is a typical youngest: unapologetically energetic and full of life and mischief. Together with my husband they make my life puzzle complete (and little insane).
So here we go, jumping in with both feet. Except Mini Marvel, she always goes head first.