Our First Year

After the initial shock of "this is my new life," I got down to business. There was planning to do, and planning is something I LOVE. I am just weird that way. I started reading every book I could get my hands on about homeschooling. I went to Sam's Club and bought a bunch of workbooks as a "do this till I can figure out our life" activity. Our first few weeks went great. We sat down together, did some workbooks, spent some time letting T be creative, and watched some great science videos. We joined all the online homeschooling groups and even found some people who wanted to form a Co-Op in our area. Things were going great.

But then the newness wore off and the boredom set in. I am not a create-your-own curriculum type of person, and we were floundering. I was afraid to purchase anything large scale without seeing it in person. So I started buying bits and pieces of things off ebay. I would bring them home, we would do them for a week, one of us would hate them, and then I would start looking for something different. T was refusing to even do any school work. Our newly formed Co-Op was floundering. I was still taking my daughter to preschool 3 times a week and then my Mom came for an extended visit. Things were falling apart and I was STRESSED!

Our only saving grace during this time was the discovery of a wonderful little book called "Galloping the Globe." This was what got us thru the year. T and one of his friends in our Co-Op really enjoyed Geography and they enjoyed each other. So this became our standard. We would meet with our friends once a week, do some kind of activity related to the continent we were studying, and then have some play time. The rest of the week we spent exploring the continent on our own thru literature while still struggling thru our math lessons. We were getting by, but soon we would be making more changes to our little world.