Day 2

I think all my posts for the next little while need to be titled, "Adventures in Homeschooling, Trying to Figure Things Out, and Getting a Lot of Practice but Not Always Succeeding at Using Patience."  I guess this is where my blog truly is journaling, because I'm sure a lot of people don't care to hear about all our day to day craziness of homeschooling.

Yesterday was busy.  Between school, sewing patches on Brian's Scout uniform, making a visit with the Primary president for Activity Days, making phone calls for Activity Days, running to Target to get plastic tubs, and setting up our work boxes for today...it was just packed.  I was actually quite impressed that we got as much done as we did, even if the laundry didn't get folded.

 I'm really excited for today.  Each night I need to go through the kids' work boxes and set them up for the next day.  On Tuesday we didn't do work boxes, because I didn't know the order to set them up in, then Tuesday night I took what I learned through the day and put the boxes together, then yesterday I made notes of what needed to be changed, then I made those changes last night.  One of the changes I needed to make was to have a few bigger tubs for the hardback books to go in.  The little plastic shoe tubs weren't big enough for that. 

I also wanted to make some cards to go in the work boxes so that I know which subject to prepare for and which books are needed, and so Alyssa knows which course to open on the k12 website when she's doing her lessons, which should put her in charge of her education a little bit more.  K12 has changed the formatting for their courses a little this year, and it means that I've been checking the computer, trying to find the right books for each lesson.  For instance, there's three or four Literature books with student pages, a few Literature books with lesson guides, and they all look the same, and then there's other books that go along with the Literature courses.  I was going crazy trying to keep them all straight on the book shelf.  Now they can just live in the work boxes.  My sister also gave me the tip to not rip out the student pages, and I'm really excited to not have to keep track of loose pages.  (That was kind of a DUH moment for me.) 

I don't know why it's sideways.

I'm really curious to see how today goes with the way I have things set up.  Alyssa will have more control over her lessons, and I think it will help her to see that she doesn't need me to sit beside her and tell her what to do.  I think that right now she's scared to do it on her own, but once she sees that it actually gives her freedom and power, instead of leaving her lost and confused, then she'll be a lot better student.  Yesterday she spent the entire morning crying over one page of Math that was review!  She wants me to sit beside her and walk her through each problem, but I just can't do that.  I need to remember to give her the confidence she needs to be able to do it on her own, instead of getting frustrated at the work she's not getting done.  (That's where learning patience comes in.)  Last night as I was doing the work boxes, I went through and graded everything she had done through the day.  It was so fun to see what she had done, and I really was impressed with the quality of her work.  I made sure to put in lots of positive notes with my red pen, so she knows that she's doing a good job.