Beginning week five!

It certainly doesn't feel like I've been a teacher for nearly 5 weeks. Home schooling has gone better than I could've imagined, although I have had a few surprises along the way. While I was preparing for this journey, I just knew I was going to struggle with my strong-willed first born. It was honestly one of my biggest fears that every instruction I gave him would be met with a bad attitude. I am SO pleased to announce that he proved me wrong! He has done a fabulous job. My second born, however, hasn't made as easy of a transition. He will tell us that he likes home school better than public school, but you certainly wouldn't be convinced by all the pouting he dishes out in the few hours we are doing school work. I'm pretty sure it just boils down to him missing his friends at school. We have joined a local group and attend play dates every Friday. He seems to be making new friends and settling in nicely with the others. I feel like the attitude will subside with time. He's thrilled that we will be picking up one of his old buddies from school tomorrow so they can spend a few hours together. I'm excited for him. My oldest daughter is doing great so far. We usually finish her work up in about an hour & 1/2. That doesn't include our read-aloud time. The toddler is always glad to have her big sister all to herself while I continue on with the boys for a couple more hours. Speaking of the little one, she is loving her 2 days a week of Mother's Day Out. She always asks when she can go to home school :) From time to time, I will let her practice her cutting skills at the bar while the others work at the table or let her play with pattern blocks and coloring pages. Every once in a while Dora will step in and offer some lessons in Spanish. She's been a real life saver ;) All 3 school-aged kids are doing great in their studies. I feel like they are getting a good balance of familiar review and challenges. I plan to do a little tweaking to our English/grammar curriculum, but other than that, I have been pleased. It's hard to believe that according to the public school schedule, we are almost a 6th of the way through our year. I'm curious to see when we will finish up. Time will tell. Speaking of time...my alarm will go off in about 7 hours, so I think I will head off to bed now. Sweet dreams!