Our homeschooling adventure: The Beginning

Yes I am still alive, I just haven't had much time to blog with the craziness that has become my life! Allison was such an easy baby I didn't really feel like I was being pulled three ways. Now I definitely feel it! Not only do I have to keep three kids entertained, but I have to keep a close eye on all three. She listens pretty well, but when your not looking she gets up to all kinds of mischief. Case in point she has emptied out the book shelf no less than five times in the last four hours. I finally just left the books on the floor. She can't pull them down if they're already down, right? But I digress.

My purpose for this post was to share the beginning of our homeschool story. Recently I've been really focused on putting together my curriculum for our first year of home school at the Meakin casa. I have talked about the fact that we're going to do this, but I hadn't gone too much into why. I have a sweet, unbelievable talented, sister that I visit teach. She has home-schooled all of her kids and has sent two off to college already. I was visiting with her one day and just to make conversation asked about her homeschooling adventure. I don't think I could tell you exactly what we talked about that day, but I can tell you all about the over whelming feeling of rightness that I just couldn't shake. Believe me I tried to shake it. I mean anyone who has met my kids would think I was nuts to even entertain the idea of homeschool. But it was like a seed was planted and I HAD to know everything I could. I checked out every book I could find on the subject. The pros, the cons. It's almost like I was looking for a reason to not do this, but a reason never came. And the more that I prayed about it, the more I knew this was what I needed to do for our family. I also knew that Heavenly Father was on my team and would help me through the tough stuff. I've always known He was there, but I could literally feel the Spirit pushing me along; encouraging me to keep going.

Jared was unbelievably supportive right from the beginning. He had mentioned homeschool before Melody even started kindergarten, but it wasn't even something I would think about at that point. After she started school I was so wrapped up in a newborn, that it took me a few months to realize that while she was excelling academically, she was struggling in every other way.

We had more than one issue come up that there was no solution for.
Issue #1:She only got one recess a day and it was not nearly long enough for her. She's a very active child and if she's not given the opportunity to take a break and get all those wiggles out once in a while she starts getting into trouble. Thankfully she had a teacher that was very understanding of this and tried to help her cope.
Issue #2: She was putting so much pressure on herself to be as perfect as possible at school that she would come home and fall apart. I'm mean screaming on the ground tantrums multiple times. Every. Single. Night.
Issue #3: Her school started at 8:00, her bus came at 7:00 (am I the only one that sees how ridiculous that is). If she didn't catch the bus I spent almost 45 minutes sitting in traffic or risked everyone's lives to walk her there. She is NOT a morning person, so it was taking almost two hours to get ready some days. Not only that, but she NEEDS 11-12 hours of sleep a night in order to have a good day the next day. So that would have her going to bed at around 6:00 in order to be to school on time. Jared doesn't get home until after five so she would go days only seeing her dad for about an hour a day.
Issue #4: Because Melody is so active she's not terribly interested in playing what the girls want to play, but she really wanted to be friends with these girls so she tried. Turns out there was a ring leader in her class that insisted all of the girls play a game called 'Hottie'. In this game you wear hot clothes and walk around like a model and be 'hot'. Unfortunately if this particular girl didn't think what you were wearing was 'hot' you didn't get to play. Melody desperately wanted to be friends with this girl for some reason or another, but this girl was totally mean to Mellie. Melody would come home in tears some day because she had had no one to play with at her 15 minutes of recess. She got one break in her eight hour day to play for 15 minutes and she couldn't even find friends that would play games that five-year-old's should want to play.

Now if she were an adult you would say learn to cope that's life. However, she is not an adult, she is 6 and too young to have too little sleep with not enough activity and too much pressure. Thus our decision to homeschool.

I've already kind of laid out our school year schedule. It's going to be four weeks on, one week off. That way we can all get a break and I have a chance to reevaluate my curriculum. I think I've pretty much settled on what books we'll be using this year, I just need to get them bought. I have this loose schedule put together, but it's with the thought in mind that it may change at any time. That's why we're doing this, so we can learn at a pace and in a way that works for everyone.
 
I am so incredibly excited for this new adventure in our lives and I'm sure you'll be hearing more in the near future!