Homeschooling the non-reader

I just realized that I hardly write about home schooling. We do home school. Sometimes I don't talk about it because I hate comparing myself to other people. It's a brutal world out there and just because we home school, is no different than being out in public schools.

You get together with other home schoolers and sometimes it turns out to be a competition. You know, the "well, my son is only 4 but he's in 3rd grade already" kind of stuff.

Last year, I wanted to do it all. I would hear of a curriculum that sounded good, I'd write it down and try it. I already had a curriculum, but I wanted to supplement what I had. So I ended up doing a lot more than what I should have and then realized that it was causing me and my son to dislike school. We were both stressed about it. I didn't even like to get up in the mornings, because I knew that the tears would start as soon as I said, "let's start school". And this was Kindergarten.

I actually wanted to quit. I prayed about it and knew that God still wanted us to home school. So I sucked it up, changed my attitude for this year and started fresh. School started pretty much the same way that it ended last year. Both of us in frustration. I knew there had to be an easier way to make this all better for us, but I had no idea how at the time. I also had a pre-k student, so now I had the little one that wanted to do school all the time and the 1st grader that hated school.

So I prayed some more and realized that I couldn't compare myself or my children to others. I was a unique person and so were my children. What worked for others obviously didn't work for me. I changed the way I did things, because while structure to the exact minute works for some people, it didn't work for us. Yes, we start at a certain time, but if we didn't finish in the alloted time that I'd given it, so what, we continued on until we finished.

AB hated to read. All the words seemed to just jump out at him and he got overwhelmed with them. He would open the book, start to cry and not stop until we finished the little story. I had to change everything. I tried it all. You name it, I probably did it. I think I should invest in stock in the company's that make thick packing tape and blank index cards. I made flash cards for the vocabulary words and sentence strips for the sentences.

Some days would go better than others. While UB begged me to do school, AB begged me to let him go work, because he'd rather work than do school. I know that some people would tell me that I did it wrong, but sometimes I'd let AB pick what he wanted to do first. I wanted to get him to enjoy school and at the beginning of the year, like I said, he hated it.

I enrolled him in the Braum's ice cream program, the Pizza Hut program, the Six Flags reading program and even bribed him with so many books read would get him a certain lego set. No go. At one point he said he didn't care about any of it. I even threatened to send him to public school.

But my plan worked. Some days he wanted to do reading first. Some days last. But then there were those days that he wanted to read all day. So nothing but reading would get done, but I didn't care, because I was finally getting some of my sanity back.

Now, I can't type in front of him (if I don't want him to know what I'm typing). He reads signs all over the place while we are driving or at places where we are. He even says that he loves to read now. He'll get a book and tell me he wants to read it to me or he'll do two reading lessons at one time.

We do school my way now. I tell him what we need to do and what order and I get no tears and no tantrums. All I get is an "ok mom". He'll even want to start school before we are actually supposed to start.

In my 3rd year of Home schooling I've learned that praying about it definately works, but every child is different. What works for one, might not work for another.

Entertaining Angels

I took the boys to the store yesterday to look for some jeans and shoes. The holes on the knees of their jeans are big enough to fit a basketball in there. Now, I know that there are some people out there that pay big bucks to get the same look, but I'm just not one of them. I think it's crazy when people buy jeans with holes in them for anything over $10. Bring them over to me, pay me the 80 extra dollars and I'll be glad to put as many holes in those jeans as you would like.

While we were getting ready to leave the mall, we stopped to get a cookie. As we were standing there, a man approached us and starting looking at AB's shirt. It had a panther and a guitar and other stuff on it. AB was inching back because the man was getting closer. All this man wanted to do was look at the shirt. I finally got AB to stand still long enough to get the man to see what he wanted.

This man had long gray and black hair that was in a pony tail. His beard was just as long and was in a braid with a bright red rubber band on it. He had the bushy eyebrows and his front two teeth were missing. He was wearing a vest and some jeans with some boots. Yes, he was not the best looking man to look at, but he was not gross. And he did smell just a tad bit.

As I was talking to this man, the boys relaxed and were smiling at him. But the people around us were not. There were two ladies about 5 feet away that looked at me like I was crazy to be talking to this man. They huddled together and kept moving away from where we were talking to this man. The cookie girl asked me for my order and smiled an "I'm sorry" smile.

I got my order and still listened to this man tell me his story. He finished and I told him good bye. The people all looked at me weird. He stood in line to get his order and we left.

He wasn't hurting anyone and he wasn't being rude or ugly. Yes, he was strange looking, but we are all strange looking at one time or another. Some of us more so than others.

I guess what made me stand there and talk to him was that while I didn't have to, I wanted to. The thought that kept coming to my mind while talking to him was, "what if that was Jesus?" So I couldn't leave and not be kind to him. My only regret is that I didn't offer him a cookie.

Happy Birthday Adventure Boy

Last Tuesday was Adventure Boys birthday. He had been extremely excited because we let them pick what they want for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So he chose pancakes for breakfast, tacos (homemade) for lunch and frozen pizza for dinner. I know, those are such nutritious food choices, but hey, a kid only turns 7 once.

He had also received some money from some people. He wanted a certain nerf gun. He gives me the money and says, "here mom, it's to help pay for the gun I want" How sweet is that?

Then UB had one dollar, he combined it with AB's 2o something dollars and 0ff we went to the store to get AB his toy gun. We get to the store and AB says he wants to make sure he has enough money to also buy his little brother something. He picks out a gun (the one that he wanted) and then lets his brother choose a small gun and they go pay.

UB is thanking AB profusely for buying him a gun on AB's birthday. AB is quite proud of himself because I told him I was proud for thinking of someone else on his birthday.

Then we get home and they start shooting each other and fighting. That happy moment at the store was short lived.

Happy Birthday Hubster!

Hubster's birthday was Saturday. We actually went out on another date. I'm starting to enjoy these dates with my husband. I'm not used to them. We would go out on dates, but it was maybe once every 6 months or so. So I'm really liking this. Anybody want to volunteer to watch my boys anytime?

On Friday, my friend had invited my boys to a sleepover at her house with her 4 boys. A house with 6 boys. Wow! But the boys all get along and they have a great time together. So the boys left sometime in the afternoon and stayed the night.

Hubster and I celebrated his birthday at dinner time on Friday night. I knew Hubster wanted to work on his car Saturday and figured we would eat in after picking up the boys.

This was UB's first sleepover and AB's second one. It was actually strange to sleep in a house with no kids. I was enjoying the quiet, but at the same time, I missed the noise. We stayed up late watching a movie, but being old fogies, we had to turn the movie off because our sleep was being interrupted. I woke up at 8 the next morning on my own. I didn't have anyone standing 3 inches from my faces, scaring me out of my wits as they said "mom, what's for breakfast?"

The boys had made their daddy a homemade card and each had attatched something from their room to give to daddy for his birthday. UB's gifts consisted of a hot wheels car that he said was a collector car. It had apparantly been involved in a road rage battle with another car because the scratches on it told a story. He also put a paper clip, a rubber band, a pen, a pencil, a candy and some lint.

AB had made a card and taped some candy on the inside as well as a keychain with a Jeff Gordon mini car on it.

Nothing like having homemade gifts made with love.