Our 1st Week of homeschooling :)

Well this week was our 1st 'official' week of homeschooling , since the kids would have returned to 'real school'.

My mother asked me - 'Are they driving you mental yet??', followed by 'Have you put those kids back into school?' ummmmm nope and nope not yet Mum ;) lol

Overall I think we had a good week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were my most productive days with Maths and English our most notable achievements.

Our 1st day we caught up with other homeschooling families for a park play, which I was glad we went to the effort to do as the rest of the week has been filled with rain!! A whole week of rain!! But the bonus has been no school drop off or pick ups!! No fighting for a park and dragging Kadee and Braith through the rain!

Starting homeschooling after a long 6 week break has been great - the kids are used to being at home and are not missing 'school' ......yet.

My kids definitely are more productive when I have a routine in place. I write up what we will be doing for the day on the whiteboard and they run with it. The teachers have trained them well!! ;) I'm introducing things every few days til we get into the swing of a 'full days work'. Morning and just after lunch are our most productive times, I've even trialled a little bit of evening work (when we had a less productive day) but have found that there is little concentration for group learning at this time. Perhaps some quiet one on one would be better.

I have also set up 'trays' with the kids names on them for storing their current work and this has been great, it also stops the younger children getting into their things and scattering it around or chewing it up :)


One thing I've noticed is that the kids are very much into a 'Me, Mine and Don't Touch MY Things' mentality!! So to foster a group togetherness, I have set up a communal pencil/supplies work station. There is a mix of fun gel pens, pencils, crayons, rubbers, sharpeners, felts and more then enough of each to be used at the same time. Its going to take some time but even just after a week there is an improvement with 'sharing'.



I have noticed that I will have to be organised in all aspects of our lives if I want to be a 'happy, balanced' homeschooling Mumma!! Especially as we are at home 'most' of the time now. So while I'm busy organising our schooling day, I'm also finding ways of making things run smoothly, and ways to save on time when it comes to general household tasks! Especially when there will be a new baby in the house in a few months time!

I've just noticed that this post is a bit loopy and all over the place, I'll put it down to the fact that its nearly midnight and that I've eaten too many fresh made scrolls!

I'm off to bed now, I'm hoping to have a big day of organising and planning so that its a 'successful, stress free' week of homeschooling :)