Over to the Dark Side

Last week I felt the shift to The Dark Side. Or the Good Side. I've mentioned it before, and we will continue to homeschool our children again this school year.

This was not what I'd necessarily planned.  We were waiting for a lot of things to fall into place to put our children back in public school. It didn't happen.

I can tell you what did happen.

This happened:

#3's math of choice

So this completely blew me away. She can barely read (it's new to her and she's doing fantastic), she'd really only be going into kindergarten, yet I was 'voluntold' by her to help her do this sheet. It's easily second grade math.

If you can't see it, it's subtracting two double digit numbers with no carry. She did an addition one later this day.

The next day she did an addition and subtraction page. I helped her with the first problem and when she got 'stuck' (only twice).

So I say all this because in the beginning, I didn't want to make homeschooling permanent. That's not to say things won't change later, but I felt a great shift in my head when she successfully did this page. I am not sure I want to put them back in that box; the box of public school. I have some challenging learners - but they're on opposite ends of learning. One of my children was wanting to move faster.  He told me weekly, "Mom, I want new words. These are to eeeeassssyyy." So I went to the teacher. She said, "he's already doing the hardest list. I don't have anything harder. Sorry." He was being held back with learning.  All of that felt wrong. I tried to negotiate with her, and she wouldn't budge. With homeschool, he's been doing second grade spelling, math, and language arts since January and we are flying through those.

The reality is my children are excelling. They're happy. They go at their pace (when it's a forward pace...when it's a standstill, I give a shove forward).

Child #1 has struggled with math, unlike her siblings, but not because she doesn't get it. It is 'boring, horrible, and not fun.' These words, because there's no desire to do it, translates into an argument between her and me and then a less than desirable note of 'I am so dumb (or insert any synonym here).'

It's been challenging. To top it off, we have new pre-teen girl emotions begin with #1.

This was after a particularly large blow up at her father.

As a homeschool family, I can customize her curriculum for her. She needed something OUT OF THE BOX. And boy, we found a math curriculum out of the box.

Meet Life of Fred.

The reviews say it all.  I have that child that child that scribbles the 'I hate math'. I want to shift it to 'I love math'.  I wish someone would have done this to me when I was little. I was very good in math...in fact, I got a pretty dang good score on my ACT in math in high school (better than my English/Reading by a lot). But I had been convinced by family/friends/teachers that it wasn't for me.

I won't have my children feeling that way. So, I find myself in a situation I never thought I'd do again and now I no longer have a 'deadline'. This will be indefinite. And I really actually like the sound of that.