11 days in..

I'm 11 days into my homeschooling journey, and though I anticipated posting after the completion of each week, I can tell that being able to manage my time in a way to make that happen will prove to be quite difficult. 

 I'm here now though, and I can honestly say that the first two weeks of homeschooling have me pretty excited to see what the future holds.  I am eager to take each failed and successful experience to make our schedule and our lessons enjoyable and meaningful for the whole family.  I want Paxton, Tobias and Naomi to love learning, and to eventually be self motivated learners who follow their passions, desires and God given talents to live out their callings.  I'm excited to have the opportunity to tailor learning experiences to each of our children's unique personalities and learning styles, and to do this I am constantly trying to rid myself of the idea that this is merely school at home.  I have found myself slipping into the inflexibility that my teacher side feels nudging when learning takes us down a new path- but I want to finish what's in my plans.  The irony of it all is that the thing that gives the homeschooling skeptics the most comfort about the fact that our family has chosen this path is that I am a certified teacher, and it's when I start believing that my home is a classroom that I our lessons begin to falter. I'm eagerly digesting nuggets of wisdom from a plethora of homeschooling blogs and re-educating myself on what's truly most important when it comes to the education of my children. I'm excited because the passion I once had for teaching special education that dissolved after having Paxton and had really been slowly fizzing out prior to that for a variety of unfortunate reasons has been reignited and redirected towards homeschooling.  There will be challenges for sure ( there already have been many!) but I am excited for the challenge.  

Paxton and Tobias are doing our memory verse hop- learning Genesis 1:1.  

 Paxton learned about infinity, and then created a book where he was able to independently think of several places where numbers are found.

 One of the places Paxton told me numbers are found are on the rectangles on the back of cars, he now knows they are called license plates 🙂

 The Tuesday after Labor Day The Lepley's and Anderson's had our first virtue of the month club where we talked about being a cheerful worker.  Here the kids are all drawing pictures of themselves completing various tasks cheerfully.

 We practiced being a cheerful worker by opening a lemonade stand, and giving the proceeds to Hurricane Harvey victims! Here Lucy is yelling " Lemonade, get your fresh lemonade" to some of our neighbors.

 Paxton painted an excellent advertisement for our sale.

 After the event the kids all cheerfully pitched in to make our cleanup a big success!

 Here is Lucy stirring our simple syrup to mix with the lemon juice for our fresh squeezed lemonade!

 The kids generated some great ideas about what it looks like to be a cheerful worker, and Paxton seemed to have the most input about what it does NOT look like ( Not that he has done any of those things before 😉)

 Paxton and Tobias playing together, pretending to feed these puppets a delicious feast of fruit.

 Friday was our first day of Homeschool Co-Op, so after changing Naomi out of her first outfit of the morning due to her massive poo explosion we headed outside for a photo before our 4 minute drive to co-op. What a blessing!

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 Paxton sitting next to his buddy Porter during co-op in their Lego building class. He had a great time and we are excited to go back this friday!

There were so many more great experience that just didn't get captured on camera, but I look forward to sharing more in the future.