Not my strength.

I am not a good blogger! There are so many lights and people and noise that I am in sensory overload. By the time the day is through I am so intensely tired I just lay down on the bed, fully clothed and pass out.

I see and do things all the time and think, 'I need to post that'.

Besides the hyperstimulation, the other thing that is wearing me out is homeschooling. Even though the US education system is a mess, it is leaps and bounds ahead of me. I never wanted to be a teacher. I am not good at lesson plans or creative songs that help my kids remember when 'c' says 'k' and when it says 's'. With this in mind, I bought a curriculum. It touted the merits of self teaching and how a self taught child is confidant and self motivated and has incredible problem solving skills. We set up the guidelines and told them what was expected and let them loose to cultivate creativity and master quantum physics.

My dreams were soon dashed when I realized my children have no self control (especially Matt). I've mentioned how small our apartment is; so, the 'master suite' also became the classroom. However, there isn't room for two desks so we moved in a table. This put Matt and Lily within such close proximity of each other that they couldn't help but touch and poke and tease.

Needless to say, after a week of hearing, 'Matt's stabbing my paper with his pencil.' and 'Lily won't stop singing.' I decided my children needed supervision and separation.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I couldn't bring myself to buy a new curriculum when I had failed at 'not' teaching the one I just bought. I began searching for 'free curriculums and found a good one called Lesson Pathways. You sign up, pick your grade level and it tells you what topics to cover. It even gives you actives and videos to support what your teaching. We are gung ho, ready to learn. This spunky attitude lasts about two weeks. Then I start to fizzle. It's all the activities and 'fun stuff' that do me in. We learn about ancient China and try to make paper. We end up with gray, mucky sludge that takes a week to dry. We attempt to sculpt some of the animals in the Forbidden City but everyone ends up in tears because there isn't enough clay and we only have white because I forgot to go to the international market to buy food coloring.

At this point I'm ready to spend some money. I sign the kids up for Time4Learning. It is all online. It tracks everyone's progress and I don't have to spend two hours a night doing tomorrow's lesson plan. We have only been at it a week but so far everyone seems happy. Time will tell.

See you tomorrow. Because I am going to do this!