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Fairly Odd Mother

Frantically waving my magic wand to make wishes come true.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Homeschooling hiccups

We are one whole month into homeschooling my oldest child (she is 5 and would've started kindergarten in September), and so far, so good. Our approach could be called 'relaxed eclectic', if one pressed me to call it anything. I've found something to like about almost every method of homeschooling I've come upon, so we're just taking bits and pieces of things and seeing how they meld together.

Most of the time, we just live our lives, but I try to pay more attention for those 'teachable moments' that pop up constantly.

The biggest worry I have right now is reading. I do lots of it, she does none. We are following a 'letter of the week' format to give me a jumping-off point and to help generate ideas (plus, I think it is useful for her two younger siblings, ages 3 & 2). Formal phonics lessons have not worked for her. She can write phonetically (yes, I have just found this love note from a few months ago: "AR TH URST MOMMY IN THE. . ." she had asked me how to spell 'WORLD', but I guess she ran out of room). She does not like sitting down to 'read'---she gets very frustrated trying to sound out words in a book. I'm not sure if I should just let her be or try new 'teaching' methods.

I also feel like I've got my ear to the ground to find out what is going on in our public school kindergarten class. Are we ahead of them? Behind? What are they doing right now? Why do I even care? It bugs me that I do.

I know that I'm very new at this and will relax more as time goes on. Sometimes the weight of what I've taken on seems overwhelming, but then I sit down with them and watch that lightbulb go off in their heads and realize that I wouldn't want to miss that for anything in the world.

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posted by Fairly Odd Mother @ 9:13 PM 

4 Comments:

Blogger Mom101 said...

While I know nothing really about homeschooling, it sounds so much like writing about parenthood itself. In the first month, it's all so overwhelming. But in time, you'll have the hang of it. In fact, you'll be great at it. We're all rooting for you!

(And I hope she didn't mean to write that you were the wurst mommy in the world...)

11:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe she meant wurst like in liverwurst. She likes liverwurst, ya know.

12:35 PM  
Blogger Daisy said...

The best way to raise a reader is to read. Keep reading to her, showing her that books are wonderful and fun and contain stories that rock. When she's developmentally ready, she'll go for the phonics lessons.

5:56 PM  
Blogger Fairly Odd Mother said...

Thanks Daisy. I needed to hear that. Sometimes, I get a bit overworked over things that just need time.

If all else fails, though, I just found out that we can get Karaoke On Demand---nothing will drive her more to read than wanting to sing along to the songs on the screen!

11:20 PM  

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