Lakeside Homeschool Update

We've been "officially" but still unofficially (I haven't done the paperwork yet) homeschooling for about 5 weeks now.  Overall, it's going well.  The first week was an eye opening experience...I realized that it wasn't going to be as easy as I'd hoped!

It's a challenge to keep E(2) busy while O(6) is having a lesson or working on something that E can't participate in.  If I'm working with O, E wants to be on my lap.  That sometimes works, but often it doesn't.  She's gotten pretty good about going inside (we have school on our deck) and choosing "work" from her shelf.  She then brings her work out and works beside us.  Luckily, she is able to be involved in most of O's lessons (History, Science, Music, Art, Spanish, etc).

The girls play SO well together, and they ALWAYS have a plan to play (I've never heard them say they were bored or ask me for ideas of what to do or play), so it is sometimes difficult to pull them away from their play in order to do school work.  After the first week I realized that I really didn't want to interfere with their play any more than I absolutely had to, so most of our formal lessons have been put on hold.  We spend the vast majority of our time reading aloud (as we always have) and engaging in pretend play.  Only now, I try to incorporate our themes from school into some of the pretend play.

For instance, we are studying Ancient Egypt this month, and O(6) received lots of Ancient Egypt Playmobil figures for her birthday.  So, we read about Egypt, and then we play with the Sphinx, Egyptian soldiers, and camels...SO much fun!    We've also been studying cave people and cave paintings, so we've played with the  figures from the prehistoric toob, and we turned out treehouse into a cave complete with cave paintings.

I was so excited one day when Elliott asked O what she'd learned in school that day, and she looked at me with a confused look and said "We didn't have school today did we?"  We had had "school" for 2 to 3 hours that day, but she was having so much fun that she didn't realize it!

We do Language Lessons for Little Ones each day (usually 2 or 3 lessons at a time).  O does well, but doesn't enjoy this too much.  Although, she is starting to enjoy it more within the last few days.  She also reads several leveled readers from Reading A to Z each day.  She is starting to enjoy this more, too.  She does not like to read very much, so I don't want to push her too much and make her hate it.  Thankfully, she has started realizing that she can read well and fairly easily if she will just focus and do it rather than fussing and pouting about not wanting to do it :)

We have been doing one lesson of Rightstart Math per day.  This is a fun and quick math program.  O likes it, but it's hard to tear her away from her play to actually do it.  She LOVED math when she attended Montessori Preschool, so I think that math will be MUCH more fun for all of us when we have a school room and we can have everything set up and arranged just right.

I have lots to post about our homeschool days, and I hope to find the time to do so soon!