Last week I shared a post about what I’ve learned since starting to homeschool with a virtual academy. If you missed that post you can read it HERE. We are now in our 7th week with homeschooling and we are definitely into a better groove. We still have days that are tougher than others, but overall we are doing well! When I get overwhelmed or discouraged, I like to focus on the positives of our situation. It makes me feel so thankful for where we have been and how far we have come. So, today I want to share with you my favorite things about homeschooling so far.
1) SEEING THAT “LIGHT BULB” MOMENT
-There is nothing better than witnessing the moment when your child “gets it”! I have been so blessed to be able to witness many light bulb moments since starting school 7 weeks ago. I have found that most of these moments for my girls happen during math. It truly excites me to know that I’m a part of my child’s learning!
2) SEEING THE EXCITEMENT ON THE GIRLS’ FACES WHEN THEY DO WELL
-In the program that we are using, the girls typically have a short assessment at the end of each lesson. It is usually anywhere between 6 -10 questions and tests whether the girls have captured the information from their lesson. Immediately upon completing the assessment, a screen pops up with their score. I absolutely love the reactions that we see when they get 100%.
Skylar squeals with excitement and screams “I got 100!”.
Hailey usually says “I totally ROCKED that lesson!” or “Oh yea, I am SO smart!”. I love hearing those words!
3) SEEING THE GIRLS APPLY WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED TO OUR EVERYDAY LIVES
-Pretty early on we did a science lesson on the scientific process. You know….observations, forming a hypothesis, testing, dependent and independent variables, conclusions, etc. Well, a few days following our lesson Hailey opened the refrigerator and said “If I don’t put these tacos in the fridge, then they will go bad! How’s that for a hypothesis mom?” I loved it! Since then, she has formed MANY hypotheses!
-We also did a lesson in history/geography on longitudes and latitudes. Chris and I have been watching reruns of the show Alias. In one of the episodes they were using a GPS device and the longitude and latitude coordinates popped up on the screen. Hailey was walking by and quickly said “Hey! Did you see that? They just showed the longitude and latitude of where they are. Now they will be able to be rescued! That’s cool!”
I truly love these moments! They may seem little to some, but they are HUGE to us! I also love that I have been able to share these moments with other parents that have children with special needs and that they rejoice with us. One thing having 2 girls on the autism spectrum has taught me is:
EACH AND EVERY VICTORY IS WORTH CELEBRATING!
4) NO MORE “MORNING RUSH”
-This was my least favorite thing about getting the girls up and ready to go to school each day. Both of our girls move at their own paces and trying to get them to move faster would only lead to frustration, tears, and bad attitudes. By the time I got the girls dropped off at school I felt like I needed to come back home and take a nap. Chris even mentioned this week how much he doesn’t miss the morning chaos. He said that the absolute chaos often sent him to work in a bad mood and it would take half his morning to really relax and be settled.
5) FLEXIBILITY
-We are pretty routined, but it is nice to know that we can pick up and go when needed. My sister moved this past week and we went down to Phoenix on Monday and Tuesday and helped her unpack. The girls worked solely on Math and Language. Hailey also worked on Spanish. I knew that this would most likely stack the end of our week heavier, but it allowed us to help my sister and her family. We also got to see my niece swim in her high school swim meet.
-We don’t have to follow a strict schedule each day. As long as we complete all our lessons for the week (5 Math, 5 Literature, 5 History, 5 Spanish, 3 Science, and 3 Art) we are good. If we choose to do all 5 Math lessons on Monday, that is fine! This week we did only Math and Language on Monday and Tuesday because those are the subjects that the girls can work on a bit better on their own. That allowed me to help my sister a bit more.
So these are my 5 favorite things about homeschooling so far. I look forward to adding more things to this list as time goes on.
Do you homeschool? I’d love to hear your favorite things about homeschooling! Please share them with me in the comments.
Hope you all have a great weekend!
Make it great!
JuJu
I am JuJu! 
My favorite words to hear are from Jocelyn when she is working on math, “Oh, this is so easy!” or “I remember doing this last year!”. She really does not like math at all and has such a bad attitude about it, so when I hear those words from her, I know that our day will be so much easier! She is also getting better with her writing, which was always such a fight! I require her to write at least 4 sentences for a paragraph. She would fight me on every one! Now she has gotten much better about writing those paragraphs and actually answering the questions in the assignment. When she does, I really make a big deal about how wonderful that paragraph was and how she did such a good job at finding examples from the text. She really responds well when she hears how well she did!
Homeschooling is fabulous!!! It will only get better. 🙂 I love your reasons as well.
Way to go girls!!! I love it!!! You ROCK Julie! Thanks for sharing😊
We homeschool! I love it most days. Somedays I want to tear my hair out, but mostly I think it is wonderful. Good luck and I am pulling for you guys to have a fantastic year!