Sentiments on Semester 1

It's about time I finally commented on the "homeschool" thing we are doing at the moment.

This week completes 9 weeks for us, a whole semester!  And we are living to tell about it, so that is your first sign that it's going well. :D  There were some new school year/teacher/lesson kinks to work out at first and I had my bewildered/doubting/frustrated moments for sure.  But I would have to say it was about 4 weeks ago that I realized we'd gotten all the way to Friday without any tempers, tears, or stress.  And that trend has continued since. Thank you, Lord!

Those first bumps in the road involved assessing just how I wanted to let the curriculum we were using drive us or not, getting a grip on my expectations for Noah and getting a bigger grip on my impatience, loosening up on my demanding manner, and letting go of my grip on my pre-conceived ideas of how the days would flow.  I also had to cut out a few things in our weekly schedule to relieve a bit of the chaos and errands that were unnecessary.  Once all that dust settled, things got really good!  Noah sure has been a gentle and earnest little student all the while.  Bless him!

So like I said, it was about a month ago that we finally hit our stride together and are happy to announce that we dig this groove that is the homeschooling life.

We love the perfect fit for our family style.  

We love the stronger relationships it affords us. 

We love the peace it maintains in our schedule.

We love having so many homeschooling buddies in our area. 

We love the control over what our kiddo is exposed to.  

We love the freedom and flexibility it allows each week.

We love the extra hours it affords us each day.

We love the adventure/experiences we get to share together.

In short,  

we love homeschooling!

And I have very little to name that we don't like about it.
Like, nothing comes to mind at all yet.
Seriously!

What people always wanna know is if Noah likes it. So I asked him and got the following answers:  Yes, he likes homeschooling.  (No hesitation at all.)  He also named his favorite subjects as Math, Bible, and Science.  He likes having more free time first thing in the mornings and he likes the extra recess.  He loves earning darts for good work/effort.  He loves the field trips we take AND he loves getting to stay home.  He surprised me by how much he likes writing in his journal.  And his closing comment was that he likes that school gets done quickly when he does careful work. :}