I Heart Homeschooling..

I don't know what's up with Blogger. My posts are not behaving normally. So if this goes bonkers, I'm sorry. I don't think it's my fault.

Now to point of my post. I really have one tonight.

I really love homeschooling my kids. There have been days this first month of school, that I've wanted to chase down the school bus on it's way to the school. But I realized the other day that I love homeschooling them.

Where else can you do math like this:


We've been studying the states. Since we've kind of covered American History, we've been spending more time memorizing the names of the states and their location on the map.
I used The Professor's projector and made a really big outline map and hung it in our entry way.

Then I found G-man, Captain Lego, himself singing and dancing a song he made up about the states he remembered.

He did throw me for a loop. He told me, "Where's Mars? We should study space!" I was caught by surprise because we studied space! And I even blogged about it! He didn't remember.

It was really hard to fight that "You're doing something wrong feeling".
Needless to say, We'll probably be studying space. :-)

This year, I've begun teaching J-man with a K-4 curriculum from ABeka. We focus on nothing but phonics and math, which is VERY basic at this point. He's already catching on to the math stuff really fast.

One problem we've stumbled upon was his insistence to hold the pencil incorrectly. He prefers to hold a pencil in a fist-like grip. On top of that, he seemingly can't decide what hand in which he wants to actually do the holding of said incorrectly held pencil.

I was a bit flustered that day. I really don't want to not teach him. It's really not an option. He wants to learn and I should grab hold of that opportunity. I don't have to teach him to write, right now. Which would be okay - with the exception of the ABeka curriculum that will follow. Writing is rather important.

like I said, he wants to learn. The standard store pencil grips were not working. They cushioned the fist-like grip.

So I did a search on "how to teach a kid how to hold a pencil" looking for tips from which I could glean. I found an internet site called Draw Your World, the produce the "Draw Write Now" books. Moreover...that's a fun word to say. Moreover, They sell pencils and pencil grips!!!

So I bought some.

They arrived. I"m so thrilled.

We'll spend some time, paused in the progress of our school, and work on Letter recognition and pencil grips. I love homeschooling for this exact reason! We could not pause in a school setting to work on these things. Granted, an experienced teacher would be able to get him to grip his pencil without the fist, but this sounds like more fun.

I heart Homeschooling.