My feel-goods are really tender right now, so go easy on me. It's taken exactly one year for me to determine that I'm not a nice enough to teach my kids. It takes a special person, or at least someone not as anal retentive.

I've reached the conclusion that my relationship with my children will always trump the benefits of homeschool (even as they all come flooding into my consciousness and I woefully push them back). I kept giving it "one more day", one more prayer to get myself together, but as all of the neighborhood probably knows, every day it was one reason or another that I lost my temper with a student/the love of my life.

So here's to trying and moving on to better ways. I'll be so sad to let them go for the better part of the day, but to be honest, walking into that school to get the registration paperwork brought back some sweet memories that I hope my kids will enjoy also. Hopefully when everyone is literate and such (anger management classes ;]), we'll give it another go. For now, I get a big fat F in homeschooling.

Blessed #5

I am so thankful to be able to hang out at home with the chittlins while Jason is off hunting bacon.

We have a sort of educational system here that we call

Home Schooling.

However, my kids are not homeschoolers as this educational video will point out.

Schooled

After church in Seattle this Sunday Liv said, "Jaxson's teacher asked me to do something with numbers and I said, "I can't" and Jackson helped me. Then she said, "You don't know how to do that?" and I said, "No, I'm home-schooled."

The best part about this?! Jaxson is home-schooled too!

My Thoughts Exactly!

This is what I was telling myself when I missed another appointment with the teacher who is over Isaac's k-12 program.

Never underestimate the ability of a child to learn anywhere doing anything! (even watching his mom get embarassed and cleaning the house around the cable guy).

Refresher Course

Things are getting much too serious around here. I've freaked out on my 6 year olds enough this week for not remembering to start adding in the ones column and forgetting to "run" the sounds together rather than sound and repeat the Dick and Jane book words.

What in heaven's name am I doing homeschooling?
1. Teaching my children how to learn - freaking out teacher not one of the ways I imagined.
2. Evoking a love of learning - once again, freaking out afrohead mother not going to do it.
3. Spending ever so much time knowing my children - the ones who say, "Mama, I love you," even after I freak out.

Next week we'll be having a Spring Break of sorts. I'm going back to our roots. When we enjoyed eachother's company and I wasn't running to 18,000,000 stores to find this supply or that. Forget creating baby geniuses, impressionist art, or blenvying 'til I want to slit my wrists. Let's eat paste and chill with a couple hundred good books on the back lawn.

I am regressing back to my Grant Elementary days as a first year teacher, changing and changing 'til midnight, and changing again after each seminar or mentor session, or walking by some other teacher's room. Makes me want to throw up.

Elder Robert D. Hales spoke in our last Stake Conference and in the midst of his talk - mostly on temples (I remember thinking it sounded like a random thought), he said something to the affect of 'Why can't we be happy just being ourselves'? He was looking right at me I swear. I was watching on the enormous screen put up in the overflow. I always want to be me, only better, but I always think that girl (or homeschool mom, or photographer, or wife, or diva:) ) over there is my version of better.

I'm all for improving myself. If I could only improve by myself I'd be so much better off. Anyone seen a good blog on that?

HomeSchooling Highs

I wrote an entry here on our homeschool experience thus far if you're interested