One month down

So, how is Hannah’s preschool going?
From Hannah’s perspective, great! She likes having her little “plan” up on the wall, she says “That’s my paper, not Benjamin’s.” She, as always, amazes us. She has memorized 3 scripture verses with just a small amount of prompting from us on the verse reference numbers. She always wants to read more than what is on the list, which isn’t surprising since we’ve always done a lot of reading. She is writing her letters very well – she has memorized how to write ‘thank you’ due to all the cards she needed to write after her birthday. Our nanny does a lot of crafts with the kids, which I appreciate since that wears me out, and Hannah loves it. She finished up the music class she was in and now she and Benjamin are in a “toddler tumbling” class together. I’m contemplating starting her in a dance class when that is over so she can learn some real moves. 🙂

The rest of this post is about me, mostly notes so I can come back later:
Some good news is that people who have homeschooled in the past or currently are popping up randomly. And usually I don’t even bring up the subject, its just getting to know someone and they say something like “I homeschooled the girls for awhile and then I went back to work.” Also, one of Nate’s friends from college started a homeschool blog which I’ll be following for awhile to get some ideas. Half A Hundred Acre Wood Just more people for me to pick their brains when I’m trying to figure stuff out.

Some bad news is that I’ve discovered that I’ll probably be spending quite a while discovering and trying out different things to see what works best for us. And doing lots of web surfing and reading. And probably once I find something for Hannah it will be time to start Benjamin! There are so many resources and curriculum options and ways to do things and I am realizing that just as with anything else there is a whole world of jargon and acronyms that I’m going to have to learn just to be able to comprehend and sift through sites for what I’m looking for.

I also need to learn to be more flexible and “flowy” if thats a word. I only planned out a month to try it to see how things work between me, Nate, and the nanny. Weeks 1 through 3 went well. Week 4, Kathy and Nate did great but I didn’t get any of my stuff done (we had a lot of afternoon activities last week). So, I had to decide what to do about it and to let go of “checking the box”. So we didn’t get everything I planned done, oh well. This is actually a really tough thing for my engineer perfectionist check the box brain. I know you are all thinking, its only preschool, but hopefully if I can get over those tendencies now, I’ll be less of a nervous wreck when its more important.

Nate and the kids have a trip in a couple weeks, so we’ll be taking our first “spring break”.