1st Week of school

As most of you know, we chose to home school our children this year. It is yet another adventure in the Battson family!

We are using Seton Home Study this year, and while the suggested schedule doesn't start until after Labor day, the kids have been very excited to get started. So Brian and I talked about it, and we thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and get started a week early, while the kids are excited.

August 27th -  I will say this first day has been nice. I thought since we are starting a week "early" I would let the kids do "1/2 days" this week, and see what we can get accomplished. I started school at 9:30 this morning, and the kids only have a few more subjects to go. I can see us easily being done, with a full day of Curriculum by 1pm. Which is much further then I thought we would get.  Granted that is on the kids side of things, I will still have the grading the work, and such this evening, the nice thing is, Brian is going to work with the kids on Math and History. He also is going to help me with the grading of their work in the evening hours.

We thought it wise to start out slow, and make sure we get into a good routine from the start, we'll try it this way for a few weeks and make adjustments as needed. So far we are doing pretty good.

August 28th - Today went just as smoothly as yesterday. I worked with Faith for a little bit, but that proved to be a bit of a challenge, as she is not feeling good and the cough isn't getting any better, and she isn't sleeping well. I think I will hold off on starting her until next week. Hopefully she will be over what ever this is she has, and will be more into doing her work.


August 29th - Well.....Today was more of a challenge. The kids are rushing through their work, and not reading the instructions all the way through, I've had to have the kids go back and redo a few of their assignments. No major struggles today though, Faith still isn't feeling well, and is very clingy and crying a lot. If she doesn't get better soon, we may need to go see our Doctor again.

August 30th - Ok, so today has been well............CRAZY! The kids have attitudes, and are having a hard time concentrating on their school work. Faith was up a lot again last night coughing, which kept most of us up. Every time she woke up crying and coughing it woke up Patrick, so he had to nurse, and the combination of all that, and the kids being up WAY to late, has made for a very bad combination today!! Add to it, I needed to take the Malibu in to get some repairs done to it,only to find out there was a BUNCH of stuff that needed to be repaired. Thankfully the majority of it is covered by our warranty, but there are still some things there that will need to be taken care of in the near future.

So far today the kids have found themselves grounded from TV, and some pretty heft homework assigned. The way Brian and I figure, if they can't due their work during "class time", they will still have to do it as homework. That is how it is in a traditional school, so why should the rules be different here at home?

August 31st- Friday went much smoother. It helped out at lot, that is was a pretty light day as far as assignments went. The kids did a great job staying on track and completing their work in a timely manner. We are looking forward to the long weekend.


My thoughts: As I look back this week. For a first week of school it didn't go to bad, the kids made some bad choices and suffered the consequences because of it. However, I think they now know mom means business, and home school isn't going to be as easy as they thought it would be. The other thing they learned this week, was Dad will back me up on any punishment I hand out, and he may even add to it! So best just to get to work, and get it done, OH and pay attention to the work we are doing, so we don't have to go back and redo a bunch of work as homework! All in all a pretty good first week of school, we managed to get a full weeks worth of work done, in what I had planned on doing just half days. Next week we will add Faith and her school work :)