Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

     I recently revisited the blog scene, mainly because I thought it would be a fun idea for the kids in my writing class to start their own blog.  I completely forgot about my old blog, this one, from the year I started homeschooling.  A lot has happened in that time, as you can imagine.  I now have 2 boys who I homeschool.  The oldest is now about to finish 5th grade and my youngest is finishing kindergarten.  I find that a lot of what I went through with the first one, I also experienced with the now kindergartner.  Only now it is more difficult because there are two of them to worry about.  Fortunately, the older one is somewhat independent.  That helps a lot.  Every little blessing helps when you are homeschooling.  
     If I were to summarize my years of homeschooling so far, I'd say that every year has had its own challenges.  I am out of the deer in headlights stage, that first year, and feel fairly confident in what can be accomplished.  Some things never change, though, like my kids' dislike of school work.  Boys! I would love to teach a kid that loved school!  I must say that my younger boy is doing pretty well with reading and actually said today that he likes reading the most of all his school work.  I was a bit surprised by this admission.  When we first started the year, he'd want to do math first and always would want to do his reading lesson last.  Admittedly, he struggled early on with reading, although he seemed to want to know what things said.  We faltered quite a bit the first half of the year and I wondered if anything was sinking in at all.  After Christmas, I started to see a change.  Things were starting to improve.  It was like things were finally clicking for him.  Recently, he told me he had something for me that I was "really gonna like."  Once we were finished for the day, he handed my a paper that he had written on, a paragraph about himself.  While it wasn't perfect, I understood what most of it said without having to ask him, and it was done with sentences but no punctuation.  I was floored!  Yes, I am one of those mothers who cry over stupid things and this made me tear up. We haven't technically worked on writing sentences, although we have read a lot together.  One on one time is very important at this stage and I found that All About Reading, the curriculum I used for both boys, works if you can stick with it.  I wasn't sure with either of them early on, but after the first year with both, they were decent readers.  That is my one triumph for the year because I feel that if I at least can teach my kids to read, the rest will come along.  Reading, I think, is the foundation to a good education.  If they can read, they can find the answers they need to anything else.
     Finishing up this update, I find that absence does make the heart grow fonder.  I stopped writing this blog before maybe because I was too busy to keep up with it or maybe it just grew stale.  Not enough viewers (followers) perhaps as well.  But I told my writing class today that they just need to write.  Even if you don't think it's good, just write.    I also like to say that "Writing is a contact sport."  Putting it down is what counts.  Write now, edit later.  That can also be said of homeschooling.  What we teach today may not sink in or seem to sink in.  If you never teach it, it won't ever have the chance.  They may complain but eventually, I hear my words come back to me and I smile.  I am doing something right.