As the time gets nearer, I find myself becoming more and more unsure of myself. It seems that nervousness and anxiety are kicking in finally at the thought of homeschooling. While I know it's not a question of whether I can actually homeschool, it is more a question of do I want to homeschool....the answer still remains YES most of the time, however there are those bad days that all parents have where your kids drive you CRAZY and you think, "Oh NO I absolutley CAN NOT DO THIS!" So I have had lots of those days over the past few months along with sleep deprivation that is a result of infant teething and sickness and over stimulation etc.
My daughters registration papers were given to me the other day as well, and I thought..."this is the moment of truth!" If I fill these out then I can always back out and change my mind....if I dont then I will be forced to stick with my decision." So the papers remain on my kitchen counter still blank, willing me to fill them out....but I haven't :). The fact of the matter is if I intend to homeschool I really need to give it all i have for at least one year, and decided from there whether this form of education fits my family life, although i dont see how it will not fit my family life. I do enjoy teaching my kids and spending time with them, and yes I can get very frustrated at times with them, but that is a natural part of parenting, and really doesnt have anything to do with homeschooling.
I have already begun certain things with my daughter,which I have already learned a lot from. One thing I started a couple of months back is teaching her to read using a book recommended to me called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The book is easy to use and you can modify the lessons to fit your childs learning pace which is a plus. In the beginning I would sit her down every day at a certain time and go through the daily lesson and she would become very fidgety. I would tell her to sit still and stop jumping around and to pay attention, when I realized it is almost impossible for a 4 year old to have any type of long term attention span, even though the lessons are only 15min. I realized that even with all her jumping and bouncing around she was still retaining the information and is currently learning to read just fine. I no longer do it on a regular basis, but do it whenever she asks or i remember and that seems to be working out just fine. She doesnt forget what we learned prior, so we just do a quick bit of review and move on to the next lesson. If she gets tired or if I see she is disinterested in the lesson I just stop and close the book for the day. I let the whole process occur more naturally now and it has been working well.
The same goes for teaching her Quran and Arabic, I have enrolled her in Quran and Arabic classes at our local mosque which has relieved much stress and pressure from me. She loves attending the classes as they do a mixture of play, coloring and learning. She retains the information well and I just follow up at home with the letters or surahs she has learned using tracing books for letters and a memorization application I downloaded from my ipad, to make sure that it all sinks in, again it's not something I enforce, but just let happen naturally. This has been my experience so far with what I like to call part-time homeschooling and overall it has been successful and gives me a bit of a glimpse of whats to come, although I am sure the full time experience will be much more challenging. :)
