What I've Learned So Far

We finished off the end of our third month of homeschool preschool with Mother Goose Time.   As I was rocking Littlest to sleep tonight, I reflected on the lessons I've learned in the last 90 days.

1.   I don't have to get through everything all the time.  I covered this a lot in a previous post.  Miss M continues to have a little resistance to school lately (I still blame the weather), although she does better when she has her friends around.  Yesterday I managed to coax her into circle time with her monkey friends.  She helped them count the numbers on the calendar and put up our weather emblem.  Then it was time for them to take a nap and she was done for the day.  Instead of pushing her into some of the other fun I activities I was personally excited to do with her, I filed those away for another time and we made vegetable soup in the crockpot instead.  We talked about the vegetables and that was it for the day.

2.  It doesn't have to be "pretty" all the time.  This was a tough one because I love Pinterest and Pottery Barn catalogs.  I want our school area to be cute (and Mother Goose Time gives you a lot of cute materials to work with).  Having two small children and a home to care for means I have a multitude of tasks to do in a given day, limiting the amount of time I have for preparation and prettification.  Luckily, Mother Goose Time does most of the work for me but there are still a few things they describe for you to make on your own throughout the week for use during circle time, for concept reviews.  I want everything I make for class to match the theme perfectly and to be great looking.  However, the reality is that I have two small children, one of whom wants nothing more than to rip everything off the walls and try to stick it back up crooked, upside down and every other which way.  I have resigned myself to keeping most of the materials on a shelf in my entertainment center and only putting up the bare necessities just before we start circle time.

I also have rheumatoid arthritis, which has been in quite the angry flare lately, making writing/drawing/coloring/cutting very painful.  Instead of creating my super cute companion materials as described in the teacher guide, I'm doing the basics.  These are supposed to be potato shapes but cutting straight lines is much faster and easier right now so that's what I did.  When Miss M decided ordering the numbers 1-10 wasn't enough for her, I grabbed the closest stack of scratch paper I had, already cut out and labeled with other things on the back, and used those.  They aren't even on the same type of paper.  This is something that would have (and to be honest, still does to some extent) really bother me but I've realized making it cute doesn't mean it functions any better.  Someday I hope to be able to do more but for now I am working on being ok with doing what I can right now.

3.  I can do this.  I just got back from a day and a half homeschool conference.  There was a lot of information.  A LOT.  It was a little overwhelming.  It made me remember how I felt a few months ago when I started researching homeschool preschool on Pinterest and Google.  I had no idea where to start.  Then I found the Mother Goose Time website and got this awesome opportunity.  It is a really good fit for me, giving me an idea of what type of curriculum/program I might be comfortable with as I look into homeschooling Miss M and Littlest in the higher grades.  Most importantly, it has given me the confidence to continue this new adventure.  I can teach my children and they will learn. It is quite liberating and I'm excited to see what happens over the next three months

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