Finally.

We finally started school yesterday.  It was only a week late, but I like doing things when I plan to do them.  Oh well.  That's life.  What it looked like was the boy adding writing to his day of studying German, which he continued all summer.  Today, he'll add his DVD engineering course.  This is a method that we tend to use every year, because we have other things going on and we procrastinate.  I feel like I only get the top of my to-do list done every day, just skimming the surface of it.  I'll have 10 things and maybe on a really, really good day, I'll get 7 of them done, and the last 3 will carry over, but then 3 or 4 things will come up and on the next day, those 3 things still won't get done as I am dealing with issues 1, 2, 3 and 4, which just happened today, etc.  You see how it goes.  I've been trying to get the people who publish the math book I want to let me have it in exchange for reviewing it for them, but so far, no luck, so I will probably order it today.  I am still looking for a violin teacher for him and will probably get more serious about looking/calling about that later this week.  The point of this jumbled paragraph is that I have a lot to do and when we start homeschooling at the beginning of the year, we start slowly and build up to a full day.

What can new homeschoolers learn from this post?  In Kentucky, you need to do 1062 hours of homeschooling a year, equivalent to 177 six hour days.  In the public school (and why should the homeschool be any different in this manner?)  this includes lunch and recess, art and music (hopefully), library time, going to the bathroom, and school assemblies.  So if you are starting a first grader in homeschool and 6 hours a day seems daunting, keep these things in mind, that your recess and lunch are included, art is included, a school assembly to discuss things or do a read-aloud for 5 or 10 minutes could be included and also, you could go to the library in the afternoon, then do art after dinner or on the weekend, take some music lessons and slowly add things in so that you are getting in your 1062 hours and also you can do as we do and ramp it up at the beginning, just doing a couple of subjects each day and adding on as you go and as you and your child get used to it.  Don't expect your child to sit at the kitchen table and do worksheets for 6 hours a day.  It's too much for the young ones.  With my high school senior, I assign the books and he decides his schedule.  He knows when he needs to be done and he does it.

My response to new homeschoolers is always  the same word -Relax. It will be okay.  If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would have started formal education until the age of 12.  There's a large body of research to back this up.

In other news around here, we may have an offer on Mom's house (pray!) and I'm trying to work out a deal with Freckles so that she does medical transcription and I lie on the bed and watch her (and sometimes snore).  So far, she's not going for it as you can tell by her facial expression here, but I will keep trying.