Curriculum

I'm surprised to be as far along as I am in this homeschool journey. I was able to talk to someone who is already homeschooling and she gave me a whole bunch of information. What was encouraging to me is most of what she had given me I had already looked into in my own research. She uses the curriculum I was more drawn to and loves it. I kept Maddy home on Friday for a couple of reasons. One, I forgot to give her the rest of her medicine Thursday night and was scared she might pick up strep again. I know that isn't likely, but hearing her in that kind of pain just broke my heart. The second reason is I had way too much work to make up that it was best if she just stay home. It got me to thinking that there is really no real reason for her to be in daycare anymore if I am going to homeschool. Why not go ahead and homeschool her in preschool to get used to a schedule, instead of waiting for her kindergarten year. It made total sense and in that moment I was dead set on pulling her out. After sleeping on it I was more confused. My gut tells me to go ahead and pull her out, but my nerves are saying to wait lol. I have to turn in a two week notice thing at her school and since she is in dance as well I would be turning in a two week notice there too. Even though I would still be paying for those two weeks, I highly doubt I would send her. The amount of melt downs we have where school is concerned is just not worth it. I asked her if she would like to go to school with her friends and she said yes. Then I asked if she wanted to go to school with all her friends or stay home and have mommy for a teacher. She said she wants to have mommy for a teacher at school. I explained that if I were her teacher she would no longer go to her school with her friends anymore. She decided she wanted to stay home and let mommy be her teacher. That is still not fully decided. I will not get to try out the curriculum if I do keep her home now, so I've been thinking about which curriculum I would start out with. I am leaning towards sonlight for preschool and then switching over to My Father's World for Kindergarten. I got my Sonlight catalog today and I think it would be good to use for preschool. My Father's World did not really have a good reading readiness program in their preschool curriculum. I have so many decisions to make that it feels a bit overwhelming at times and scary because this is her future...I don't want to mess it up. I know homeschool is what is best for her, but choosing which way to do homeschool will be the challenging part. I have found which group I will belong to as well as what school I will umbrella under. I have a feeling as she grows we will be experimenting with different curriculum's and interchanging them. I am so very excited to start this process, but there is nothing I can do now until I either dis-enroll her from her daycare now or wait until next summer for the curriculum fair. I did make my first purchase, which is a huge calender for the days of the week as well as what the weather is like today.

 Luckily I have worked in a school before and worked closely with kindergarten, so I am hoping her kindergarten year will be a breeze. I have worked with all elementary grade levels, but I spent two years in kindergarten so I feel more comfortable with it.

Apart from choosing the best curriculum for Maddy my only other concern is if I will be able to get her to listen to me as a teacher. She is so spirited that I am afraid we will spend more time learning to listen than we will actually learn about the lesson lol. I know God has put this on my heart so it WILL work out, but I think it will be very challenging in the beginning. This is where we are for now. I won't write about homeschool again until she is officially staying home all the time or until next summer when I turn in her "intent to homeschool" forms.