Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Is homeschooling in our future?

I bought Kate a blue sippy cup that is exactly like Zach's and she loves it! It has caused confusion as to whose cup is whose between her and Zach, but she drinks more milk with her new cup.

We set up passwords on all of our computer accounts when we bought this computer, so the kids can only get on the computer when we let them, and Zoe finally cracked the code for all of the accounts except mine and Matt's. So I changed the codes yesterday. It was nice for awhile that she could get on the computer by herself and help her siblings when they wanted to get on the computer when I was busy, but lately she has been getting on the computer too much and getting on at times when I tell her not to. I hope she never figures out my password or Matt's because all of the saved passwords on the internet get erased when the account password gets changed and I don't want that to happen.

I was talking with the Arbonne consultant Saturday about this and that and she asked me if I homeschool my kids. I said no, but told her that if any of my children wanted to be homeschooled that I would be willing to do it. Zoe perked up and said, "Really! Can I be homeschooled?!" I told her that she had to finish out this year at school, but if she wanted to homeschool next year that she could. She brought it up again yesterday morning and I asked her why she wants to be homeschooled. Her reasons were...
she hates getting up early
she's always tired when she gets to school
she usually has a headache because she's tired
she spends all of her afternoon doing homework while the younger kids play
she would like more free time

Fair enough. I was filling out Eleanor's Kindergarten sign-up paper when Zoe and I were talking about homeschooling, so I asked Eleanor if she would still go to school if Zoe had school at home and Eleanor stated a firm, "YES!". I think Eleanor should go to Kindergarten because I think she's going to love it. I haven't brought up the subject with Emily yet and I'll probably wait because I have a feeling Zoe is going to decide to go to school next year when the real decision needs to be made. Zoe thinks being home is boring...and she wants to be here all day?...I'm having a hard time believing it.

Our prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley passed away Sunday evening at the age of 97. I'm going to miss his sense of humor and caring way. He has become my favorite prophet and it's going to be weird not having him here leading the church anymore.

4 comments:

Gabriela said...

You are brave to offer homeschooling- I think I could do it if I had too but it would be really hard-especially with babies around.

That's funny about your passwords- I just password protected our family computer for the same reasons- password = less fighting! I hadn't thought about it getting hacked-I'm sure that will happen soon enough.

Zach's hair looks fab!

Dawn said...

I could never have home schooled - I'd either be dead or in prison (because I killed myself or them!). But I have great admiration for those who can and do.

Kris said...

I think you're right... Zoe would miss school. But, you would be a great teacher. I have heard (from my friend with five children who has homeschooled them all at one time or another) that the amount of time spent on school, in the younger grades, is one hour per grade (i.e. 3 hours/ day for 3rd grade) - and for the older grades, school basically took the same amount of time they used to spend on homework! They loved having their evenings free.

But... I think it would be really hard!

andalucy said...

I homeschooled my eldest daughter for 2 yrs when I had a baby, a toddler, and kindergardener at home. I'm homeschooling my 4th grader now, and my youngest is in kindergarten. I think it's harder now than it was then. It really helped me those years that I struggled being home with a bunch of children. It forced me to use my brain. Now I have to admit I sometimes resent having to do the homeschool thing when I could be living it up mornings when everyone is at school.

Still, I'm glad we decided to go ahead and do it. My daughter loves it.