Home Schooling

I was a teacher for over ten years.  I loved it.  I loved the kids, I loved watching them learn and grow.  It was amazing to see the changes and progress in just 9 short months.  It was challenging too.  Lots of work preparing and grading and writing up lesson plans and theme units, decorating the classroom, and hanging up their work, figuring grades, keeping tabs on who needed extra help, keeping in constant contact with parents, and dealing with behavior issues (with children and parents) on a day to day basis .... it was hard work but super rewarding. 

Now I read a lot of blogs of moms who home school their children ... many of them have 4 or more kids.  Seriously I don't know how they do it.  Just keeping up with looking through my kids book bags, looking over their work, keeping track of and reading 3 library books, sending back notes and things they need for class is a lot to deal with most days.  But working with them almost every night on practicing their writing and letters has left me drained and exhausted to say the least.  Ethan has almost mastered writing his name ... but now instead of leaving out the "h" he is leaving out the "a" or combining the "a" and "n" into one letter.  He needs to work on his fluency with the alphabet so I am doing flashcards with him .... he continues to say "8" for many of the letters he doesn't know.  The teacher sends home extra worksheets (by my request) for us to work on.  I'm trying to get him to do them but his stubbornness takes over and he screams and refuses to do them most of the time ..... Then a worksheet was sent home today that stated he is having trouble distinguishing beginning sounds to tell when they are the same or different and that we need to work on that at home.  Seriously at this moment I don't even know what to do to help him with that .... I've taught 25 people to learn how to read all at one time and but to help Ethan work on beginning sounds, I'm at a loss. I'm sure homeschooling is even more rewarding than teaching in a classroom.  However, will I be homeschooling? I think not.

On a sidenote, Ethan's drawing skills have evolved from his SpongeBob like self-portraits to include suns and wind.