Our New Homeschooling Plans

When I wrote my post about why we're not red shirting Jay for kindergarten, I very openly admitted that only time would tell if our plans went through and if what we thought originally would work for us or not. In May we got the first bill for August's tuition for Jay's preschool, and Derek and I found ourselves questioning, "is this really right for him?" The main things we weren't jazzed about were the payments of $245/mo for the next ten months, and I didn't really know what I had even wanted for Jay to get out of school for that year. There was also the fact that I would have to wake up and get him out the door four days a week by 8:30am, which seems daunting when you sleep as little as we do, and lastly, we really wanted to be able to sign Jay up for soccer and other fun extra circular activities this year, and with $245/mo going to preschool tuition there really wasn't the extra funds to facilitate any extras.

There were also other contributing factors like, what will happen when our lease is up? Would we force ourselves to buy a home close to his preschool? Would I drive him 30+ minutes everyday to finish out the school year? Would he like going on a daily basis? How would I be with him not being home everyday? Needless to say, there were a lot thoughts going through my mind. 

So then I sat down and thought about what I really wanted for Jay to get out of school this year. What are the things I really want him to know before we dive into the big open world of kindergarten the following year? I realized that I really wanted to work on more craft projects at home with him. He's literally never cut anything with a pair of scissors, and so I'm thinking one structured at home preschool craft a week could definitely fulfill this need. I wanted him to work his way through the kindergarten workbook that we bought for him since he finished the preschool level one this last school year. I'll be honest in that the kindergarten one is a little too much for him right now, and we do have to modify some of the activities in it so that neither one of us get frustrated, but I still like it just as much as the preschool one. 

Another thing I wanted him to be working on is coding. I mentioned this to Derek a few nights ago and he raised an eyebrow at me and said, "Does he need to know that at age 4?" but according to code.org, kids should start learning about computer science and coding at the age of four since it's like another language and it's easier for other languages to be picked up when they're younger. In a world that is getting more and more digital by the second, coding really is going to be a part of our kids future. I love the easy lessons that you can do through code.org and how they're broken up by age group and you can do both "unplugged" activities with crayons, glue, and paper, but they also have activities on the computer as well, and the entire thing is free. 

Once I realized that those were my objectives for him to learn over the next school year, I realized that those were things that I could easily do at home for significantly less money than the price of preschool. Since we were saving money, we realized we could put some of it towards extra curricular activities so that he was still getting the social interaction that he needed. We signed him up for fall soccer through the local YMCA branch, and after digging around our community and learning about the multitude of activities and classes that they do for people of all ages, we got him enrolled in a community art class for four-year-olds as well. We spent less than $200 on activities that will last him for the entire first half of next school year, and I'm sure he'll have a lot more fun. 

Finally, once I had fully accepted and embraced that we were going to be "homeschooling" next year, I bought Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum for all of $15. I love that I was able to download everything that I needed and then I can just pull the lessons together and print them off each week and have structured things to do with him each day. 

While it may sound like we have a ton of plans, and it sounds like I have all this stuff I'm wanting to throw at him this next year, I do know that we really need to just pace it and take it slow. I never want to be the parent that is forcing my kids to learn things that are too hard for them, and I never want to have false expectations for things with my children. I think often we get so caught up in having to make our kids the best/smartest/everything etc... that we can push them too hard and make them resent learning. I loved this video by The Encouraging Homeschool Mom where she talks about teaching 3-4-year-olds and how at this age, it really all just needs to be about having fun and not pushing them. I've really taken that to heart these last few weeks. While I really want to be able to expose Jay to all these different and fun things, I don't want to push him into doing things he hates. I know he loves writing and counting, but if it turns out he hates coding? We'll put it on the back burner for six months and see how he feels about it later. I'm mostly excited to just have a lot of fun this next school year, and he is too.