First Day of Homeschooling

Phew.  What an absolute energy-sucker today was.  We were originally planning on starting directly after Labor Day weekend, but on a whim, I decided to throw ourselves in the mix today.  I figured this will give us a little bit of time to catch our bearing and sort of see what works.  We got up, whipped up breakfast and then devoured it, brushed teeth, got dressed and got to work.  Gage, Cote and I all got set up at the table while Bo headed outside for some adventures.  Cote's big homework of the day was to master patiently hanging out in her highchair with a stack of board books.  She did pretty good :)

Gage and I worked on the letter "B" (handwriting, recognition and pronunciation).  We also worked on shapes (squares and backwards circles), as well as slanted lines and a couple of coloring activities.  I wanted to do an Art project with all three kids after lunch, but I was not prepared to start today and made a large lunch we all needed to recover from.

First day of homeschooling ever.  What is my verdict, you ask?  I am more cemented than ever in my decision.  I spent a large portion of our time redirecting Gage's attention back to his assignments.  I imagine how he would be doing in a classroom setting and I cringe.  One full year of Headstart and Pre-School and one full year or Learning Readiness and he is still not where he should be for starting Kindergarten.  The problem is not with his old schools or with his teachers.  The problem is that he has Sensory Processing Disorder and needs to be taught a lot differently.  Gage is a super sociable kid and is very well-mannered.  He loves being in social settings and will absolutely light up a room.  The problem is not with how he does in those settings, but rather what he is learning in those settings.  He can barely hold a pencil.  He can barely scissor.  He cannot recognize the majority of his alphabet.... ect ect ect...  We were offered to do yet another year of Learning Readiness but kindly refused.  

Keith and I decided to give homeschooling a try because at this point, it may be our best option.  If this ends up falling through, and we have to go back into the public school system, we are absolutely going to need an IEP.  Homeschooling is going to help with our therapy schedule as well.  Gage was re-evaluated last week to see if he was going to need to keep seeing his Occupational Therapist and the answer is a big fat YES.  This will be his third year, and although he is improving, we definitely have a ways to go.  

So tonight I am going to go ahead and get our curriculum set up for the rest of the week.  Not sure if I will ever get to the point where I can get a whole month don, but you never know.  I could end up being one of those super organized mama's yet!