I'm schooling two children right now - my third grader, Hannah, and my K'er, Emma. I also have a wee one in training - my all boy 17mo. Consequently, a lot of my energy and focus tends to naturally fall towards the oldest and the youngest. You can probably imagine (if you have middle kidlets or were one yourself) that Emma, especially with her easy going and affectionate nature, can often get less of my attention than the other two, despite my attempts otherwise. All my children are very good at playing independently and keeping occupied - but pair that with a Mommy who tends to be weak in the area of talking and playfulness, it's obvious together time needs to be worked at.
I recently bought a book called Family Math for Young Children by Coates and Stenmark. It's a really simple book full of easy projects to do with little ones. In addition to Emma's regular K work, I've added this one, mainly for more "Mommy and Me" time together, but also for the educational aspect of it. It's her new favorite activity! She looks forward to it every school day and can't wait to share with Daddy what she did when he gets home from work!
On this particular day, the project was fitting different sizes of bolts with the right nuts. She found it thrilling! LOL! For my part, I was blessed by the excitement on her face and the sweet hugs she gave for doing such a "fun project" together.
As hard as homeschooling can be sometimes, I am truly thankful and feel so blessed to be able to be home with my children, teaching them, watching them learn and discover, being right there when their joy at learning the 7 continents happens or finding out how syrup is produced. During times when I sometimes wonder what it feels like to stand on the corner, waving at them driving off on the school bus and imagining what I'd do with those extra 6 hours a day, I realize that as nice as it sometimes sounds, I could never do it without grieving at what I'd be giving up.
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