Today was difficult. It's only the second day Daisy, I know - I know. But let me explain. Dagny had a music lesson that was in person with a studio that is deemed safe and is doing all the necessary things and taking precautions to keep us distanced and safe. Not a problem. I had to bring the other kids with me. They had Chinese worksheets to practice character strokes and memorization in the car. I brought an ipad for the youngest, there are shape learning games he can play. I expected to sit with them. But it was a parent class and I had to attend with Dagny. There were only five of us in class with our kids. Everyone started to talk about back to school since it had just been the day before for most of the people in our nearby neighborhoods. This, my friends, is when regret hit. All of a sudden, I had that knee jerk reaction of WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU KEEP ALL YOUR KIDS AT HOME WHEN YOU'RE ONLY A FEW YEARS FROM BEING AWAY FROM THEM ALL?!?!?! ARE YOU CRAZY?!?!
I think I have to explain that one of the huge reasons we are attempting homeschool is because I want my kids to learn Chinese but I'm kind of done with the Chinese immersion program we were attending. I could send my kids to the regular English school but then they would be in school until 3:30 PM and by the time we settled at home and relaxed, I'd have to teach them Chinese before our evening dinner and activities resumed. Or, we'd have to wake up super early to learn before school. And where's the incentive for anyone to do that? Instead, I started to think about how my kids who have started school all missed being with me, spending time with me, exploring with me, and playing with their friends. For me as a child, school was my only outlet to see friends and learn. I looked forward to school every summer and dreaded my long boring summers at home with super workbooks and nothing else. But my kids have a different life at home. Their mom is available to do stuff, experiment, projects, field trips, all that jazz. So I had always wondered if homeschooling was an option that would give me the opportunity to take my kids out to explore and learn in a different way than at school. So along with being able to learn Chinese together, we would also be able to go and do fun things and learn in non traditional ways. The first time I even got this idea was when we were doing a rotation as a family of five in Washington D.C. There was a family there who homeschooled (they also had chickens, I'm not sure why this is important but I think it explains my fascination with wanting to raise chickens too - don't worry, Andy has said no repeatedly and I'm not winning this one) and the mother had come from a homeschooling family herself. Apparently, her family was amazing. A bunch of kids and they all went to Ivy League schools and now she was homeschooling her crew. I found her Instagram because we had some mutual friends, she was actually in our Church Ward at the time we were visiting but I didn't meet her or her sister, but heard about them. I spent hours scrolling through her Instagram account, wondering if I could ever homeschool my kids. It seemed amazing. Exploring with your kids. Learning through reading and being, rather than an institutionalized approach. Hmm. It definitely peaked my interest. But to be honest, I was exhausted just scrolling through her feed. Plus I was physically exhausted as is, wandering around the City with three kids and no car. I created a tab and filed it until recently. And I guess the more I have been wondering about it, the more I have wanted to try it. I'm sure the feed was a bit glorified, and as my thoughts of regret have peaked on my second day, I'm positive there's going to be a lot of ups AND downs definitely, but it was part of the reason why I wanted to try it.
So after music we ended up going to Lakeshore Learning to pick up some stuff. I was looking for math manipulatives, a word I had seen tossed out in the Facebook Homeschool groups I'm a part of now, but it ended up looking like junk I didn't want in my house. Instead, we got some stopwatches and Dagny and Cooper both got a fun lil activity book - Dagny's was a mosaic mermaid peel and stick thing and Cooper's was a water powered look and find book. We also got some dry erase markers and a map, because I also want to do some geography with my kids. And then we headed to Chic Fil A because I wanted a salad and McDonald's just doesn't satisfy. Plus the lemonade at Chick Fil A is so good. We had an appointment at the library so we headed back to grab a book, but I ended up grabbing a bunch of display books the library had in their roped off area. And then, we finally made it home to eat. I fell asleep that afternoon during our scripture and meditation hour, and half asleep kept commanding my kids to hurry up and read some scriptures and meditate. When I finally woke up, we had to grab some food to prepare dinner, so we went off to the store again with masks. We're getting pretty good at masking up together. I didn't want to leave my kids alone in the car with the AC on, so instead I piled them into the grocery cart with my phone and a show on, and I ran about to grab items while they sat there in the store.
But then we had some neighbor friends come over while I prepared dinner and just relaxed. Dinner came too fast, and then the normal nighttime workload. I work every evening from 8:30 - 10:30, but it gets me out of bedtime and I'm okay with it. It is kind of weird to work every night again, but it does make me really value my weekends. Now with homeschooling, I'm feeling quite busy every day. But I'm trying to give myself some grace until I figure things out more. And that's why we ate out, and likely will eat out a bit more until things normalize.
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