After three weeks

Well, we've been homeschooling for 3 weeks now. I really feel like it's been a huge learning curve for us and I guess I wasn't anticipating that it would be. This week found us at the beginning of the week very frustrated with Alyssa's negative attitude towards school, me giving her a piece of my mind & the two of us praying together. Seriously, I was thinking that if her attitude continued we would not be homeschooling for much longer. Something had to give but she was not really giving things a chance. While we prayed together it was like God was whispering words to me as I prayed, helping ME realize how much Alyssa needed to hear some of the things I was praying about - how much I had been looking forward to spending time with her doing school stuff, how sad I was because of her attitude & that I was willing to do something different if homeschooling really wasn't going to be a good fit for her.

For many reasons, the rest of this week has been really good. Alyssa's attitude improved a ton (I still get resistence every once in a while but NOTHING like on Monday & last week). Part of the change is that I began giving Alyssa a list of what we need to do every day that she could cross off as we did them. I also made sure that the first 4 things we do, we pretty much do every day. And we began studying topics. This week it was the Sun and therefore we read books about the sun, did science experiments having to do with the sun, painted pictures of the sun, we made sun bread and so forth and I think she's really liked it.

The other thing that happened this week is that we just happened to be at Messiah Lutheran Church cleaning some toys for MOPS (it's where we go to MOPS). One of the women I know there invited us to stay for the meal they have on Wednesdays and then invited Alyssa to try out the bells class they have for K-2 grades. She LOVED it and ran out the door afterwards saying how she wanted to go back again next week. It's early enough in the evening that I think we're going to do it - eat there every week & have Alyssa do bells while the boys run around with some other friends they know. Music was one area I wasn't sure about and I think this will really help her learn about beat & rhythm. And she loves music...

We are ending the week on a much better note than at any time in the last 3 weeks and am hopeful that we've turned a corner. Monday we go to co-op and I'm hopeful that she will enjoy it. She gets to play soccer in her P.E. class and she really likes soccer.