raising rileys

a homeschool life conversation with jesika harmon

We are the Harmons! Robbie, aka the Principal who the students actually want to get sent to visit; Jesika, aka the teacher/mom who some days flies by the seat of her pants; Bree, aka the sweet 9 year old who loves everything art, history and music, and not so much anything math this year; Gabe, aka the 7 year old who rolls his eyes at reading unless it has to do with animals and college sports teams; McKay, aka the 5 year old who is trying to find his place as the third child and has all the sport/math/reading talent as his older siblings but kindawants to be different; and Quinn, aka the 3 year old ballerina who reminds mom that she has to do “her math and grammar” every day too.

autumn art projects

I love this time of year. The change of season is always refreshing to me. And the autumn colors against the brilliant blue sky is breathtaking to me. One of my favorite things is to find ways to bring nature indoors as well as create with my kids. I think it's important for them to create, but I also find it's an essential outlet for me personally! Here are a few projects we have enjoyed doing.

school lately

Homeschool is such a full experience. I attempted to express my feelings about it the other day to my husband as we drove. It's as though my love for my children has deepened and expanded through this experience. That's interesting because I didn't think that love could increase because it was so great--but it has.

grumpiness and a gorgeous autumn day

Ever have those mornings where there's a general aura of grumpiness going around? Maybe not in your home, but it occasionally happens in our home. I think it usually relates to one sort of stress or another when it comes from me or my husband, and when it comes from one of the kids, I can oftentimes correlate it to not enough sleep or some sort of little sickness (a cold or something) making it's way through our home. Either way, the reality is that sometimes grumpiness takes a bit of a hold on us.

exhausted yet fulfilled

By about 1:30 today I was feeling pretty exhausted. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been working on a lot of things trying to get caught up and doing my best to put my full energy and heart into our homeschool (along with all the other regular life stuff). I think we're doing pretty well, but boy, it's no small effort! That's why at around 1:30 I was scooting the boys out the door so they could play a while and run around in the backyard while I could sit down and take a break for a few minutes!

beginnings

We just finished our first week of school! This year is different from last year because I've added purchased curriculum to our day. Last year Matthew was 4, and we did a lot of child-led learning, reading, and exploring which was a wonderful, beautiful experience. It was a year I will treasure always. This year I felt it was time to increase some structured learning while still maintaining the outdoor time and reading, creative time and child-led approach. I think figuring out curriculum and planning is a balancing act that looks a little different for each family, and maybe even different from year-to-year and from child-to-child. So far I'm very happy with what we're doing. Still working out the kinks, still trying to figure out how to do things better (I'm sure we'll always be trying to do that).

HomeschoolElizabeth RileySeptember 20, 2016homeschool, homeschooling, homeschoollife Comments