Monster school

monster from crunchzilla

My mom tried to homeschool us for a while when we lived in Globe, I think. it might have been Mesa…I don’t remember. I usually block really traumatic things that happen to me. I do remember a little bit about how it went. I remember her saying we could do school as soon as we finished our chores. hmm. That may have worked with some kids who liked to clean, but we didn’t. So, it was a day-long battle with nothing getting done. I can’t blame her though, homeschooling is hard.

I thought about homeschooling my kids until I had number four. By then, I realized two very important things: 1: my kids were way too smart for me, and 2: I needed those school hours to regroup and find my balance. There was also the fact that I was pregnant or nursing for about nine years…judge me if you will.

So, here it is, many years later. Almost all my kids are grown and somewhat independent, or at least out of school. All I have at home to ‘homeschool’ during this C-19 thing are Baby-G and Grand-T. 4 and 7 respectively. How hard could this be? I mean, I teach all day. I have 82 students and it is a joyous thing.

Yeah, right. Here’s what I’ve learned about homeschooling:

These kids are smarter than me (talk about working deals!)
There is a reason we have small kids when we are younger
Naps should be required for everyone until they die
the planning to doing ratio for homeschool activities is about 3 hours to 4 minutes
All subjects/learning is based around PE and terrorist (aka PreK) demands
It’s better to sleep in and start late than be the early bird
there are a LOT of good reasons why the 1 room schoolhouse is not around anymore
It is NOT safe to take a 15-minute power nap in the middle of the day, no matter what the kids are ‘busy ‘ doing
I miss being at school

It hasn’t been all bad. We’ve had a good time. Today I was really prepared. I even made a PowerPoint. It wasn’t for the kids, just for me to organize my thoughts. (I’m a PPT nerd). Here are some pictures of our successful hour of school. I grabbed resources from all over. Most of them were free. If you’d like a copy or a link, leave me a message/comment and I will share. I told a friend what I was planning and he surprised us with “Monster kits” at our door. The kids were pretty sure a monster had dropped them by to trick them, but it didn’t stop them from ripping them open and eating all the monster candy.