Home? Schooling?

My goals for this blog experience are (to quote myself): "to share some of my general thoughts on general things, and to capture some of the moments we share during our homeshcooling days." I seem to have found time for the former, so it's time to address the latter.

But man, there doesn't seem to be much HOME or much SCHOOLING going on around here lately.

At the moment, my only goal is to have each of the kids do their reading, math, and writing four days a week. And even that has been a big struggle. For one, we're just not HOME much. Owl Poppa has an erratic work schedule that means he is frequently home during the week, and gone on the weekends. So when he is home, we are running errands, hanging out, and trying to do all the things that are too hard for me to do alone with three kids. And then of course we want to spend time together as a family. Formal desk work seems to take a back burner too often. And we're all recovering from colds, a bout of flu, and terrible cedar fever. So even when we're forced to be home, we're more convalescant than academic.

We're also facing alot of resistance from J. He doesn't want to willingly do anything that seems like work. I certainly don't want to be neglecting his education. But I don't want to rob him of his love of learning in the name of discipline, since instilling a love of learning is one of the reasons I want my children home with me. Left to his own devices, he is still learning... history, practicing math skills, building things in the yard (engineering?), and "reading" (looking through books, though he is not at all fluent with the decoding yet). But I still feel like we should be doing something more formal for him.

Starting tomorrow, I am planning to move our book work back into the forefront, since Owl Poppa would like to see them do something constructive each day. Maybe I'll have more to report later.