A great day!

Today was the first day of school for Audrey and Savanna. Audrey is a Senior at our local public school and Savanna is a Freshman at the private school she has attended since 3rd grade. Both girls had a great day!

Yuly and Riza had a "warm up" school day. Yuly and I did about half of the work of a normal school day. It went very well. Riza begins kindergarten next week at our church's school, so I told Yuly we would wait until Riza started school before we undertook a full day schooling. My plan for this week is to get two days under our belt so that we have a little cushion. I was really excited about Yuly's work today. It is going to be a really fun year.

We had a lot of hands-on learning this summer about everything from God's amazing sea creatures at the Georgia Aquarium and Gulf Marine Lab to different times and places at the Children's Museum in Oakridge, TN. I hope these experiences help Yuly relate to the information we study this year.




Riza will go to school from 9-1, so it is my aspiration that Yuly and I will take Riza to school, come home and do our work, and be finished by the time we need to pick up Riza. However, our curriculum (Sonlight), has so many fun things (e.g., learning about countries around the world including how to pray for the people of that land) so if Riza gets to be a part of that, it will be o.k.

You may be wondering how we decided to home school Yuly and I can tell you it has definitely been through God's leadership. I always said I was not a homeschool mom. I have considered it intermittently, but it never seemed to be the right choice. As Yuly as grown, learned, and matured, we have noticed some gaps in her learning, most noticeably in her academic vocabulary. She has tons of compensatory strategies that allowed her to do reasonably well in school, but Todd and I came to realize that the gap would continue to widen in her expected and actual knowledge. She also is behind in reading skills, but she is rapidly progressing in that area which has been a huge answer to prayer. However, God showed us that we needed to home school Yuly for her benefit. We prayed about the placement of each girl and as you can tell, we made a unique choice for each girl. We are thankful to live in a community that has so many excellent educational opportunities.

Superimposed on our desire to help Yuly in a way that meets her specific needs, is the realization that homeschooling can be very beneficial in continuing to strengthen the bond we have with her. Yuly is such an easy child to parent (I haven't always been able to say that!) so it is not about problems, but the realization that I will never recover the seven years of her life that I missed. However, one-on-one time five days a week will close the gap on the time I missed with her when she was a small child.

I am so grateful that Todd is supportive and that we are able to live on his salary. Yes, we are making some financial adjustments, but the benefits are so overwhelmingly apparent, that it is not at all a sacrifice. Please understand, I walked away from a job that I loved. I got to do all the things I loved to do, my position was part-time and very flexible, and I had amazing co-workers. However, as great as it was, I'm learning it just can't compete with this new job offer :)

And, just to show how amazing God is, the one thing that I was sad to miss as I homeschooled is my weekly Moms in Touch prayer time. I tried and tried to figure out how I could work it in, but Yuly just can't work independently yet, so I had given up....but God orchestrated a variety of schedules so that I can continue to attend without it impacting my homeschool schedule.

Looking forward to my new adventure as homeschool mom...and the little girls are plotting how I will be teaching them 1st and 4th grade :)