That Amazing Moment

Up until about a month before Cathy Belle came I had been "homeschooling" my two other children. Now when I say homeschooling I mean 2-4 times per week we were working on things like learning the alphabet, counting, colors, shapes, and other concepts. I have a strong desire to homeschool my children and I am hoping to learn what works and does not work for us before it really counts. My son was my main student (Emmie has just turned 2 in August, so she was learning what she caught) and he knows shapes, colors and counting. Recognizing the letters and numbers, oh my, was hard. I felt like I might as well be teaching the cat sometimes.

We tried games, flashcards, chalk, paint, activity books, coloring pages, and anything else I could find. Nothing seemed to work, and I was beginning to doubt my ability to homeschool and whether or not my son would ever learn. He started to pick up on a few letters and I would get so excited at the thought of progress, only to be disappointed again.

The other day we were at my in-laws house and my mother-in-law had found some alphabet flashcards. Ray-J decided he wanted to play with them, so we pulled them out and he begins to look at them: "A for Apple. B for Ball. C for Cat. D for Door. E for "Elphalet". F for Flower. G for Goat. H for Hat. I for Ice Cream. J for Jack in the Box. K for Kite." At this point he got bored and started putting the cards all over the floor, but we quickly made him pick them up (because, of course, that is not how we treat our things), and as he was picking them up we identified the rest of the letters. Yay!!! I was proud of my brilliant son, and I was also having a proud mommy moment. I imparted knowledge and it stuck!

I will admit in the past week I have felt well enough to do some school with him, but I have not for a couple of reasons. One, it is so close to Christmas I feel like learning about that is more important. Second, I was discouraged about his learning and my capabilities as his teacher. Now I am ready to go, we will spend the next week learning about Christ's birth, and making our traditional Birthday cake for Jesus, but after Christmas has calmed down we will be back to doing school :)