We may not be over, but we are definitely on a break. It might have just been a fling. I wasn't myself with you, I was someone I thought you wanted me to be and I can't do it anymore. I am heartbroken because I was in love with you and I really wanted it to work.
In all seriousness, I have decided to stop homeschooling. It started to feel really wrong for us. I decided to homeschool last spring after Gavin spent an entire year in Pre-K and learned nothing that he didn't already know. His teacher showed me an assessment during a conference and announced that he "knows all of his letters." Yeah, thanks for telling me that, he's known "his" letters since he was two. I realized that the expectations were very low and didn't want to waste anymore years of school. I wanted to educate him myself. I wanted to know his progress firsthand. I also didn't want to have him gone all day all week.
So we began our homeschool journey for lots of good reasons and I imagined that it would be hard but that it would be worth it. It was around Spring Break last year that we made the final decision to homeschool. I went to a Homeschool convention. Umm, yikes! The curriculum fair was huge and overwhelming and I ended up buying a curriculum package that looked amazing at the fair but once I started using it realized that it wasn't a strong curriculum.
The package I bought was all subjects integrated into unit studies. I loved it because this is the ideal way to teach, according to my Early Childhood Degree. It was kindergarten but it was too easy for my Pre-Ker. I supplemented reading for Gavin and thought about buying a separate math curriculum as well. At first I would look ahead at the next unit and plan a lot of extras to give the boys a more opportunity to learn. I quickly got burned out and was more disappointed with the curriculum each week.
By the end of October, I reached my third trimester of pregnancy and realized that this wasn't working. I hung on for another month and the week of Thanksgiving just boxed up the curriculum for indefinite storage in the closet. I was so relieved to have it out of sight. I hated it and I didn't have to do it anymore. I thought about researching curriculum and getting another plan of action together to start after Christmas. The huge problem with that idea is that we are having a baby right after Christmas.
So I thought and I thought and I thought and I became overwhelmingly convinced that my boys and I and our baby girls would all be better off if they went to school full time.
It was after I decided to homeschool that we found out that we were having another baby and I didn't want to let the baby stop us. We ended up moving, which we had planned to do in another year but decided we needed more space right away with another baby coming. We needed a bigger house and also a better school district. We managed to find a perfect house that is about 2 blocks away from arguably the best public elementary school in our area. Had we been in this school district before, I might not have felt the need to homeschool in the first place.
It was 3 weeks before the start of the school year when we moved and my husband really wanted me to enroll the boys in the school. He kept saying he didn't think I could homeschool with the new baby. I pointed out that lots of homeschooling families are large and they don't let babies stop them. I thought I could do it. I wanted to try. I could rattle off a huge list of reasons why homeschool is better, many of these I still strongly believe.
The summer brought so much change for us. Moving, new baby on the way when the current baby is still a baby, I quit my job that I loved. It was too much change. I think we all needed this time of being home together through the fall semester. I absolutely could not have enrolled them in such a big school for the full day full week at the beginning of this school year.
Now that we have tried homeschool for a semester, I realize that I am not doing my best at this and I certainly will not be able to improve things anytime soon. In a matter of weeks I will have a newborn attached to my boobs at least 8 hours a day. Poor Everly is going to be lost in the middle. Gavin has reached frustration level with reading and does not respond well to my instruction. I never dreamed that I would think that someone else can probably do a better job than me at teaching him to read. He cries when I sit down to do a reading lesson with him, I doubt he would do this for a teacher, especially when he is surrounded by peers who are learning right along with him.
A couple of weeks ago, I let the boys know that I was thinking about having them start school right after Christmas break and they were thrilled. In the past, Gavin has been adamant that he prefers to homeschool so this was the first time he said he would rather go to school. I realized they were feeling the same about homeschool as I was. It just wasn't working and with a newborn, we won't be able to improve things anytime soon. Next, I let my husband know what I was thinking. He was relieved. He had been really worried about me homeschooling with a new baby and a toddler. 12 hours later, he had them enrolled.
We went on a tour this morning. The teachers and classrooms look perfect and I know that the boys will be in the best place they can be while I focus on this new baby. I feel like a weight has been lifted. I could not mentally fit a new baby into our daily routine. I could not begin to imagine what our school days would look like. Now that I know that the boys will be in school, I can actually imagine caring for the baby and Everly during the day. I used to think that I would send the baby girls to preschool so I could homeschool the big boys but then I realized how backwards that was. Why would I send my babies away so I could keep my big boys home?
I have a lot of peace about this decision but I do feel a bit defeated. I am accustomed to doing it all, and it is uncomfortable to acknowledge that I have limits. I do know that this is the best decision for all of us.
Interestingly, as soon as the boys were enrolled, I began having false labor and went on a crazy nesting spree to get us ready to bring home a newborn baby. I feel ready and am so looking forward to this new chapter.