school at home
One of the big advantages to homeschooling a single kid is how much time you save over a classroom setting. There's no sitting around—it's all efficiency. Add just one more student, though, and that goes out the window. Not only does each kid has to wait while the teacher works with the other, but they immediately start distracting each other. So I observed yesterday when we had a friend join us for school... but it was totally worth it.
Harvey gets plenty of socialization time, and we enjoy doing school just the two of us, or with Zion. But what fun it was for Harvey to have someone other than me to play math games with, and to teach and learn from! Plus, pulling carrots is more fun with two.
they were working too hard to pose for a photo
Taya is a kindergartener, and I struggled to recall what I had done with Harvey last year to kick-start his incredible mastery of place value (the most important foundation of math knowledge!). She's also a different sort of learner. It's good for me to work on my skills in the home-school arena, broadening myself to become a teacher of children rather than just of Harvey. Like Harvey, though, she soaks up direct instruction like a sponge... I need some more active, resistant students to really test myself.
Going into this school year we had hoped to do more of this sort of thing. I even had some thoughts that this would be the year we'd start our "school", on a small scale at least. But various family situations—for us and our prospective students—has kept it from happening so far. Yesterday was very encouraging: like getting back on track. We're scheduled for another meeting next Tuesday. Yay school at home! Maybe next time we'll even get to some literacy work.
working together