We have officially embarked upon the journey of homeschooling. We started on Monday, Aug 23rd. It is going way better than I could have imagined it would. Josh is thriving, and asking to keep going instead of taking the breaks I had planned into the schedule. I am finding that my lessons and plans may not be advanced enough for his desires. I am doing a bit of this, and a bit of that kind of curriculum. I am following some of the pathways on www.lessonpathways.com and am supplementing with other workbooks and fun activities.

This week the book is The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Josh is almost reading the story, though I suspect some of that is because he has an amazing memory. He is definitely picking out certain sight words from the book and is enjoying himself. The math lessons are a bit below his level, as it focuses on 1-5 and he can count to one hundred, and backwards from 100-0. He is learning to write the numbers though, and as he is still struggling with proper holding of writing utensils I feel the review is good. I may end up bouncing him up to the 1st grade level of math if he seems bored with it. We are discussing what a scientist is, and different jobs a scientist could have. We did a few fun experiments with water, freezing and evaporation, and viewed a website that shows how scientists help the world. He seems extremely interested in those lessons. We are focusing on community this week, beginning with family, and moving to the world. It is so interesting to me to see Josh's perspective on things. This is as much fun for me as it is for him I suspect.

Seth and Trey are interacting with some of the lessons. Seth loves story time, science projects and arts/music activities. Trey just likes to steal papers and eat crayons, but hey, at least he is taking part in the adventure.

All in all I have found it to be such a rewarding adventure so far. I am not regretting my decision to homeschool at all. I was worried Josh would have trouble focusing, but he wakes up anxious to begin lessons and seems to love it. I do worry about the socialization aspect, but think that with church activities and our playgroup he will be okay. I plan to join a few homeschooling groups once we get to San Antonio, so I think that will help a lot also.

Did I mention that James is home? He came home early from his deployment. It was a mixed blessing, as the reason he came home was to have a dysplastic lesion removed from his tongue. They caught it in time before it turned into cancer, but the worry was there. It is a recurrent issue from a few years ago, and we were terrified that it had turned cancerous this time, as the initial biopsy couldn't rule out squamous cell carcinoma. Anyways, he is home and the surgery is done. The pathology came back that all of his moderate to severe dysplasia was removed. There is a small section in the back of the margins that showed mild dysplasia, so it is something we will have to closely monitor for the rest of his life. So, yeah, James is home and life is good.

We finally got the hard orders for his next assignment. We will be leaving Alaska on Oct 21 and heading to San Antonio for the next 4 years. We are excited, yet I am very sad to be leaving behind such an amazing community and some friends that I know I will miss so much. I am glad we'll be back by our family, but these friends are like my family, and it will be so hard to say goodbye. It's kind of like Army Wives, these ladies became my family.

Well Trey is awake and fussing so I must cut this short. I plan to try to use this blog in part as a record of our homeschooling accomplishments, so hopefully I will be a little bit better about updating it more often.