The Year When There Was Three!

This is the second week of school for this 2005/2006 year, and for the first day of the second week, I have to say things are looking up, alhamdulillah.

The first week was simply hellish, for lack of a better word. I guess we all were too tense in getting back in the swing of things. S is a dawdler. I suppose it took some reminding for her to break the habit. The first day of school last week, she was still doing school at 8 pm. I wasn't in too jolly a mood either, to say the least.

H on the other hand, was more than elated to finally be 'in' with his sisters. His history lesson that day consisted of learning the cardinal direction in which I had told him to stand facing the 'north' wall. From then on, I gave him directions to go to various places, only using cardinal directions. He really got a kick out of it that when his father came home, it took all he could do not to switch to his 'chatterbox' mode.

"Y.yy..y.yyy...o...oo..uu.u.u.....w..we..we....learned north, south, east and west. Ummi told me to stand..stand..facing the north..and then...and then....she told me to turn south, and then ...and then...east......"

I was upstairs, still doing school with S, quite in a foul mood because of her dawdling, ultimately dragging me in with her procrastination. Yet I couldn't help but smile when I heard H chatter away his 'lesson learned' for the day.

I half expected this week to be stress inducing too, but alhamdulillah, we all probably learned a hard lesson from last week, and by 1 pm, school was over. I had dreaded this school year just because I would be teaching three chilren, all at different levels at the same time. I honestly didn't know how I was going to handle it. I half feared I would go insane.

With homeschooling, preparation can take up quite a big chunk of your time, but once it's done, things can go smoothly, provided you omit the other factors such as dawdling, lack of attention, phone calls, doctor's appointments and such. it's very much like Chinese cooking: chop, chop, dice, slice, mince, julienne, but when it's all ready, you just toss it in the wok and before long, you'd be treating yourself to a steaming plate of fried rice bristling with tantalizing aroma.

It took roughly about eleven hours yesterday for me to prepare their individual schedule for the next three weeks. I usually do it one week at a time, but since I have weekend classes this two coming weekends, I thought I'd make it less stressful on myself by just going all out and lay out their lessons for the next three weeks in one sitting.

I had to open up their online school, look at their weekly schedule, then look and study the individual lessons per subject, jot down the objectives of each lesson, the worksheets and pages on their workbooks that need to be worked on. Halfway through it, I was spent and very much wanted to quit, hands up in the air. However, I know only too well the trouble that would cost me, for once you start with the schedule, you have to stick with it till the end, or you will be floundering much like a fish out of water once the lesson day arrives.

So now, I don't have to worry about their lessons until the end of September. I only have to worry about S's coming 3rd Grade Ahievement test coming up on October 3.