A Pajama Day; Reflecting on All the Benefits of Homeschooling

We spent a lazy morning in bed and hanging around in our pajamas yesterday.

My younger two boys had a sleepover the previous night and were up early ready to play (though they wanted to stay in Evan's room).  They brought out all their stuffed animals and staged battles, brought up their Nintendo DS games to play side by side and just hung out together.



Ian asked me to come lay in his bed with him and watch some more Harry Potter and Evan eventually joined us.  We had no plans to go anywhere and it was nice to know that we had nothing pressing going on; no school, no plans, no schedule.

They told me that they all wanted a pajama day, a bit of time to visit their great grandmother and a lot of time to just play.  So that's what we did-- or rather what they did. 

It was nice to have this week off and reflect.

 Looking back over our two year journey I have to say I see so many more benefits to homeschooling than I first started with:  

  • They have to get along; 80% of the time they're the only playmates they have!  As soon as my boys woke up yesterday morning they asked if they could have another sleepover that same night.  They love spending time together in these fits and spurts and do act as one another's best friends on occasion. 
  • They're slowly getting a bit better at occupying their own time-- they played for over two hours while I was on the computer looking at curriculum, writing my blog, exercising, doing laundry, etc.  They build with Lego sets, play with blocks, use their imagination and enjoy their time "off" from school.  
  • They're much more competent at home doing chores, making their own breakfast and lunch, and cleaning up after themselves.  
  • They're more confident, outgoing and sure of themselves.  When people ask if we like homeschooling we're all quick to answer that we LOVE it & we do.  
  • They're eager to listen to stories and learn (most of the time)
  • We spend so much time with my grandmother and other family members that we would rarely get to see if the boys were in school. 
  • My husband and I yell much less, the kids are happier than they've ever been, and as a family we seem to be such a stronger unit. 

Ian build a whole marina on this rainy morning

We spent the whole afternoon at my grandmother's house visiting with her, playing with her cat and building such wonderful bonds with yet another generation.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Favorite TV Shows Growing Up in the 80's and early 90's

Image
Do you remember the TGIF lineups on Friday nights? I can remember planning sleepovers and time with friends around TV Show lineups of our favorite shows... or else trying to set the VCR to record our favorite shows if we weren't going to be home. And through the years I had SO MANY favorites! Growing pains aired in 1985 which put me around age 8 and it stayed on the air until I was 15 or so; I'm pretty sure most people in my age group watched mostly for Kirk Cameron and all his antics.  I still have a soft spot for family sit-coms!  The Facts of Life aired when I was just 2  and stayed on the air until I was 11 so I'm sure the episodes I remember so fondly were either some of the later ones and then reruns shown later on when I was old enough to watch from the beginning. I think everyone would have loved an Edna Garret in their lives.   Benson another sitcom that began airing when I was just 2 and was done by the time I was 9 (another one I must have watched mai...
Read more

Things That Make Me Laugh

Image
I loved the challenge of this week's list for our 26 lists link up.  I don't know about you but I really need to laugh more lately.  It's such a great stress reliever. 1.  Books-- I love a good funny book that makes me laugh out loud.  I haven't read one in a while but if you have any recommendations I'm all ears.  The last book I can remember making me laugh was the Un-Honeymooners. 2  The boys being silly. 3.  Watching shows like America's Funniest Videos or Family Feud. 4. My husband.  Most people don't realize it but he's actually pretty funny and often makes me laugh. 5.  Whenever my sisters/ family get together and we get to reminiscing (particularly if my Aunt Elaine is around) we end up laughing so hard at all the old family stories that we are all in tears by the end of the night.  It's fabulous. 6. Movies like Mom's Night Out, Christmas Vacation, and Grown Ups make me laugh out loud. 7.  When my ...
Read more

Making Gift Card and Money Holders Using Scrapbooking and Cardmaking Supples

Image
I don't tend to keep a lot of crafting supplies on hand so when I saw this month's de-stash challenge I wasn't sure what I was going to make.  I finally realized that with so many of my Christmas gifts being cash and gift cards this year that I needed to make up some fun paper crafting/ creative ways to gift them.   I still want my nieces and nephews to have something to open so I pulled out my papers and stamps and made up some cute little money/gift card holders. They were much easier to make than I thought.  The first one I worked on was to hold some oversized Nintendo gift cards.  I made a standard sized card and folded down one corner of the card front.  Then I ran my double sided tape along the bottom an 1/2 way up the side creating a cute little pocket.  Finally I added some cute embellishments and ribbons.   Voila! A simple and easy gift card holder for those larger sized gift cards.  The bulk of the tweens and teens on my list j...
Read more

Making a Sugar Cookie "Gingerbread" House

Image
 Alec really wanted to try making his own gingerbread house this year without using a premade kit.  We talked about how we never really eat the house since they don't taste very good.  Years ago we gave up on the frosting that comes in the kit and began making our own so we thought perhaps we should try making our our house too. Only problem is that no one in the house likes gingerbread.  We talked about trying to make the house using a sugar cookie recipe.  Alec was so excited at that idea since he just LOVES sugar cookies.   He found a recipe online for a simple sugar cookie recipe and mixed up the dough.  He rolled it out an cut it to the size of our cookie sheets-- we had read that it's easiest to cut the house pieces out after the dough has been baked and is still warm and soft because then you don't have to worry about any of the pieces losing their shape while baking. I had picked out a simple cookie cutter set on Amazon and as soon as the ...
Read more

52 Book Challenge of 2024; How I Did and What I Read

Image
 I finished up the 52 Book challenge by mid-July this year despite reading lots of other books along the way.  1. Locked Room Mystery--  Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney-  2. Bibliosmia: A Smelly Book-- Heidi by Johanna Spyri  3. More than 40 chapters -- Betting on You by Lynn Painter 4. Lowercase Letters on the Spine-- The Book Proposal by KJ Micciche (read in Jan) 5. Magical Realism--   The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer 6. Women in STEM-- The Women by Kristin Hannah 7. At Least 4 Different POV-- A Fatal Affair by A. R Torre 8. Features the Ocean-- Blue Hawaiian by Carla Luna 9. A Character-Driven Novel--  Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close 10. Told in Non-Chronological Order-- The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins  11. Title Starts with the Letter "K" -- Key Lime Garden Inn by Annie Cabot-  12. Title Starts with the Letter "L" -- The Last Love Note by Emma Gray 13. An Academic Thriller -- One of Us Is Next by Karen McManus (read in Jan) 14. ...
Read more