Preparing for School

Since we are moving this weekend and because of all of the stress that goes along with that, we decided not to officially start school yet. We are however doing a little bit each day just to ease Laney (and me!) into it. Yesterday I gave Laney some coloring pages with a short story on each page. I asked her to color the pictures, to try and read the stories to herself, and to circle any words she didn't know. Once she went through them all on her own I would sit down with her and we'd read them together and talk about the words she didn't know. Well, she didn't circle ANY words and sat there and read every single page to me! She just blows me away with how well she is reading! I love it! Today I had her do a few more reading/coloring pages and then gave her a worksheet about compound words. Again, she got everything right with no help from mom! I'm thinking if I play this out right, Delaney will be able to homeschool Hadley in a few years for me! haha, just kidding. Kind of.
I'm thankful for these few weeks of taking it easy and just kind of evaluating where she is at. I can see already I'm going to have to challenge her more with the material than I thought. I am looking forward to getting settled into the new house and really starting our school days. I don't know how it's going to go, and I don't know if we'll homeschool forever, but I am so thankful and excited for the opportunity to do it this year. I'm so looking forward to watching her learn and to the memories we will make. With all we've been through this summer (that's another blog post, coming soon!) I almost threw in the towel on the idea of homeschooling. I didn't feel ready, wasn't prepared, was too distracted, and the list of reasons to quit before we even started grew longer and longer. I'm so glad that I decided to continue with our homeschooling plans. I knew in my heart it was something Cory and I both wanted for our family, at least for this year, and I'm truly thankful and excited to get to be both mommy and teacher for a little while :)