I love homeschooling, but the work involved isn’t all rosy.  For one thing, it tests my patience A LOT!!!  It’s both good and bad as a homeschooling mom.  It’s bad because I get frustrated and it’s good because I know this is one way of refining my character.

While teaching my 4.5 year old to read this afternoon, I almost wanted to bang my head against the wall.  Well, not exactly, but you get my drift.  My 4.5 year old boy is a dreamer dwelling in his own happy little world.  It’s not an easy task to have him phone home to earth at times, or shall I say, most of the time.  This, of course, presents a huge hurdle for me to overcome as I teach this child.

This is one of the sentences he read today:

“She will take a pail and get the mail.”

After reading this my boy was concerned whether the pail truly belonged to the gal.  In order to speed up the lesson, I said, “Yes, of course it belongs to her.  She’s using it to get the mail so it’s her pail.”  Side tracking is my boy’s forte.  It makes perfect sense to him although the rest of us don’t see the connection.

My boy went on to read another sentence that goes like this:

“Did she tell you the tale of when the fox lost his tail?”

Well, this sentence doesn’t make sense to him as he protested, “Foxes don’t lose their tails!!!”  As an answer, I said, “In this story, they do!  Ok. . . moving on. . . . ”

Thankfully I was still sane after today’s reading lesson.  Even though I was frustrated, my boy brought me much amusement.  I’m so not like him and he certainly brings a colorful perspective into my otherwise boring world.  This is why I love homeschooling.  It’s not easy but it’s very rewarding.