First Day of School 2009 - Park Wife Style

Sticking with tradition, we waved to the school bus and headed to the lake for Little Buckaroo's first day of school. We have been schooling for a few weeks, I am just behind on posting, surprise, surprise.


Was he worried he left his backpack, lunch, or if he was ready for pre-Algebra? Oh no, not in our world. He was just working on patience, a character quality I need to work on also, as he waited for his dad to bring him a life jacket. Now, we are all about an adventurous boyhood, but we are safe (plus they required it and since we were at a state park, we thought it would be best if we followed the rules).

Cool Littlest Buckaroo, this kid has the best personality. He is the class clown of our school.

The boys are into pirates now, so we introduced them to Treasure Island. They are dressed up as different characters and acting it out all day long ~ Jim Hawkins, Billy Bones, Ben Gunn, Black Dog, and of course, Long John Silver complete with a crutch. While at the lake we had to stop at many of the islands to search for treasures, all we found were some aluminum cans. I guess we could have picked them up and sold them for some coins.

Little Buckaroo worked on his driving skills, real life stuff he is going to need. Forget all that sentence structure, math word problems, let's drive!!!!!

Littlest Buckaroo worked on his adventure skills, no problem there. He even talked mom into tubing with him. That was not hard, all he had to do was look at me with those big blue eyes and I was jumping in the water.

Little Buckaroo tubed with his dad......

.....before deciding he was big enough to be out there himself. Who says homeschooled kids are not independent?

Not to be outdone, our 3-year-old said he wanted to tube by himself, he is a brave warrior!

Since then we have actually been working on reading, math, history, outside play, cleaning bathrooms, building huge Lego projects, making lighthouses, going to the library, oh the list goes on.

Homeschooling is not right for everyone, it is right for our family. It is a way of life for us, not just a part of our day. I love how it gives us the freedom to teach to each child's level and interest, to be together and control our day, and that we can focus on their heart, which is most important to us.

Learning takes place all the time and everywhere for our boys ~ outside, at the grocery store, in our kitchen and even in the car, the world is our classroom.

Now, I am not going to gloss over and say that it is not hard and stressful at times. There are many days that Big Buckaroo walks in and I say, "I quit and am moving to Ireland, see ya". But, then I go somewhere by myself for a little while and come back ready for first grade fun.

I better go get the glue ready, I am sure that today we will make something worthy of the biggest art museum in our town, well if there was one in our town of 148 people.

The Park Wife