Catholic Homeschooling

I had always said that being a teacher is not for me. Being organized does not usually come naturally to me and to be a teacher you have to be very organized. But when I had my children and started to think about their schooling and homeschooling was an option that I thought of. Of course I thought I could never actually be the one to do the schooling. Perhaps my husband could or something. Eventually I came around to the possibility of me teaching my kids. I once spoke to someone who said "I can at least do as good of a job as most of the grade school teachers out there". Well that made me think about it. I may not be a formally trained teacher, but I care very much for my children (more than any teacher would) and I care very much for their education. I can be taught simple things and I should be able to teach my children those as well. I guess I realized that I could teach them when I started realizing that I AM teaching them all the time! Playing and just informing them about simple things. I realized that maybe I can give it a try.

I work full time though, and for now I am not in the position to stop this. I might try to go part time in the future, hopefully. Is it even possible to homeschool and work full time? A quick internet search about this led me to think that it was not really possible because most people make a face when I ask if I can do this and say "well...it would be really tough...". Pretty much every one I know that home schools has a mother that stays home. This, I'm sure, is ideal. I hear that preschool (which is not necessary) and kindergarten and maybe even 1st grade are pretty low key. They do not take hours a day to teach the children.

So here I am which my preschool aged daughter and I am going to try my hand at preschool while working full time and see how it goes. I have completed one successful week of this. I decided to use Mater Amabilis http://materamabilis.org/ma/ as my guide because if someone else tells me how to organize myself, I think I have a chance at organization. I basically tailored their ideas to my amount of time and schedule. I also am using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I am surprised that this book, though it may be intended for children older than her, seems to be working out well! She is moving through it slower than expected (due to attention span and my limited time constraints) but she is moving along! I also do simple counting activities with her for math and we read books that are suggested in the book Catholic Mosaic (recommended on Mater Amabilis' web site) which has books that have themes that relate to parts of the Catholic calendar. I just make our bed time story time a part of her schooling. This seems to be working!

I pray that I will be successful with this simple exercise. We have an Au Pair currently watching her during the day and I will attempt to have her do activities during the day that reinforce the learning we did together. I'll keep you posted on how it all goes! God is good! =D