Pregnant & Homeschooling
March 8th, 2010 by heidiMy kids are watching Bill Nye the Science Guy DVDs from the library and I’m counting that as a science lesson for the week. 
This is what we call survival homeschooling.
I’m grateful we worked out a good system with lessons and schedules that’s relatively easy for me to do from the couch. I can read off spelling lists and I can supervise handwriting. Each of the older three knows which book & binder is their math and they bring them to me for math lessons. We’re spending lots of time outside since the weather is warming up and we’re reading books aloud. I’m about 8 weeks along and optimistic that by 14 weeks I’ll get the second trimester energy and be able to do more involved lessons but for now, I’m trying to take it easy and remember a kind and patient mommy is more important than getting all the book work done.
We plan to do lessons year round as usual and that means in my second trimester over the summer we’ll try to be really consistent about lessons 4x a week. Come October, November & December we’re going to be on a lighter schedule for my maternity leave and in January we’ll pick back up with 4x a week.
In many ways I think homeschooling through this pregnancy will be even easier because I’ve got three readers and the kids are all two years older than they were in my last pregnancy – far more independent and self entertaining. I’ve got more children now, yes. But the older kids are a HUGE help with the little ones. And this time around I’m not at all worried about taking the time off postpartum – I know schooling year round makes up for that time off and we’ll just enjoy that new baby and worry about lessons later. I plan to get a couple good novels to read to the kids while I’m nursing and we’ll cuddle and read and I’ll nurse and we’ll do some life skills work like learning to change diapers! That is going to be handy…