The Good News is that Home School is Getting Easier

Okay, so this is probably the calm before the storm, but for now our home school supplementing is actually really leisurely.

So, home school always takes a lot of effort, but this past month it has suddenly started seeming easier. And I think that's for several reasons. One is that M is the only one doing a real curriculum because E is still working on just reading and handwriting and of course G is still learning to speak English. We have seven more months of this golden spot before E starts taking on more actual content in 2020. But for now, she's mostly pretty independent and I only need to focus on M.

Also, history is the main subject we supplement and M is doing medieval history this year. So, unlike ancient history, there is a lot of material available that's geared towards kids, but it's really only about Europe (think castles and knights). As in, for ancient history last year, there wasn't really a lot of material about anything. And when we do Renaissance to 1800 next year, there will be a lot of material about everywhere. But for medieval history, there's lots of information about Europe, but not about anywhere else. So home school felt very hectic all the way up until we finished Europe the first week of April and then it suddenly (unexpectedly) became pretty manageable. I guess I could've seen that coming if I had just looked carefully at my plans, but I didn't realize how big the change was going to be until it happened. So that's been really helpful.

Also, M is starting to show real interest in things! Science is always interesting to kids, but this year since we're doing earth science, we can actually do experiments (like this awesome water cycle one we did). Last year, when we did plants and animals, there's not so much experimenting as there is observing. Also, she's really started to get interested in history. I don't know if it's because her imagination is more developed now or because the past year and a half of studying history (and her real-life cross-cultural experience) has given her enough framework to be able to appreciate different cultures or what. But she is just really starting to get things now, and she actually wants to learn about what I'm teaching her. That's been amazing! Also, I finally caved and decided to start teaching her French (she's been asking ever since we visited Belgium in 2017), and that has been a blast. We've started very slowly, so it's not a big burden and she is so unbelievably interested in it that it's been really fun.

It won't be this way forever, but for now, I'm really enjoying it!