Schooling Delimma

For the past year I have been contemplating homeschooling. I've at least had it in the back of my mind, and I've been thinking about it more and more. Rebekah loves preschool and she is learning things, but some of the things they are teaching are below her level. For example, last semester they were working on numbers 1-10 and this semester they are learning 11-20. Rebekah knows her numbers through 100 and at home we are working on her 10's. She also started counting by 2's one day over Christmas break all on her own. She wasn't completely accurate, but she is figuring out this kind of stuff by herself, so we are guiding her with it and working on it as she is interested.

I am so blessed to have a number of friends who homeschool who have been able to give me tips and answer my questions about homeschooling. Tennessee is a great state to homeschool, and it has become very popular here. There are quite a few homeschooling moms at my church as well, so I hope to find a good support system through them should I decide to take this route.

One college friend of mine, Candace, shares what she is doing with her kids at home on her blog, and she is doing some really neat things. She, along with several other friends, have been a great help in guiding me and telling me about the curricula they are using with their children. I am going to try some of these ideas at home with Rebekah part-time while keeping her in preschool two days per week. This will allow me to get a feel for homeschooling to see if it is a right fit for us. I'm excited to try to some things with Rebekah. The only downside I see to this for Rebekah is that the social aspect of preschool has been really good for her. I know that this will be a lot of work as well, but it will also give the two of us some great quality time together. Darrin and I will just continue to pray about this and seek the Lord's guidance as to Rebekah's education while I try some things with her at home.

While visiting Candace's blog I read a post about making marshmallow snowmen. It was such a cute idea that I had to try it with Rebekah. We both had such a great time! We took a few liberties and changed it a bit, but I think it still turned out cute.


We began by pasting spread-out cotton balls for the snow on the ground. I then cut a large marshmallow into three pieces for the snowman. The great thing about the marshmallow was that it was sticky, so we didn't have to use glue. I cut out a hat out of construction paper and we glued it to the snowman's head, and Rebekah made the facial features and buttons using markers. Rebekah selected some small sticks outside for the arms, and we poked holes in the sides of the marshmallow and inserted the sticks. Finally we added tiny pieces of marshmallow for the falling snow.

We had a lot of fun working on this craft, and I'm looking forward to trying some new things with Rebekah over the next year.