Bilingual kindergarten

 One of the things I liked about sending my kids to the elementary school they were attending was that they were learning everything in both languages. At home we all are bilingual. The problem is that when I teach my kids, the homeschool program comes in English, and there is not much that I can find in Spanish... and most of it is too expensive. So I try to teach what the book says but in both languages. We also try to buy books in Spanish or bilingual so they get a lot of reading in the other language.  

It's so interesting to see the kids learning not only the subjects of school but doing it in 2 different languages and the most interesting is how consistency makes it easy. Laila, my last child is the one that hasn't been to public school at all. she was for 3 months at a preschool but then she didn't like it anymore and I stopped taking her.

Laila is the only one who has to learn Spanish without a proper Spanish curriculum just adapting the English one to Spanish. I think she is doing it pretty well though. Something that is helpful is that Spanish is not a foreign language to her since she listens to it at home. 

Here is the link to see Laila doing the teen number tracing and counting.

Random days

 

I, as the mom and teacher, try to have a specific schedule, a routine, for the kids so they know what to do and how to do things if I'm not here some day like sometimes happens.

We also have to do other things like going to doctor appointments, orchestra lessons, go to the store and things that not always are unexpected and some that are but can shake us from our schedule. 

Somedays we have more time so we can clean our tables before we leave the house after homeschool, others we just run and leave a few things for "later", "when we come back." Sometimes we accomplish them after  the appointment or "interruption" but some days we just have one thing after another and at the end of the day we are all tired and only ready to sleep so we have to start homeschool next morning with a whole load of books and things on the table.

This year my life is being more busy than last year when we started homeschooling so it kind of frustrates me but I have to remember that we are homeschooling and we can be more flexible and the importance of this journey is to be together, learn together, enjoy our time together and sometimes a messy house/school is ok if we still have the peace to do all the other things, that are actually more important, in a happy manner.