Brenna, Isaac and Homeschooling

By far, the most common question people (family, friends, complete strangers) ask me about homeschooling is, I suppose, the most practical one:

What do you do with Brenna and Isaac while you teach Nathan?

I lock them in their room.

Just kidding.  This question is one that I wondered about before we started school, but sorted itself out more simply than I expected.

What do you do with your kids when you're cooking, cleaning, loading the dishwasher?  Either they do it with you, or they go play, right?

Well, in general, Brenna does school with us, and Isaac plays/disrupts/naps.

Disruption at its cutest. 
Those are wet clothes he's sitting in.

(Yesterday, his brand of disruption was pelting me in the face with a stuffed football.  Nathan and I were working at the table, and Isaac climbed into the chair opposite us and threw the ball at my head.  I set it on the floor.  He came around, grabbed it, went back to the chair, and threw it at my head again. OVER AND OVER.  I was concentrating on what I was trying to teach Nathan, so that dang ball hit me in the head about five times before I threw it back at him took it away.)

Isaac is on a spazzy (for his age) nap schedule.  He's definitely down to one nap a day, however, that nap needs to start between 10:00 and 11:30 (One day this week he woke up on the wrong side of the whole world and was tossed back in his crib at 8:30).  This causes me some measure of stress, as a nap that begins at ten in the morning and lasts a couple hours is not going to see this young man through until his seven o'clock bedtime.  So basically he wakes up shortly after lunch, and I try to keep him happy until Daddy gets home around six, thus starting the only part of his little day worth living for.  The upside is that he sleeps through a good portion of our school day, which makes things much simpler.

Brenna, on the other hand, for the most part does school with us.  I have a couple cheap little preschool workbooks and the amazing Kumon My First Book of Cutting that she works on while Nathan does his math, and she does the rest with us, or takes off to go play as she sees fit.

There are definitely times that I have to explain to her, "Right now, I'm working with Nathan.  You may listen quietly or go play, but I cannot talk with you until we're done."  I sort of file that one under "Having more than one child". 

So that's how we roll.  For those of you who can stand it, tomorrow, I'll talk about how our school day actually looks.  I am LOVING our curriculum!