Like I Have Time For This?

Last fall, I listed in my curriculum page all the things I’d purchased for my preschooler to work on while my first grader was doing her work. And, of course, once I’d bought all that stuff, my preschooler became adamantly opposed to the idea of sitting down to do school work. So, not being one to push 4-year-olds into schooling, I simply nodded when she chirped that she never ever EVER wanted to do school EVER, and let her wander off with the math manipulatives to play instead.

And slowly, over the course of this gray drab winter, she became ready. She was ready at least two months ago to sit down and do some work. She began to beg me for math sheets, for handwriting, for reading. Please Mommy…I want a sheet too! And I’d print off these free worksheets I’d find online and let her scribble on them and “grade” them when she was done, and that worked for a while. But soon, even that wasn’t enough. The kid wanted more. More work JUST LIKE HER SISTER’S.

In the evenings, I’d sit exhausted on the couch and wonder just exactly how I would fit her in. I’d grown so accustomed to just teaching the one, that I’d balk blankly at trying to add in the other. I wasn’t quite sure why I couldn’t wrap my brain around starting her. Her work would take a half-hour or less of time each day. Yet somehow I just couldn’t fit it in. As the weeks passed, she became more and more fitful about it, and I realized that I would just have to sit down and do it.

So, this past Tuesday, I pulled out our old primer book, just recently finished last fall by my 7-year-old. I found a marker and some index cards and sat down with my 4-year-old and started working through the short vowel sounds. We work on this while my 7-year-old does her math worksheets.

And there’s a little more distraction this way, and a little more work for me now, but there’s a part of me that’s singing inside because soon, my youngest will be reading, and that barrier that she feels somehow between her and the rest of the family will be going away. That I’m still-little-ness. That I-don’t-know-how-yet-ness.

So, I’m singing inside, yes. But I’m a little sad too. Because I’m watching my youngest “go off to kindergarten”, and I guess I thought as a homeschooler that I would skip that strange emotional moment when you realize that your baby isn’t really a baby anymore.

But I was wrong.