I wish I could say that it was loads of fun and I had two little eager students that were cooperative and obedient and thrilled to be homeschooling.

But that was not the case for our first day.

I’m blogging about our day because I have been reading many homeschool blogs recently and it seems everyone had a fabulous first day of homeschool, except us. I want to be real. I don’t want anyone to ever read this blog and think I have it all together all the time and my children always obey and are perfect little angels all of the time.

Because that is certainly not the case.

I know God has called me to homeschool my children, but on this first day, I am wondering what in the world He was thinking giving me a strong-willed child and how in the world I am going to make homeschooling work with a child that basically wants to do the complete opposite of what I ask her to do.

Remember that post I wrote recently about how my girls had finally gotten out of that hard phase of being 3 and 1 and now, at age 4 and 2, life with them this summer has been FUN? Well, August hit and I am not sure where my fun 4 and 2 year old went.

I am seeing an ungrateful heart and a spirit of discontent in Little Bug on a daily basis. And Sweet Pea is turning into a little tornado of a 2-year-old. I learned Day 1 homeschooling with a 2 year old under foot is going to be an extreme challenge!

But it is Little Bug that has my heart so burdened on this first day of homeschool as they are both tucked away in their beds for naptime and I am sitting here on my bed typing all this out. I have tricks up my sleeve to occupy the 2 year old while we do school.

What do you do with a kid like Little Bug?!? She was SO excited about starting homeschool the night before. Then, the morning of, she tells me she wants to go back to her school with Mrs. S. So now I am regretting having even sent her to preschool at all because now she knows there is another choice and, like I said before, whatever I choose, she is going to want the complete opposite. Already. At four years old. I thought this was behavior you’d seen in a teenager; not a four year old.

So I told her, “Well, preschool is for 3 year olds. Mrs. S teaches 3 year olds.” To which Little Bug replied, “There are other classes!! There are classes for 4 year olds!!”.

Yes, you are exactly right, Little Bug. She got me on that one.

The thing is, if I told her today after nap, “Little Bug, you can go back to your school! To a 4 year old class.”, she would probably be excited, but the first day it was time to go she would be a bucket of tears, weeping and saying, “But Mommy, I want to stay with you!! I want to be homeschooled!!”

This past month nothing pleases her. If I tell her to do something, she argues with me or gives a reason she needs to do XYZ. It is constant. All day long. By bedtime, I am so ready to put that child in bed that it is probably sin-worthy how glad I am to close her door at the end of the day and be DONE for the next 12 hours.

The thing is is I knew our first day was going to be this way. I knew she was going to resist everything, even though I had spent hours pouring over curriculum options that I felt would best suite her needs for this year.

My solution as of now?! Well, I’ve been thinking all morning about what to do and the only thing that I’ve come up with so far is to close up shop tomorrow. Do everything but “homeschool”. Because I know when the time comes to do “learning time” (which is what she calls school) and I say, “Oh, well, you didn’t want to do anything yesterday that Mommy had prepared for us to do, so today I am not going to do homeschool with you until you show me you are ready to learn with me and have a positive attitude that pleases the Lord.”, she will melt into a puddle of tears on the floor and beg me to do learning time with her.

So what are some lessons Mommy learned on our first day of homeschool?

For one, taking school pictures (a tradition I would like to start for each first day of school!!) is a test of my patience right off the bat! Even Sweet Pea, who normally smiles and looks at the camera right away when you take her picture, was uncooperative! I did manage to somehow gets these:

And a decent picture of the two of them together was apparently just asking way too much.

And a picture with Mommy?! Whose crazy idea was this?!? Whatever. One day we will look back on these pictures and laugh…and be able to see how much the girls have grown.

2. Homeschooling with a 2 year old underfoot is a challenge in and of itself!

We came in from picture-taking and started on our first Bible lesson. The creation story is our story for this week. I wanted them to sit with me on the couch and read the story. Not asking much there, folks! We sit and read on the couch every day! Don’t let this cute picture fool you.

Little Bug was cooperative here. Sweet Pea? She was insisting that she HAD to hold the Bible. Well then, Little Bug couldn’t see and she wanted to hold the Bible too. Solution? Sweet Pea got her own Bible to hold and Little Bug and I read the story in peace!

Then we headed to the homeschool room to work on our creation project. There was a coloring page for Sweet Pea and Little Bug had an activity where she was to cut the squares out and then paste them onto the other page to show what God created on each day.

She didn’t want to cut. She LOVES to cut. Every time we are in this room, she asks to cut something. And I let her. But on this day, did she want to cut? No. But then she decided she would cut.

Sweet Pea turned into a little tornado! She LOVES to color. But did she want to color? No. She wanted to do what Big Sis was doing and, quite simply, she was just in the way and a HUGE distraction to Little Bug.

I pulled out some math manipulatives for her to play with. That worked for Sweet Pea and got her occupied with something other than Little Bug’s project but then Little Bug didn’t want to work on her project anymore and wanted to play with the manipulatives. Ahhhhh! Can’t please ANYONE!

And then it was room time, thank goodness, because I needed to breath.

Didn’t get to breath for long because Little Bug chose today to not obey her room time rules. She was trying to play with a toy that she couldn’t do on her own (a small doll with tiny clothes that she couldn’t dress. Why do we have this toy?!) and I ended up putting it away and telling her to get something she could do on her own (that is the point of room time). Torrents of tears. She wouldn’t stay in her room and kept messing with her sister.

Outside time actually was a breath of fresh air. This picture was taken the same day. Little Bug just decided to change her clothes during room time. My girls love to be outside and so do I!

Trees in our neighborhood! So pretty!

I let Little Bug take a picture of something God created. Her finger (or mine?) got in the way.

And then we came back home. Show time for Little Bug and Learning Time for Sweet Pea. Somewhere in this time I also prepared lunch.

And then we sat down to eat our lunch together.

After lunch Sweet Pea went to take her nap and it was time for afternoon activities with Little Bug. First we did the first lesson in Saxon Math K, even though she “didn’t want to do this”. Playing with pattern blocks is such torcher, I know. How dare me subject my child to that?!? She did cheer up after I stopped mid-lesson and told her we were going to pray that she have a positive attitude. Her response to my prayer for her? A prayer of her own that went something like this: “Dear God, help me to not like homeschool.” This kid is something else!

I pulled out the Hands-On Thinking Skills and opened to the first page. She refused to do it. After some talking and telling her that we’d be making something after she did this, she did it.

I made a little Craft Box for Little Bug. It is full of crafty things that Little Bug is free to use on her own. Everything in there is Little Bug-proof so that she can be working without me worrying that she is painting  a picture on the walls. So, at this point in our first homeschool day, I told her to go get her Craft Box, cut a strip of paper and I told her she was going to get to make a bookmark to keep in her Hand-On Thinking book so we know where we are.

The paper was too big that I cut. Then she wanted to use materials that were not in her Craft Box. Ok- that is fine. She found this teeny tiny sequence box I had in there that had about a million little pieces in it. Not sure why I even had this thing. It spelled trouble. She wanted to use it. There is something you must know about a strong-willed child. You can’t tell these kids “no”. Well, you can. But it isn’t ever pretty. They don’t handle “no” well at all. I still tell her “no” all the time because I am her mother and it is my responsibility to lay boundaries for her, and that requires being told “no”. In some cases (like with a teeny tiny box full of a million little sequence pieces) it is just easier to let her have at in and know that I will have to clean up sequence ALL.OVER.THE.HOUSE. than it would be to tell her “no, you cannot use that, pick something else”. I had already fought enough battles for one morning of homeschooling that a battle with the broom after the damage was all done seemed way more appealing.

She spilled the box (as I knew she would) and sequence were EVERYWHERE. I wish I had a picture, but in this case, there was just no time for a picture. This was taken when she had stickers and other mommy-approved crafting items.

And that was our glorious first day. I put her down for a nap, went to clean up the sequence disaster in the homeschool room and then came to my bed and sat the entire time. I still sit here with laundry piled on my bed and laundry in the laundry room that also needs attention. And I don’t care one bit!

3. I knew we’d have “hard days” but I didn’t expect the first day to be a total disaster. And I didn’t think on day 1 I’d already be contemplating calling up the preschool that is located two minutes from our house to sign Little Bug up. This was a very blunt reminder to me that I am homeschooling not in my own strength but through God’s strength within me.

I won’t call, but it is so tempting. But God has called me to homeschool my daughters and I will figure this out, one way or the other. Right now, I just have some serious praying to do for my daughter’s heart. That she would not have a spirit of complaining but one that would just be compliant and enjoy the fun activities I have worked so hard to plan for her. And ultimately, this is why I am homeschooling. To mold and shape their little hearts for Jesus, one day at a time.

And, tomorrow is new day.

- Elaine