This is our first full year homeschooling.

I used to be a middle and high school science and French teacher, and the first time I gave homeschool a try, I attempted to set up our home like a classroom and do what I knew how to do. But my little learners to not do well in that environment and my attempt backfired. We all kind of hated it and I ended up sending the kids back to school the next year.

But I still felt like homeschooling was something I was supposed to do. I get feelings like that sometimes. It’s part of my INFJ personality type, I think.

Then I went to a homeschooling conference and learned that there are as many different ways to homeschool as there are families who do it. That was liberating. I regrouped and we tried again this year.

I still feel like I’m figuring us out and trying to work out the best system for our family. It’s not easy to teach older ones with a toddler and a preschooler running around and getting into everything, and I find I need to get our focused teaching in while the younger ones are napping. Before and after that, we do some independent work or art or Lego club or something like that.

Anyway, I decided to use a bit of our income tax return this year to purchase some new homeschooling supplies.  Our crayons are broken, our paints are used up, the printer’s out of ink, and our pencils are almost all MIA. (Please tell me it’s not just us.) So we needed some things to get us through the rest of this year, but I also ordered a few things for us to start next year.

One of the things I ordered was Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit *, which I had been eyeing for a while and just knew my little engineering-minded kiddo was going to love. I also got some recorders for us to learn to play, and a couple of ukuleles, too. The only trouble, if you can call it that, is that part of the order came yesterday, and as I opened it to see what had arrived, they couldn’t wait to get their hands on the Snap Circuits.

So I’m learning that it needs to be more of a covert ops kind of thing if I’m hoping to still have some exciting additions for next year. Otherwise, it’ll all be old news by then.  But I’m happy that they have been playing with the Snap Circuits nonstop since they arrived. Especially this guy. He just loves to figure out how things work.

* Eileen Tully is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com