I was so discouraged Monday night. Like, in tears, discouraged. I talked to two very good homeschool Mama friends I know and they each gave me such encouragement. One helped me see through the fog and that I needed to have some consequences for Little Bug’s rotten attitude. (Because I text her saying, I don’t know what to do!!!! AHHHH!) So when Little Bug asked for all her pleasures in life (i.e. gum, juice, a TV show, Mommy putting her to bed at night) the answers were no, no, no and no. And my other seasoned-homeschool Mama friend reminded me of a Bible verse that tells us to not be discouraged and she even shared with me that Monday had been their first day back and it had been a terrible first day for them as well! I can not tell you how much it encouraged me to know she, an experienced homeschool mom, had had a terrible first day, too.

As I said, telling a strong-willed kid “no” is not a pretty sight but a necessary evil in molding their little hearts to choose to do the right thing.

Going to bed that Monday night, I knew our bad day didn’t stem from anything other than a rotten attitude that needed to be extinguished in the heart of my daughter. I knew it wasn’t poor curriculum choices or activities that were not developmentally appropriate for her. Plain and simple, for whatever reason, Little Bug had just decided she was not going to like homeschool or anything that has to do with homeschool.

Monday night and the next morning, we were consistent with her consequences when she exhibited her rotten attitude and by the time we were ready to start our activities for Tuesday, we had a brand new student join us. The transformation was simply amazing. And it just goes to show kids need boundaries and they need  to know what is acceptable behavior and what is not.

The rest of our first week of homeschool went how I imagined it would go. We had FUN exploring and learning together!!

I am going to share in pictures our first week of homeschool activities, but this isn’t something I’m going to keep up for various reasons. 1. I am trying to limit the amount of pictures I post of the girls on this blog since I made the changes back in May. 2. Time! I don’t have time to post daily what we do in homeschool! 3. When I am schooling my girls, I want to be fully present with them in our activities and not distracted trying to get pictures of them in action with our learning activities.

This isn’t to say I will never again post about our learning activities. I will. Just not every single activity we do! I am considering blogging about each science experiment we do from Mudpies to Magnets because the experiments have been so much FUN and we only do 1-2 experiments weekly. I think I could keep up with that!

Look for our first week of homeschool activities post tomorrow!

- Elaine