Homeschooling, Easter and You Tube pranks. You know, the usual.

Madeline’s preschool is on spring break so we spent Monday and Tuesday checking out some school options. We’ve officially decided to (deep breath) homeschool her for kindergarten.

To answer all your questions,

1. Yes, I will be hitting up thrift stores for floor-length denim jumpers and prowling through You Tube for “How to Achieve a Perfect Bun” tutorials.
2. Yes, I will be baking only crusty, hard whole wheat bread from now on.
3. Yes, Madeline will go from social butterfly to socially awkward faster than you can say “wingardium leviosa.”
4. No, I’m not signing up to homeschool her and Caleb for the rest of their school career.

Only one of those statements is correct.

I’m taking this one year, one child at a time. Right now, I’m homeschooling Madeline for kindergarten and we’ll see how it goes. I’m ridiculously excited as well as scared out of my mind to do this. My list of reasons to homeschool is really long. I may type it all out some time so Madeline can understand later and so I can properly explain it to people but not right now. I have some other very important (not really) things to share instead.

Briefly back to explaining it to other people: OH MY WORD YOU GUYS. We’ve decided to homeschool for about 2.2 seconds and I’ve had to explain why about eleventy thousand times. I don’t mind explaining because I know doing something different prompts lots of questions but I just didn’t realize I signed myself up for a year of that. 

I’m learning that this is very similar to deciding to not find out the gender of your baby. People tend to FREAK OUT at your choice. Hence the need to organize my reasons so I don’t splutter and grunt and resort to pointing fingers. “Uh, me like her. Her like learning.”

Anyways, back to the beginning. I am interested in putting her in a homeschool supplemental program/school/thingy once a week so she can have a school-like experience. This girl loves her some classroom structure, a teacher, classmates and crafts. And we all know mama ain’t into crafting. So we visited a couple different options and Madeline was sold on one because the kindergarten class had a fruit break at 10 a.m.

It's the little things, yo.

It was a big step for us to get to the point of ruling out traditional private and public schools and decide on homeschool. Now we have even more decisions. Which program or co-op do we join? What curriculum will we use? How do I not ruin my kid?

This is the point in the post when I say, if you are now or have ever homeschooled a kindergartner, feel free to give me any advice or tips. It’s not unsolicited. I’m asking for it.

This may even be a cry for help.

(Just kidding.)

(Kinda.)

Now onto other items.

Amanda at Impress Your Kids has been doing an awesome series called “A Sense of the Resurrection.” It’s a 10-day experience to help kids learn about the Easter story through their five senses. I’ve only done two days of it but I love it so far.

Yesterday, we read how Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive perform (sense of smell) and decorated reed infusers to make the house smell good. We talked about how Mary was a sinner and how much Jesus loved her. Today we read about the Last Supper, broke a loaf of bread and ate it (sense of taste). We talked about communion and how Jesus was going to be broken in order to rescue us.

Amanda is extremely thoughtful at explaining the Gospel to little kids and I love that this series doesn’t require a lot of extra things (read: crafts). We’ve been following her recommendation to read the stories from the Bible so Madeline isn’t just hearing an abbreviated version but we’re also reading from The Jesus Storybook Bible because it’s awesome, for her and for me.

It’s not too late to start the series if you want to do it with your kids. It’s meant to last 10 days and while I don’t know her last two days yet, I assume you can do them on Easter weekend if you start later this week. I started it yesterday so we have a couple of freebie days if we skip a night or two. (I know myself too well and can easily envision me squeezing in three stories in one night.)

There is no easy segue from Jesus' death, burial and resurrection to a funny You Tube video so I'm just gonna go there.

A funny You Tube video can make my week. Recently Joe discovered some that made me laugh so hard until I cried. Honestly, I watched these videos again to post them here and I cried again. I really, really, really hope you like them.

I give you permission to watch the whole video but you absolutely must watch from the 2:16 mark on. Please. For me.

This one is short. You have time to watch this. Trust me. A worthy use of 39 seconds.