I honestly cannot remember.....

The last time I had a whole afternoon to myself. I'm trying to think back to a time...surely there's been a day in the last year, right? For the life of me, I cannot remember one though. Anyways, this past Saturday, Bo took the kids to the zoo, and I got to stay home...ALONE! Now, normally, I'm all about getting out of the house and being with the family, but I had a ton of work to do that just wasn't happening with all the kids home (or should I be honest and say with two 3 year olds at home?)

See, I somehow managed to get myself into a brand spankin' new homeschool co-op. Teaching two classes. Me. I know I've homeschooled for 9 years, but I am no teacher. There's a world of difference between schooling your own children on your couch and around your kitchen table and standing up and teaching a lesson to a group of someone else's children. I've done the preschool VBS thing, but that only requires a weeklong commitment, so again...world of difference. And believe me when I tell you, preschool is my ultimate comfort zone. It's the only age group with which I am fairly competant I can appear more knowledgeable than my students.

Fortunately, one of my classes *is* preschool. We'll be doing Before Five in a Row/Five in a Row, which should really be a lot of fun. We'll basically read a different book each week, and do a couple activities which tie in to the story. The only real challenge here is to have enough activities so that each one is *rilly* short and *rilly* sweet, cause kids that age have *rilly* short attention spans.

My other class will be a little more challenging. It's for K-4th graders (BIG age difference--non-readers & readers, spellers & non-spellers) so that alone presents a challenge. I'm basing my lessons on Galloping the Globe, which is a basic geography course. We will be covering the continents and the larger countries within them, as well as the major bodies of water. I hope to have quite a bit of activities and different foods to keep it interesting. (I will hate if it I find out the kids hate my class....and I'm realizing that I may have issues if I feel the desparate need to be liked by 2nd graders!)

Anyways, it was a nice change of pace to have a quiet house for the whole afternoon. I sat and lesson planned and drank several cups of coffee. I think I could get used to this teaching thing if it means I can request more of these planning days!