My attempts to begin homeschooling my boys

Welcome to my Toddler Home School.  I have been attempting to "formally" home school my two boys for about the past month.  Let me introduce myself and my family before I continue.  R is 29 months, his birthday is March, 2008, and T is nearly 13 months, his birthday is July 2009.  I am an online school teacher.  Yes, you read that correctly, I said online school teacher.  I teach geometry to about 300 high school students through the internet every year.  I am very blessed that I am able to work from home and that I have two wonderful caretakers (one of which is the kids grandmother) who are able to take care of my kids while I work. 

My husband and I have been discussing the possibility of homeschooling are children since before R was born.  I did a lot of reading on the subject this past year, and have decided that I want to give it a try.  I saw no reason to wait until my kids are 5 years old and decided to give it a try this summer while I was on summer break. 

We had several rocky starts.  I spent a lot of time reading up on different curriculum.  One of the ones that I found suggested reading the same book every day for a week and doing activities based on the book.  R, who loves to read, hated the first few books I chose.  Even though my boys are only 16 months apart in age, they are on vastly different levels.  That meant it was impossible to choose a book both boys could enjoy. 

I read a lot about Waldorf Education, which I found intriguing but it sounded more like a way of life and not like a formal education to me.  From my reading I did discover ways to simplify our lives a bit.  The Waldorf philosophy does do a good job of describing appropriate toys for pre-schoolers, and talks about reasons why tv is harmful.  I may go into those topics more in a later post.  The main result of my Waldorf readings was that I stopped letting my kids watch any tv (except when someone is sick).  I also got rid of a lot of toys, and no longer feel guilty about the fact that my boys have very few toys. 

In my education research, I finally settled on what I know best, Montessori.  I attended Montessori schools from age 3- 8th grade.  When I tried presenting some Montessori activities to R I was amazed.  I realized that at least for the time being this is what I am looking for.  I am still struggling, and therefore researching a lot.  This blog will be my attempt to record what we do.  I figured it will give me good practice once they do hit school age and I have to turn something in to the school district.  I am also doing this because I have read several other Montessori blogs that have helped me get started and I hope to return the favor to someone else. 

That is enough for today.  Tomorrow I will show what we have done so far.