Then there were 4

Just over 3 weeks ago we had 3 little girls placed into our care by CAS due to abuse and neglect issues with mom.

That means there are now 4 children under the age of 6 in this house, 3 of whom are sadly behind because mom didn't/couldn't give them what they needed to help with learning.

2 are in school, which just gives me more reasons to be grateful that I homeschool my son.

One is in grade one and doesn't make letter sounds, yet the teachers are refusing to put her down a level in reading until she gets there.

One is in Senior kindergarten and can not recognize all her letters and the teachers say she is just fine.

The youngest is supposed to start school in Sept and just learned how to say most of the alphabet, knows no numbers, letters or colours.

So I am not only homeschooling Blaine I am working to get the other 3 to where they need to be. The problem is that they didn't have to do anything when they lived with their mom and feel they don't need to anywhere else.

The middle one is super eager to please and loves to do the work, the youngest is hit or miss, the oldest wont even read the books the school sends home because "I don't have to at my moms". For the children in school there is no home school work at home when they are done at school, unless its sent home from school as homework. On non-school days such as weekends, PD days and strike days the ones in school each have to read a book and do two page in a workbook that is at their actual level not where the school things they are.

The youngest gets to school with my son. He does his work and then we do songs and reading and playing with the youngest.

Each day that I watch them struggle and fight me on learning, I am grateful that I taught my son that learning can be fun and 99% of time he just gets up and works on what he needs to. I am thankful that I was blessed to be able to work with him from the day he was born so he didn't have to struggle to learn.

I hope with time and once the girls get used to the new normal around here that they will too love to learn and know that it is fun!

The way I have to homeschool has changed greatly. I spend 15 mins with each child on their own doing the work for their level and then we do activities as a group that are fun but still learning.
I want each child to have the one on one for each subject that they need without the others to distract them.

Having 4 children all at different levels but all around the same age make it a bit harder but how I keep things a little bit sane is each child gets a file folder with their reading book for that week, work sheets, etc in it and then there is a main folder with the stuff we do as a group.

No things are not perfect but we are learning what will work and wont work for getting everyone what they need.

Each of the 4 children have a different learning style which is fun for me because I get to come up with ways for them to each learn in the way they need to.

Watch for blog posts on each week for each child because they are all at different levels I will be posting a blog post for each one!

I am excited for what the future holds for learning for each of them and nervous of the height of some of those bridges we are going to have to cross.