This year, our home school will face the biggest transitions we’ve ever had before.

First, there’s Turkey and Bunny moving from third to fourth grade. This is a big transition to me, for some reason. I guess I see this as a year moving away from lower elementary school, and toward junior high. And I really remember what fourth grade was like myself, and how much…more there was. More homework, more new concepts, more everything. Fourth grade is when they really start becoming “big kids,” and move completely away from early childhood education.

Then there’s the transition of going from teaching one grade to two, as Ladybug will be joining our school full-time this year. To be fair, I started her on some kindergarten work in January. But she wasn’t a full-time student yet…it was really just one or two subjects, and the amount of time she spent on them was brief. But now I have to figure out how to juggle teaching different material to different children. I know that most homeschooling families will have dealt with this already…I was very lucky to be able to start Turkey and Bunny in the same grade right from the beginning. But it’s new to me, and it’s going to take some time to figure all of the necessary scheduling out.

We also have to transition to having a baby around while trying to do school work. When we started homeschooling four years ago. Ladybug was just a toddler, which presented its own challenges. But I only had two students in kindergarten then, so our school days were relatively short, and, let’s face it, kindergarten work isn’t as challenging, at least not from the teacher’s point-of-view. I’m not sure how a baby fits in to a two-grade, one-room school-house, though, especially when the baby is as cute as Chickadee, and so good at distracting everyone from their work (including the teacher!).

I know we’ll figure it all out, but I also think it’s going to take some time to find our equilibrium. This is the most daunting year yet for me, as teacher, even more than the first year, which was plenty intimidating. I’m also really excited about what we’ll be doing in school, though, so I’m just praying it will all work out, and we’ll all have a great year!