The first of many...

Hello All,

For anyone wanting to keep up with the Rivera clan, here's the first of hopefully many posts. It's going to be a little long, but bear with me - here goes...

This is the year that I finally decided to start homeschooling my middle daughter, Claudia. She was never a straight A student in public school, in fact, she struggled for several years, but I didn't realize the extent of her deficits until we started homeschooling. My decision to homeschool Claudia came after several years of hearing my cousins talk about their HS experiences. Because Claudia was struggling, I had wanted to take her out of "school" for quite some time, but I, myself, was struggling through Nursing School, so it was just wasn't possible. Now things are different. I graduated from Nursing School at the beginning of this year, so now I have the time to dedicate to helping her get on track with "her" studies.

Anyone who has ever been through Nursing School can attest to the fact that "it's a *itch". Now, add to that: 2 kids still living at home (my stepson wasn't with us yet), running a business with my husband, all the household duties (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc) and trying to give everyone the attention they all needed...needless to say, I was a "hot mess"!

I didn't know if I was coming or going most days. There were several bday parties, play dates, events in general that my girls had to miss because I simply couldn't do it all. On numerous occasions, my girls told me how much they missed "hanging out with mom", which of course, broke my heart.

Little background: my oldest daughter just turned 23 & lives on her own. My youngest daughter, Sophia is in 3rd grade in public school, as is my stepson, Cristian (17) - he very recently came to live with us.

Since I now have the time to dedicate to "life", I decided that this was the perfect time to start homeschooling. Claudia just started 6th grade (the ugly middle school years). Two huge factors pushed me to finally dive in: she was struggling in school academically and she'd been bullied in school in the past. The thought of the caddy middle school girls was horrifying!

Sophia is such a different personality. She actually likes "school" (probably more so because she's a social butterfly). Happily, this is the first year that I actually LOVE her teacher!! This is the first time she's had a male teacher and he has some really awesome teaching methods. I'm over the moon with this year's 3rd grade teacher!! I have to boast about him, because he's great, but no worries, that's where it ends - I'm happily married, LOL!! He just makes me feel so much better about the fact that I kept Sophia in public school, instead of pulling BOTH girls out of "school".

I wanted to start homeschooling with Claudia FIRST for the reasons I just listed above. Since Sophia is younger, I wanted to start with Claudia - spend some much needed "mom/daughter" time with her and hopefully work out all the kinks of homeschooling with her BEFORE adding Sophia to the mix and so far, so good...yay!!

We got a little bit of a slow start with "schooling", but now I'm feeling like this is actually going to be great! She's learning some much needed grammar, catching up on her reading and happily zipping through math (hooray...she actually learned SOMETHING in public school all these years!).

We became involved in a local homeschooling group that has been WONDERFUL!! It's a group of AWESOME folks with the same goals, who are ridiculously willing to help with any questions/issues - I can't say enough about them!! I don't want to mention the group's name, in case there are rules against that, so sshhh...I'll have to find out.

So, on to the reason I'm here...to share our homeschooling journey, so please follow along with us!!