i'm officially a homeschooling mom!

ack! i sent off the notification to the school so now i guess i'm officially em's homeschool teacher. we're going to try this for a year and really focus on her attachment. since mr was home with me all day every day for 2 years, he has MUCH improved and is now pretty "normally" attached. with help from his attachment therapist, i went back and did the baby steps that he missed, bottle feeding, baby talk, nursery rhymes, cuddling, checking in (eye contact) every few minutes, and a few hundred other (honestly quite mentally draining - but effective) activities throughout each day. but it's given him a good base to feel what having a good mom feels like and he's quite cuddly and likes to give and receive love now!
anyway, em's never had that time because by the time she gets home from school, i'm exhausted. plus all three are then fighting for attention (or just fighting) so she doesn't get quality one-on-one time. plus she avoids that like the plague!
so now that mr's headed to kindergarten, we're going to keep em at home and do the nurturing activities. hopefully she'll blossom like mr did! i'll do enough teaching to keep her up to par, but it'll be fun, non-threatening learning. she can't handle me helping her with homework (because of her perfectionism isuses), so i'll be making sure it's low-pressure and fun. instead of history books, we'll visit a historical park. instead of math workbooks, she'll use a calculator at the store, measure ingredients for dinner, etc. since i know i'll be able to keep her attention (she used to "check out" at school and miss entire days!) i have a feeling she'll learn much more at home than she ever would at school. hopefully as she learns to attach, she'll also gain confidence, and the ability to concentrate so she can learn at school later.
she'll be choosing her areas of study and i'll just be guiding her and making sure the lessons are there to be discovered. the first thing she wants to study is the monarch butterfly. :)