Week 4 In Review

Wow, we are really groovin' here!  It's been a really good week, since I dropped a couple of things last week and am retooling for my kindergarten gal.  They enjoyed another week of gymnastics, which is their newest passion and did very well in their school work.  They also got to pick the ONLY apple from our baby apple tree (which is one of two...the other one didn't produce this year)

Matty's love for history and his enjoyment of making lapbooks has really culminated in a good effort from him this week.  I am discovering that as long as we are talking history, he will read, write and stay on task and not really think he's doing school.  (mwahahaha!) Science, however, is another story.  Because the weight of our interest tips the scales in favor of history, it's just, well...tough...to get around to science...for both of us.  There's always tomorrow, right?  And both kids are still getting something of science from CC's memory work and weekly experiments.  I'm planning to pick up Astronomy here in the next few weeks.

I have to say I loved this week.  It was low-key...the days are getting shorter and we all seem to want to stay snuggled down in bed a little later.  It's a natural thing...I don't think I'm going to fight it.  I want my kids to be rested as well as educated, not dragging through life feeling like they are being rushed from one thing to the next.  Today, for instance, they got up at about 7:30 and saw that it was pouring rain out, so they got dressed, did their chores and at 8:15 were outside riding their scooters, getting soaked.  Weirdos.  Happy weirdos.  We started school around 9:15.  Somewhere in there they dried off, but they took care of that themselves.  I was still drinking my coffee, so I wouldn't have noticed if they were dripping on the oriental rug.

Otherwise we did what needed to get done and then some.  I didn't get enough cooking done, but oh well...we didn't starve.  God made deli meat for a reason, right?  It was the first week of the school year in which I had the luxury of doing the fun stuff, and in that learned that the essential stuff (like writing and spelling) has a miraculous way of flowing from that.  When a 9-year-old writes 9 small summaries of the lives of the great kings of the middle ages, and hardly notices because he's so interested in what he's doing, I can't help but think that "school" is happening.  I'll take it.  Sooner or later the 5-year-old will get the "click" for reading...I'm not going to worry, but I will do a happy dance when it happens.

Wordless Wednesday: Concentration

Photos by Aimee Gable...Thanks!

Raising Men Who Read

I love this article by the Wall Street Journal about raising boys who read.  Thankfully, my son is becoming a bibliophile and is learning the love of reading, but I think that the average boy is a disaster waiting to happen in this regard.  Their natural love of visual stimuli combined with the bombardment of electronic media places them at a huge disadvantage in this society.  Girls are succumbing, as well, but the problem is more pronounced in boys.  If the men of future generations are robbed of their ability to think because they've been fed brain-candy all their lives, we are in great peril. 

Week 4 in Review

My friend who is a seasoned homeschool mom of three, one graduated said to me this week--"You never get it figured out, Kelly."
Me--"That is NOT what I wanted to hear."

I have not figured this thing out yet, I know that for sure, but this week I think that I rested just a bit in the fact that I will not ever get it all just right.  By setting goals for the week and simply relaxing, allowing myself to be imperfect and by working more in a moment by moment manner, I found that we actually did quite a lot of school.  Not all that I would have liked, but a lot nonetheless. 

The main task at hand this week is to retool the reading lessons for Molly.  With our small infrastructure breakdown in which we both discovered that our reading curriculum had to go, I have been trying a few new things.  I borrowed some Pathway readers from a friend, and she seems to like these so far.  I also just pulled out Bob books and Hop on Pop and silly things like that, and worked together on phonics and sounds.  Hang it all--do I really need a curriculum to teach my kid to read??? I'm not so sure I do, but I couldn't help but feel a bit out of sorts without a guaranteed-to-make-your-kid-a-genius reader.  Okay, I admit, it was worse than a bit...

When I was a kid I carried around this old blanket that I called my "godden." I loved this blanket, and remember the trauma I felt when it was once left behind in the grocery store, and then another time when I forgot it for the weekend at my father's house and returned to find that my mother had hidden it away so that I couldn't carry it anymore.  It was devastating.  I TRULY relate to Linus in Peanuts when he is separated from his blanket.

I think some of us moms start to feel that way when we are separated from the crutch of curriculum.  Upon ditching the book that we both really hated, I immediately had a feeling not unlike the D.T.'s (or at least what I imagine they'd be like!)  Then today I found myself with my dear little girl, making up a story on the white board about a brown cow who walked into town wearing a gown.  We were both giggling and picturing this scene...and she learned what ow stands for in these cases.  I had no guidebook, no teacher's resource, no reader in front of us...and we were both thrilled.  So, I'm not actually sure if I am going to replace that blasted book.  I think I may just trust my instincts and go with the flow on this one.  She's five for pity's sake.  I need to lighten up.

Don't get me wrong...there are many really, really good curricula out there, and I have benefited from many.  However, Mom's lesson this week is that I really need to learn to trust my instincts and be responsive to how my child learns best.

Lapbooks

This final photo is not technically a lap-book because we did not create mini-books.  Rather it was a report about Charlemagne's family tree that he presented to his Classical Conversations class.  We used the same concepts as the lap-book to create it, however, and it turned out really well.

Wordless Wednesday: Things That Came In that Should Have Stayed Out