September 11, 2009
Homeschool Year 2, Week 1
Survived the first week, despite my own crushing exhaustion. In terms of getting ready for baby, I’m not quite there yet, so there’s still an extra burden on top of the usual load of school, cooking, and housekeeping. To top it all I had two nights in a row (!) of being social. Needless to say it was just too much. I’ve been tired, super tired.
Even so, we have managed to have good, productive days of school, even if they’re not terribly inspired. We’ve been doing pages from our Learn At Home 1st Grade Workbook – at least 8 pages a day. In addition I’ve had him do independent reading – at least an hour a day. He’s been reading comic books, which I am all in favor of. He loves them and the ones he’s been reading are rather melodramatic, which means he’s asking me about all sorts of words that are far beyond his reading level: here’s a smattering of the words on the first few pages of the Justice League comic he was reading: descended, engulfing, lurked, saturated, overwhelmed, frantically, avail, emerged, petrified, elaborate, utilize. He did well sounding them out and we talked about their meanings and how to figure out their meanings from the context. Not bad for a 6 year old.
This week we also started homeschool soccer again. It felt good to be welcomed and recognized, but I can see that I need to help Rocketboy learn how to play with others. During their free play time I could see he was having a hard time integrating with the others, until the end when he steped away from the rougher boys and had a rocking game of freeze tag with three girls near his own age.
Writing is still a problem – moving him to extreme whining and nearly to tears at least twice this week. I pushed for him to finish the exercises and made sure he got huge amounts of praise when he finally got past the “I can’t do it” wall. The wall we hit on Thursday was particularly bad and getting past it had him happily high-fiving me. I had hoped that success would carry through a good feeling for the next day, but today we hit that can’t do it wall yet again, though with slightly less force, but only slightly.
I have enrolled him in a partner writing course – he gets paired with a 10 year old homeschooler and together they are creating a story, with the 10 year old doing all the actual pencil to paper writing, but with both of them creating the story and illustrating it together. I hope that might help a bit.
We did get to the Botanical Garden earlier this week where he played urban farmer for a couple of hours. We did some fun cooking activities, including making honey cake. I was particularly proud of his desire to figure out how many cookies he needs to make if we each want a cookie for dessert for the next 5 or 6 days. Independently, he grabbed a piece of chalk, drew boxes for each day, drew 3 cookies in each box, then added them all together. Great problem solving!
In all we managed an average of 4.5 hours of lessons each day, despite my exhaustion and distraction these days. I can’t imagine being more tired after the abby is born, but if I am and this week is any indication of what we can accomplish, we should do fine. Especially since I’m planning to incorporate more independent computer lessons. I’ll probably seek out some educational DVDs too that I can pair with lessons. There are so many good science and nature shows. Though more than anything I wish there was a Power of Myth for little kids. I might just show it to Rocketboy anyway, in small chunks with lots of discussion.
I was a little worried about the sudden removal of copius amounts of TV from his life – during the summer break (especially at the end) he was watching plenty. This week he has been allowed to watch in the morning before our 9am start, as long as he eats and dresses without any complaint. That amounts to about 2 or 3 half hour shows each morning. Beyond that he has had 1 or 2 shows in the evening, though for a couple of days there was no afternoon TV at all. I am happy to report there was nearly no complaint about it. I guess warning him well ahead of time worked. He’s such a good kid. As much as I feel like it’s a struggle to deal with his whining and intensity sometimes, in reality (and in comparison to many, many other kids I see) he’s consistent about asking permission to do things and generally accepts when we tell him no. It’s great validation that our strictness about certain things is really paying off.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Homeschoolers need a vacation too
Last week the public schools in NYC had off for their spring break, and while I could have easily ignored it and gone about our usual homeschooling business, I decided we all needed a break. Besides, so many of the city's esteemed institutions have all sorts of special events for the week, it would be a shame not to take advantage of at least some of them.
Monday we hit the NY Hall of Science and got to see a great science of bubbles show. Tuesday we spent the day at the Met doing an art scavenger hunt. The last few times we've been to art museums, Rocket Boy simply did not have a good time and now like to refer to the Museum of Modern Art as "the museum I hate". This time he had a blast. On Wednesday we sent him to an all day camp at a local kids gym where they specialize in gymnastics (as in state ranked team) and rock climbing. He came back tired. Not just a little tired, but tired like when we were putting on his shoes and coat he asked if he could lay down on the bench. I was speechless. There are a number of good reasons his internet nickname is Rocket Boy. Aside from the fact that since the age of 2 he has steadfastly held on to life's goal to be a rocket scientist, he is a bundle of unstoppable energy, zooming everywhere and not stopping. Needless to say I was pleased and he's is signed up for rock climbing class there every Monday.
On Thursday, a beautiful, beautiful day, after I spent the morning volunteering at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden we went up to the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx. I love them both, but the NYBG has better drop-in events for kids. The BBG has great kids' programming, but they are mostly classes that have to be signed-up or well in advance. Rocket Boy spent a good chunk of our day in the family garden, digging and planting. Friday was another garden day - this time a homeschooler meet-up at a tiny volunteer-run botanic garden in Bay Ridge. He loved the tour, did not want to do the drawing or poetry exercise, and had a great time playing games with all the other kids.
The whole week was light on curriculum and the usual lessons, and big on experience and fun, for him at least. I learned a big lesson that I should lighten up a bit. He will learn and experience and is full of curiosity that just gets dampened when we try to pound it into school-sized shapes. We've opted to step out of the system, there's no reason I need to bring the system home with me. I'll still do lessons and have him practice some basic skills, but they need to be in service of his self-motivated curiosity.
My next big job as his parent and teacher is to perfect the art of pushing. It has to be just enough to get him past his limits, but not so much that it causes him to shut down. It's a very fine line. That said, I'll take him up to the Met again tomorrow and try to push our luck with his distaste for art museums. We never did finish last week's scavenger hunt. We still need to find a samurai, a hippo, George Washington, and a dragon. That shouldn't be too hard as long as we can navigate past the closed bits and actually find the American Wing this time.
Monday we hit the NY Hall of Science and got to see a great science of bubbles show. Tuesday we spent the day at the Met doing an art scavenger hunt. The last few times we've been to art museums, Rocket Boy simply did not have a good time and now like to refer to the Museum of Modern Art as "the museum I hate". This time he had a blast. On Wednesday we sent him to an all day camp at a local kids gym where they specialize in gymnastics (as in state ranked team) and rock climbing. He came back tired. Not just a little tired, but tired like when we were putting on his shoes and coat he asked if he could lay down on the bench. I was speechless. There are a number of good reasons his internet nickname is Rocket Boy. Aside from the fact that since the age of 2 he has steadfastly held on to life's goal to be a rocket scientist, he is a bundle of unstoppable energy, zooming everywhere and not stopping. Needless to say I was pleased and he's is signed up for rock climbing class there every Monday.
On Thursday, a beautiful, beautiful day, after I spent the morning volunteering at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden we went up to the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx. I love them both, but the NYBG has better drop-in events for kids. The BBG has great kids' programming, but they are mostly classes that have to be signed-up or well in advance. Rocket Boy spent a good chunk of our day in the family garden, digging and planting. Friday was another garden day - this time a homeschooler meet-up at a tiny volunteer-run botanic garden in Bay Ridge. He loved the tour, did not want to do the drawing or poetry exercise, and had a great time playing games with all the other kids.
The whole week was light on curriculum and the usual lessons, and big on experience and fun, for him at least. I learned a big lesson that I should lighten up a bit. He will learn and experience and is full of curiosity that just gets dampened when we try to pound it into school-sized shapes. We've opted to step out of the system, there's no reason I need to bring the system home with me. I'll still do lessons and have him practice some basic skills, but they need to be in service of his self-motivated curiosity.
My next big job as his parent and teacher is to perfect the art of pushing. It has to be just enough to get him past his limits, but not so much that it causes him to shut down. It's a very fine line. That said, I'll take him up to the Met again tomorrow and try to push our luck with his distaste for art museums. We never did finish last week's scavenger hunt. We still need to find a samurai, a hippo, George Washington, and a dragon. That shouldn't be too hard as long as we can navigate past the closed bits and actually find the American Wing this time.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Working on Being A Social Caterpillar
I'd say social butterfly, but we're not there yet. We've been joining more of the homeschool activities, including regular Wednesday soccer and playtime as well as any field trips anyone offers. We're starting to recognize and be recognized by others, which is a nice thing.
It has cut back significantly on some of our class hours for those days, which had me a little uptight, but I've gotten over that, mostly because, as Rocket Boy has been running around with all the other homeschool kids, I've been starting to chat with the other parents. It seems like most of the ones I manage to talk with (before I bury myself back in my book) are no so much homeschooling as unschooling. The fact that I use workbooks and aim for 4 solid hours of educational stuff every day makes me an overachiever in most of their eyes. I guess that means I can lighten up on myself a bit.
So even though I've supposedly lightened up, we spent yesterday and today doing lots of workbook stuff - yesterday was nearly all math, and today was all about writing. He rarely objects to writing when it comes to numbers, but he still struggles a bit. I was really surprised at today's writing exercises. This morning, Rocket Boy and his dad blessedly went to run some errands at our local office supply store so I could sleep. While there, they picked up yet another 1st grade writing skills book. I don't know what it is about this book rather than the others, but it had him more engaged. They also picked up a package of silicone grips. We placed them on his pencil (and I let him chew one to keep him from chewing on his shirt all day). Either the book with it's self-evaluation at the end of each activity, the grips, the chewing, or some magic combination of the three made it such that the writing got done with lots of the usual prodding but none of the angst. His writing was far cleaner and neater. I'm not sure what it is, but I'll take it.
I still need to do some research on therapies for him. The chewing has gotten more consistent and his trouble with the writing has led me to look into other therapies for his fine motor skills. I need to pay more attention to his sensory seeking more often and provide more stimulation throughout the day. I'm also going to look into rock climbing for him. There's a kid's gym nearby that has a wall. I'll find out tomorrow about the cost. I really hope it's not too expensive, I think it would be perfect for him.
As for myself, I need to get out there a little more with the other homeschool parents. My social skills are rough and it's far easier to read a book during soccer than to actually interact. I feel like I need to read a primer of how to talk to strangers. If I can have at least three conversations with other parents tomorrow, I'll feel like I accomplished something. Besides that, I need to look into organizing a few activities. I'd like to start a regular gardening club of some sort, or an outing group that has to do with the gardens. I'm certainly qualified to do those and it will help me meet more parents. I wouldn't want to do it as a one-shot, mostly because I want the kids to get some regularly repeated playtime with the same kids over a few weeks so they can actually form relationships. I've told myself that I'll wait until after the never ending taxes are done before I add something else to my plate. (Yes, we are last-minute filers. Every year we owe, so every year we wait to file till the very last minute. It takes forever to do them since we take so many deductions. It is a bit of a marathon. Sure we could have run this marathon in February, but we didn't. The marathon is all the same to us, no matter when it is. So there.)
It has cut back significantly on some of our class hours for those days, which had me a little uptight, but I've gotten over that, mostly because, as Rocket Boy has been running around with all the other homeschool kids, I've been starting to chat with the other parents. It seems like most of the ones I manage to talk with (before I bury myself back in my book) are no so much homeschooling as unschooling. The fact that I use workbooks and aim for 4 solid hours of educational stuff every day makes me an overachiever in most of their eyes. I guess that means I can lighten up on myself a bit.
So even though I've supposedly lightened up, we spent yesterday and today doing lots of workbook stuff - yesterday was nearly all math, and today was all about writing. He rarely objects to writing when it comes to numbers, but he still struggles a bit. I was really surprised at today's writing exercises. This morning, Rocket Boy and his dad blessedly went to run some errands at our local office supply store so I could sleep. While there, they picked up yet another 1st grade writing skills book. I don't know what it is about this book rather than the others, but it had him more engaged. They also picked up a package of silicone grips. We placed them on his pencil (and I let him chew one to keep him from chewing on his shirt all day). Either the book with it's self-evaluation at the end of each activity, the grips, the chewing, or some magic combination of the three made it such that the writing got done with lots of the usual prodding but none of the angst. His writing was far cleaner and neater. I'm not sure what it is, but I'll take it.
I still need to do some research on therapies for him. The chewing has gotten more consistent and his trouble with the writing has led me to look into other therapies for his fine motor skills. I need to pay more attention to his sensory seeking more often and provide more stimulation throughout the day. I'm also going to look into rock climbing for him. There's a kid's gym nearby that has a wall. I'll find out tomorrow about the cost. I really hope it's not too expensive, I think it would be perfect for him.
As for myself, I need to get out there a little more with the other homeschool parents. My social skills are rough and it's far easier to read a book during soccer than to actually interact. I feel like I need to read a primer of how to talk to strangers. If I can have at least three conversations with other parents tomorrow, I'll feel like I accomplished something. Besides that, I need to look into organizing a few activities. I'd like to start a regular gardening club of some sort, or an outing group that has to do with the gardens. I'm certainly qualified to do those and it will help me meet more parents. I wouldn't want to do it as a one-shot, mostly because I want the kids to get some regularly repeated playtime with the same kids over a few weeks so they can actually form relationships. I've told myself that I'll wait until after the never ending taxes are done before I add something else to my plate. (Yes, we are last-minute filers. Every year we owe, so every year we wait to file till the very last minute. It takes forever to do them since we take so many deductions. It is a bit of a marathon. Sure we could have run this marathon in February, but we didn't. The marathon is all the same to us, no matter when it is. So there.)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I love science that ends in ice cream
Rocket Boy has officially gotten over the "I love homeschooling" phase. This has been building over the last few weeks. He's gone from the enthusiastic learner to the kid who whines when he has to do actual schoolwork. Today he finally voiced it. "I don't want to go to regular school and I don't want to do school here. I just want to stay home with you and Daddy." It's a lovely sentiment and I know that when he's a ten years older I'll be dreaming of the day he said that he just wanted to be with us. But for now I turned a hard heard to it and cracked the whip. Not so hard since the kind words were accompanied with much whining.
Since I am highly unsympathetic to that kind of whine, we went ahead with some phonics and social studies, with a 10 minute nap break for me in between. We went back to the atlas and looked at North America. He's definitely more interested in what the internet links are. We may have to abandon the atlas if that keeps getting in the way. It was still enjoyable and deciphering all the map symbols was good, but I got impatient at parrying all the questions about the links.
Since he was so down on school today, for our reading I decided not to push him too much. Instead I read to him for quite a while, which is fun because I can read a much more complex story from start to finish. When I make him do all the reading, I have a really hard time not getting bored by the latest easy reader. There are so few really good ones.
After a late lunch, I let him watch his chosen TV shows for the day, chatted with my father, who called to find out how to use Facebook (!), and started reading a new book. That's part of my resolution to read in front of Rocket Boy more often. I want to encourage a whole culture of reading in our family, but if the only time I read every day is before bed after he's long asleep, Rocket Boy is just never going to get it that reading is something grown-ups do.
After his TV break, we went back to schoolwork. I have a cooler full of leftover ice from the broken-fridge debacle. There has to be some science we can do with ice, right? We pulled out the experiment books and they all pointed to making ice cream. We talked about heat/cold transfer and we talked about how salt affects temperature. And we made some awesome ice cream using two different methods. #1 involved nesting a cup of our ice cream base (milk, cream, sugar, cocoa powder) within a big bowl if salt and ice with occasional mixing over about an hour. While we waited for ice cream method #1 to work, we did another experiment involving dissolving salt into hot water and into cold water. Then we started ice cream method #2, which was far more fun and quickly effective. We filled a small baggie with our ice cream base (milk, cream, sugar, cocoa powder), ice, salt, milk, and chocolate. We put that baggie into a large baggie filled with ice and salt, put on our mittens, and played catch. 5 minutes later we had real ice cream! Is was especially fun because I could tell he was getting antsy and really wanted to move his body.
It was a long school day with lots of breaks, but it felt really good (to me at least) since I got to intersperse housework with school, instead of saving it till after Rocket Boy is in bed and I'm tired. In the end, even he really enjoyed it, despite his whiny start. Ice cream makes everything better.
Since I am highly unsympathetic to that kind of whine, we went ahead with some phonics and social studies, with a 10 minute nap break for me in between. We went back to the atlas and looked at North America. He's definitely more interested in what the internet links are. We may have to abandon the atlas if that keeps getting in the way. It was still enjoyable and deciphering all the map symbols was good, but I got impatient at parrying all the questions about the links.
Since he was so down on school today, for our reading I decided not to push him too much. Instead I read to him for quite a while, which is fun because I can read a much more complex story from start to finish. When I make him do all the reading, I have a really hard time not getting bored by the latest easy reader. There are so few really good ones.
After a late lunch, I let him watch his chosen TV shows for the day, chatted with my father, who called to find out how to use Facebook (!), and started reading a new book. That's part of my resolution to read in front of Rocket Boy more often. I want to encourage a whole culture of reading in our family, but if the only time I read every day is before bed after he's long asleep, Rocket Boy is just never going to get it that reading is something grown-ups do.
After his TV break, we went back to schoolwork. I have a cooler full of leftover ice from the broken-fridge debacle. There has to be some science we can do with ice, right? We pulled out the experiment books and they all pointed to making ice cream. We talked about heat/cold transfer and we talked about how salt affects temperature. And we made some awesome ice cream using two different methods. #1 involved nesting a cup of our ice cream base (milk, cream, sugar, cocoa powder) within a big bowl if salt and ice with occasional mixing over about an hour. While we waited for ice cream method #1 to work, we did another experiment involving dissolving salt into hot water and into cold water. Then we started ice cream method #2, which was far more fun and quickly effective. We filled a small baggie with our ice cream base (milk, cream, sugar, cocoa powder), ice, salt, milk, and chocolate. We put that baggie into a large baggie filled with ice and salt, put on our mittens, and played catch. 5 minutes later we had real ice cream! Is was especially fun because I could tell he was getting antsy and really wanted to move his body.
It was a long school day with lots of breaks, but it felt really good (to me at least) since I got to intersperse housework with school, instead of saving it till after Rocket Boy is in bed and I'm tired. In the end, even he really enjoyed it, despite his whiny start. Ice cream makes everything better.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Today feels, um, normal for the first time in a long time
So today was packed full of lots of stuff to do. This morning I had to finish clearing out the broken fridge. I had left some items in the freezer since everything in there was keeping itself pretty cold. I also finally got to the scary stuff in the back of the fridge. Please, do yourself a favor, never forget about Pad Thai.
The morning was unusually productive. Rocket Boy and talked all about plants. We took apart a couple of pine cones looking for seeds. We read about how seeds germinate and checked the progress of our seeds. Next we talked about how plants get nutrients. We ran a fun little experiment that involves placing a stalk of celery in a glass of water that has a generous helping of blue food coloring. After about 2 hours the leaves started exhibiting blue areas, much to our excitement. I was actually pretty surprised by it, since there was very little evidence of the blue in the stalk, really it was only in the leaves. We decided to run the experiment on one of the morning glories we've been growing. As of the end of the day there was no blue, but it's a very small plant and I expect it will take a little longer to transpire a visible amount of blue water.
Then the delivery guy came at 11:30. First he took the old fridge away, so I took the opportunity to give the never-seen behind the fridge area a thorough cleaning and I put down anti-roach gel all around. We've been fighting a battle against those buggers for a while, but we live in an old, old house in Brooklyn with lots of cracks and crevices. We usually keep them away for a 2-3 weeks then they start showing up again. Another round of baits and all is quiet for a few more weeks. It has never been very bad, compared to friends I know who turn on the lights in their kitchen to a scene that looks like a concert letting out. We've never had more than a couple at a time and usually in very isolated areas. Still I don't like 'em one bit.
Then we had a nice session of unpacking the cooler into our shiny new fridge. After a lunch inspired by some of our finds, we opened up the National Geographic Kids Atlas and started our new attempts to address social studies and geography. Today's look at the atlas was dealing with the whole world and how it fits together. They have lots of good specialty maps and we worked on making connections between climate and population (why do so few people live in Antartica?) and also talked about how landforms influence where people live. Next we'll start going continent by continent to get a good overview of what our world is like today. Once Rocket Boy has a very basic grasp of continents and regions, we're going to switch gears and talk about ancient civilizations. That should be fun, since it will involve lots and lots of mythology. Rocket Boy loves hearing those stories. I just hope I can find some good material that I can retrofit for a bright 6 year old that looks beyond Greece and Rome. I want to be able to address early civilizations all over the world, but I don't think Rocket Boy is ready to deal with Jared Diamond. I know I'll be looking to Joseph Campbell for some inspiration.
The one annoying thing about the National Geo Kids Atlas, is that it is web-integrated. Now I love the idea of that, it's great for enrichment, but my child obsesses over the computer, so much so that I have exorcised it from any of our curriculum. As we went through the atlas he kept fixating on the links, which are called out with easy to read graphics.
At that point it was only 2:30 and I was seriously sleepy. We tried a rousing game of Dinosaur Go Fish, but I was practically drooling on my triceratops. I gave up and laid down while he watched Between the Lions. 10 minutes later, Rocket Boy's dad came in for his lunch, and was seriously bent out of shape that the boy was watching TV during school time. That little row woke me up plenty. So we went back to looking at plants and the plant books, then finished the day with another 10 pages in his school-issued math workbook. He's whipping through that thing and is more than ready to move on, but for the sake of being a completionist, I'm going to have him finish the book. Besides, it's so easy for him that he happily and confidently does the work. That means he's getting lots of practice holding a pencil. Anything that gets him to practice writing, even if it's just writing his numbers, makes me happy. He doesn't get too upset about writing numbers the way he gets upset about writing letters so I'm hoping that will work as part of the strategy to get him writing more.
Overall the day felt really productive and normal, in a good way. Lately I've been feeling a little out of sync with teaching. It hasn't been bad, it's just been a little unfocused or vague feeling. I don't quite know what made today feel so much more together. We still wandered through our day driven by what RocketBoy found interesting. I'll have to think about it more, because I want more days like today.
The morning was unusually productive. Rocket Boy and talked all about plants. We took apart a couple of pine cones looking for seeds. We read about how seeds germinate and checked the progress of our seeds. Next we talked about how plants get nutrients. We ran a fun little experiment that involves placing a stalk of celery in a glass of water that has a generous helping of blue food coloring. After about 2 hours the leaves started exhibiting blue areas, much to our excitement. I was actually pretty surprised by it, since there was very little evidence of the blue in the stalk, really it was only in the leaves. We decided to run the experiment on one of the morning glories we've been growing. As of the end of the day there was no blue, but it's a very small plant and I expect it will take a little longer to transpire a visible amount of blue water.
Then the delivery guy came at 11:30. First he took the old fridge away, so I took the opportunity to give the never-seen behind the fridge area a thorough cleaning and I put down anti-roach gel all around. We've been fighting a battle against those buggers for a while, but we live in an old, old house in Brooklyn with lots of cracks and crevices. We usually keep them away for a 2-3 weeks then they start showing up again. Another round of baits and all is quiet for a few more weeks. It has never been very bad, compared to friends I know who turn on the lights in their kitchen to a scene that looks like a concert letting out. We've never had more than a couple at a time and usually in very isolated areas. Still I don't like 'em one bit.
Then we had a nice session of unpacking the cooler into our shiny new fridge. After a lunch inspired by some of our finds, we opened up the National Geographic Kids Atlas and started our new attempts to address social studies and geography. Today's look at the atlas was dealing with the whole world and how it fits together. They have lots of good specialty maps and we worked on making connections between climate and population (why do so few people live in Antartica?) and also talked about how landforms influence where people live. Next we'll start going continent by continent to get a good overview of what our world is like today. Once Rocket Boy has a very basic grasp of continents and regions, we're going to switch gears and talk about ancient civilizations. That should be fun, since it will involve lots and lots of mythology. Rocket Boy loves hearing those stories. I just hope I can find some good material that I can retrofit for a bright 6 year old that looks beyond Greece and Rome. I want to be able to address early civilizations all over the world, but I don't think Rocket Boy is ready to deal with Jared Diamond. I know I'll be looking to Joseph Campbell for some inspiration.
The one annoying thing about the National Geo Kids Atlas, is that it is web-integrated. Now I love the idea of that, it's great for enrichment, but my child obsesses over the computer, so much so that I have exorcised it from any of our curriculum. As we went through the atlas he kept fixating on the links, which are called out with easy to read graphics.
At that point it was only 2:30 and I was seriously sleepy. We tried a rousing game of Dinosaur Go Fish, but I was practically drooling on my triceratops. I gave up and laid down while he watched Between the Lions. 10 minutes later, Rocket Boy's dad came in for his lunch, and was seriously bent out of shape that the boy was watching TV during school time. That little row woke me up plenty. So we went back to looking at plants and the plant books, then finished the day with another 10 pages in his school-issued math workbook. He's whipping through that thing and is more than ready to move on, but for the sake of being a completionist, I'm going to have him finish the book. Besides, it's so easy for him that he happily and confidently does the work. That means he's getting lots of practice holding a pencil. Anything that gets him to practice writing, even if it's just writing his numbers, makes me happy. He doesn't get too upset about writing numbers the way he gets upset about writing letters so I'm hoping that will work as part of the strategy to get him writing more.
Overall the day felt really productive and normal, in a good way. Lately I've been feeling a little out of sync with teaching. It hasn't been bad, it's just been a little unfocused or vague feeling. I don't quite know what made today feel so much more together. We still wandered through our day driven by what RocketBoy found interesting. I'll have to think about it more, because I want more days like today.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Yes, we’re still homeschooling!
February 18, 2009
I’ve been silent the last two weeks. Week one I was helping Steve prep for the NY Comicon. Week two I spent every evening on the phone letting everyone know about my pregnancy. I was supposed to get back on the wagon this week, and I have no excuse for waiting till Wednesday, other than sheer laziness, compounded by the fact that our AirPort has been really buggy lately. Not having internet on my laptop makes daily updating a bit of a drag. On a regular, password free network it mostly works, but is often slow and kicks me of for no reason rather frequently. With a password protected wireless connection, it accepts my password, but tells me there’s an error joining the network. Our other option is to directly wire in, which involves switching the cord from the cable router and resetting the router, but that means stealing the internet away from Steve. To make it even brighter, the cord won’t reach anywhere where I am actually comfortable sitting. All could be solved with a splitter and a longer cord, I just keep forgetting to actually go out and get it or order it.
Anyway, rather than recap the last two weeks I will tell you the big things I have learned:
1) When you’re pregnant and more tired than usual, it’s easier to let some things slip. We started out with really long days of learning (too long really), and have now whittled it down to 4 hours of actual instruction (not counting snacks, lunch, or Rocket Boy’s choose-and-do time).
2) My kid really hates writing and really loves science and math. I need to do some more research. A while ago I was reading about brain development and how our language centers don’t begin to mature to really handle symbolic language until after we’re 7. Despite this it has been ingrained in us, as individual parents and systemically in our schools, that early reading is a sign of advanced intelligence. Seeing my child, with his highly advanced vocabulary and comprehension, struggle with the act of writing, has me wanting to delve more into those studies. I’m experimenting some oblique strategies to help him with fine motor writing skills that don’t involve writing actual letters.
3) His disposition has turned dramatically. He used to spend a lot of time acting aggressively towards others with lots of punches and kicks and shoves. Now he is calmer, more polite, and is more likely to hug than punch. I attribute the change in part to his activity level. He spends the day moving around, not being told to sit at his table. That means less unspent energy needing to go somewhere, anywhere. He also spends the day with me not tolerating his aggressive movements, and gently reminding him that if he really needs more touching (part of his sensory integration issues) he can always ask me for a hug or a squeeze. He is the huggingest kid these days. Pair that with him regularly hugging me so he can whisper into my belly at his new sibling, and I’ve been a melting puddle these days.
4) This week mid-winter break for the public schools so we’re taking it easy and filling our week with field trips and play dates: NY Hall of Science for Engineer’s Day, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, tomorrow Museum of Natural History. Friday we’ll stay home and do regular school stuff and tennis in the afternoon. Saturday Steve is taking him to the NY hall of Science again. It’s a week full of experiential learning and very few worksheets. We’re having a blast.
I’ve been silent the last two weeks. Week one I was helping Steve prep for the NY Comicon. Week two I spent every evening on the phone letting everyone know about my pregnancy. I was supposed to get back on the wagon this week, and I have no excuse for waiting till Wednesday, other than sheer laziness, compounded by the fact that our AirPort has been really buggy lately. Not having internet on my laptop makes daily updating a bit of a drag. On a regular, password free network it mostly works, but is often slow and kicks me of for no reason rather frequently. With a password protected wireless connection, it accepts my password, but tells me there’s an error joining the network. Our other option is to directly wire in, which involves switching the cord from the cable router and resetting the router, but that means stealing the internet away from Steve. To make it even brighter, the cord won’t reach anywhere where I am actually comfortable sitting. All could be solved with a splitter and a longer cord, I just keep forgetting to actually go out and get it or order it.
Anyway, rather than recap the last two weeks I will tell you the big things I have learned:
1) When you’re pregnant and more tired than usual, it’s easier to let some things slip. We started out with really long days of learning (too long really), and have now whittled it down to 4 hours of actual instruction (not counting snacks, lunch, or Rocket Boy’s choose-and-do time).
2) My kid really hates writing and really loves science and math. I need to do some more research. A while ago I was reading about brain development and how our language centers don’t begin to mature to really handle symbolic language until after we’re 7. Despite this it has been ingrained in us, as individual parents and systemically in our schools, that early reading is a sign of advanced intelligence. Seeing my child, with his highly advanced vocabulary and comprehension, struggle with the act of writing, has me wanting to delve more into those studies. I’m experimenting some oblique strategies to help him with fine motor writing skills that don’t involve writing actual letters.
3) His disposition has turned dramatically. He used to spend a lot of time acting aggressively towards others with lots of punches and kicks and shoves. Now he is calmer, more polite, and is more likely to hug than punch. I attribute the change in part to his activity level. He spends the day moving around, not being told to sit at his table. That means less unspent energy needing to go somewhere, anywhere. He also spends the day with me not tolerating his aggressive movements, and gently reminding him that if he really needs more touching (part of his sensory integration issues) he can always ask me for a hug or a squeeze. He is the huggingest kid these days. Pair that with him regularly hugging me so he can whisper into my belly at his new sibling, and I’ve been a melting puddle these days.
4) This week mid-winter break for the public schools so we’re taking it easy and filling our week with field trips and play dates: NY Hall of Science for Engineer’s Day, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, tomorrow Museum of Natural History. Friday we’ll stay home and do regular school stuff and tennis in the afternoon. Saturday Steve is taking him to the NY hall of Science again. It’s a week full of experiential learning and very few worksheets. We’re having a blast.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Ending on a good note
Friday, January 30, 2009
After dropping Hypersteve at his studio, Rocket Boy and I did a lightning strike on the grocery store. We’ve never gotten our groceries that fast. I was thrilled, because after losing so much teaching time yesterday, I really didn’t want to lose much today.
After we got home and ate a bit, we settled into our workbooks. Rocket Boy whizzed through an entire chapter of activities in his math book. He was on a roll and didn’t want to stop. The lessons were really simple, and honestly below him, from the kindergarten workbook he used when he was in school last fall. After seeing him move through those, I am doubly glad he’s not in school anymore. He’s really stuck in an in between place grade-wise. He’s got too many skills that K just bores him, but not enough skills to handle everything in 1st grade. As a result I’m following a basic 1st grade curriculum for him with some modifications. Some of the stuff he flies through, and other stuff still needs the kindergarten touch. My hope is that by the summer, we’ve achieved all the 1st grade goals. That way in the fall, if we choose to send him to school, he’s ready for 2nd grade. I don’t know if we’re going to enroll him or not. All I do know is that we have some major life changes coming up – this summer I hope we’ll be living somewhere that’s *not here.* I don’t know where that will be yet, but hopefully it will be in a place with abundant natural beauty, property for me to garden and Rocket Boy to roam, and good schools so we have that option if we need it, plus progressive wonderful people. Wish us luck.
After the mathstravaganza, we read Rocket Boy’s new favorite book, The Three Samurai Cats, and worked on adding more words to his word box. He was impatient and I was tired so we were both glad when it was time to leave for tennis. That class is a nice way to cap our week. It gives finality to the school week and marks the beginning of the weekend on a good, energetic note.
After dropping Hypersteve at his studio, Rocket Boy and I did a lightning strike on the grocery store. We’ve never gotten our groceries that fast. I was thrilled, because after losing so much teaching time yesterday, I really didn’t want to lose much today.
After we got home and ate a bit, we settled into our workbooks. Rocket Boy whizzed through an entire chapter of activities in his math book. He was on a roll and didn’t want to stop. The lessons were really simple, and honestly below him, from the kindergarten workbook he used when he was in school last fall. After seeing him move through those, I am doubly glad he’s not in school anymore. He’s really stuck in an in between place grade-wise. He’s got too many skills that K just bores him, but not enough skills to handle everything in 1st grade. As a result I’m following a basic 1st grade curriculum for him with some modifications. Some of the stuff he flies through, and other stuff still needs the kindergarten touch. My hope is that by the summer, we’ve achieved all the 1st grade goals. That way in the fall, if we choose to send him to school, he’s ready for 2nd grade. I don’t know if we’re going to enroll him or not. All I do know is that we have some major life changes coming up – this summer I hope we’ll be living somewhere that’s *not here.* I don’t know where that will be yet, but hopefully it will be in a place with abundant natural beauty, property for me to garden and Rocket Boy to roam, and good schools so we have that option if we need it, plus progressive wonderful people. Wish us luck.
After the mathstravaganza, we read Rocket Boy’s new favorite book, The Three Samurai Cats, and worked on adding more words to his word box. He was impatient and I was tired so we were both glad when it was time to leave for tennis. That class is a nice way to cap our week. It gives finality to the school week and marks the beginning of the weekend on a good, energetic note.
I’ll have a scoop of frustration and a scoop of delight, with sprinkles please.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
I’ll have a scoop of frustration and a scoop of delight, with sprinkles please.
No, there was no ice cream had today. Today started out slow. Instead of starting at 9 on the dot, we straggled since we were planning to drive Hypersteve at his studio. We were just about to leave, and just about to leave again and again that I didn’t want to get anything started, just to have to stop mid-activity. Well by the time we dropped him off it was quarter after 10. We needed to return some books so I decided to make it a library morning, and do most of our lessons there. We had a play date scheduled for 2, closer to his studio than our house, and it’s usually so much easier to extract Rocket Boy from somewhere other than home. We went to the library near the studio, but they don’t open till 1 on Thursdays. Meh. I decided to head over towards our play date neighborhood about 15 minutes further, and go to the library there. My trusty GPS that kindly lists all the libraries was full of fail. I drove past the place where there should have been one, but no such luck.
Figuring I had no library luck, we decided to go back to the neighborhood with the studio to Barnes & Noble. I’ve been wanting to pick something up that was more social studies related anyway since we seem to have so little of that material in our house. Easy, right? Not so much. Apparently there is nowhere to park in Park Slope at noon. No street parking, no meter parking, after 20 minutes I just gave up. We headed towards home to go to the trusty library branch that is halfway between Park Slope and our house, and where parking is not a huge problem. Got there quickly, parked right in front, and was thrilled to see that the gate was open. Except they weren’t actually going to open for another hour, the staff was inside doing all the things that a library staff does before the hordes descend.
That’s over 2 hours in the car not accomplishing anything. We were both super cranky. On the bright side, I finally listed to the book on CD we’ve had in our car for ages: The Magic Tree house Wild West Adventure. The reader was a bit cloying, but I came to enjoy it and Rocket Boy seemed to love it.
Luckily there is a friendly café on the next corner, were we proceeded to sit, eat, and do lessons until it was time to leave for the play date. The kids meal, a grilled cheese on good multigrain bread, OJ, and a huge fruit salad that I happily shared, was only $4.00. We worked on basic phonics. He is still having trouble remembering the short U, but other than that he’s getting a good grip on all the sounds made by individual letters, digraphs, and blends. Time flew and we went to the play date.
This is a new person we met on a homeschoolers listserv. The mom was looking for a babysitter/play date for her son, Rocket Boy needs more regular kid relationships, and I’m happy to have grocery money. The kids got along famously, the mom and I got along famously. I was thrilled that there’s a boy out there with similar energy to Rocket Boy and a mom out there who isn’t freaked out by the roughhousing that boys do. I’d go in to more detail, but I am sleepy and drained and happy by how our day ended up, despite the morning’s horribly frustration.
I’ll have a scoop of frustration and a scoop of delight, with sprinkles please.
No, there was no ice cream had today. Today started out slow. Instead of starting at 9 on the dot, we straggled since we were planning to drive Hypersteve at his studio. We were just about to leave, and just about to leave again and again that I didn’t want to get anything started, just to have to stop mid-activity. Well by the time we dropped him off it was quarter after 10. We needed to return some books so I decided to make it a library morning, and do most of our lessons there. We had a play date scheduled for 2, closer to his studio than our house, and it’s usually so much easier to extract Rocket Boy from somewhere other than home. We went to the library near the studio, but they don’t open till 1 on Thursdays. Meh. I decided to head over towards our play date neighborhood about 15 minutes further, and go to the library there. My trusty GPS that kindly lists all the libraries was full of fail. I drove past the place where there should have been one, but no such luck.
Figuring I had no library luck, we decided to go back to the neighborhood with the studio to Barnes & Noble. I’ve been wanting to pick something up that was more social studies related anyway since we seem to have so little of that material in our house. Easy, right? Not so much. Apparently there is nowhere to park in Park Slope at noon. No street parking, no meter parking, after 20 minutes I just gave up. We headed towards home to go to the trusty library branch that is halfway between Park Slope and our house, and where parking is not a huge problem. Got there quickly, parked right in front, and was thrilled to see that the gate was open. Except they weren’t actually going to open for another hour, the staff was inside doing all the things that a library staff does before the hordes descend.
That’s over 2 hours in the car not accomplishing anything. We were both super cranky. On the bright side, I finally listed to the book on CD we’ve had in our car for ages: The Magic Tree house Wild West Adventure. The reader was a bit cloying, but I came to enjoy it and Rocket Boy seemed to love it.
Luckily there is a friendly café on the next corner, were we proceeded to sit, eat, and do lessons until it was time to leave for the play date. The kids meal, a grilled cheese on good multigrain bread, OJ, and a huge fruit salad that I happily shared, was only $4.00. We worked on basic phonics. He is still having trouble remembering the short U, but other than that he’s getting a good grip on all the sounds made by individual letters, digraphs, and blends. Time flew and we went to the play date.
This is a new person we met on a homeschoolers listserv. The mom was looking for a babysitter/play date for her son, Rocket Boy needs more regular kid relationships, and I’m happy to have grocery money. The kids got along famously, the mom and I got along famously. I was thrilled that there’s a boy out there with similar energy to Rocket Boy and a mom out there who isn’t freaked out by the roughhousing that boys do. I’d go in to more detail, but I am sleepy and drained and happy by how our day ended up, despite the morning’s horribly frustration.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Way to a Boy’s Heart is Through Space
Wednesday January 28, 2009
Rocket Boy used to obsessively do puzzles, but for the last year really hasn’t been interested at all. A shame too, because we have some really nice ones. Well this morning he decided that he wanted to do puzzles. Great! We started with a tangram, but with one missing piece we didn’t get too far. Then we moved on to the 48 piece wooden puzzles (Melissa & Doug) that come with their own tray. I had him make a chart of the puzzles he wanted to do so he could time himself to see how much he can improve. He did a total of five puzzles with 48-100 pieces. The kid had puzzle mania. I won’t complain one bit. They hit on all sorts of skills he needs. The last two puzzles he did were very fanciful artwork from a company called D’jeco. One in particular was populated with all sorts of space creatures and planets. Rocket Boy was painfully slow putting that one together because he kept making up stories about the creatures. The completionist part of me was getting impatient, but the educator part was thrilled.
After he finished it we did a story cloud exercise, in which we came up with a main idea for his story and four secondary points. I then got my writer-phobic child to actually write several sentences. He cheerfully (mostly) wrote about the aliens going to a birthday party but the way was dangerous. Then he listed three of the obstacles they would have to pass to get to the party. He filled about 3/4 of a page in his notebook without complaint! That is unheard of in our house. The story had a beginning and middle, but no end, but that’s ok for now. There’s no need to quash excitement by forcing too much lesson. We’ll deal with that another day.
Next time I want him to write I just need to remember to involve space aliens in peril.
He was so excited about his story that he put on a play of it, complete with ticket taking and an imaginary participatory audience. Then he realized that he could make a book of it. He was zooming with excitement and at that point I was bone tired from keeping up with him.
We cuddled on the couch to watch some PBS and the school day was happily done.
Rocket Boy used to obsessively do puzzles, but for the last year really hasn’t been interested at all. A shame too, because we have some really nice ones. Well this morning he decided that he wanted to do puzzles. Great! We started with a tangram, but with one missing piece we didn’t get too far. Then we moved on to the 48 piece wooden puzzles (Melissa & Doug) that come with their own tray. I had him make a chart of the puzzles he wanted to do so he could time himself to see how much he can improve. He did a total of five puzzles with 48-100 pieces. The kid had puzzle mania. I won’t complain one bit. They hit on all sorts of skills he needs. The last two puzzles he did were very fanciful artwork from a company called D’jeco. One in particular was populated with all sorts of space creatures and planets. Rocket Boy was painfully slow putting that one together because he kept making up stories about the creatures. The completionist part of me was getting impatient, but the educator part was thrilled.
After he finished it we did a story cloud exercise, in which we came up with a main idea for his story and four secondary points. I then got my writer-phobic child to actually write several sentences. He cheerfully (mostly) wrote about the aliens going to a birthday party but the way was dangerous. Then he listed three of the obstacles they would have to pass to get to the party. He filled about 3/4 of a page in his notebook without complaint! That is unheard of in our house. The story had a beginning and middle, but no end, but that’s ok for now. There’s no need to quash excitement by forcing too much lesson. We’ll deal with that another day.
Next time I want him to write I just need to remember to involve space aliens in peril.
He was so excited about his story that he put on a play of it, complete with ticket taking and an imaginary participatory audience. Then he realized that he could make a book of it. He was zooming with excitement and at that point I was bone tired from keeping up with him.
We cuddled on the couch to watch some PBS and the school day was happily done.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Back to basics and a huge milestone!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
After the irregularity of last week and yesterday, today we mostly stuck with the basics. We spent most of the day working through the 1st grade workbook, catching up on a couple of worksheets we didn't do last week and working on through more basic lessons on letters and numbers. I'm still attempting to impart counting by twos and even vs odd numbers. After much work, I think he finally got it, especially when Hypersteve reenforced it with an after dinner game of mancala.
After a late lunch we turned on the computer, after all, I did deem Tuesdays and Thursdays computer days. Otherwise Rocket Boy gets a bit too obsessed with it. We did math code breaking again - simple addition problems whose solutions correspond to letters to answer science questions. This time it was a fish theme. We followed it with time on the Museum of Natural History's kids' website, Ology. Going along with the fish theme, we stuck to the marine biology section and played all kinds of games and activities. It's fun to make a 6 year old with a missing tooth try to say "ichthyologist."
That's right, Rocket Boy lost his first tooth the other day! Of course he put it under his pillow and the tooth fairy did her job, but he wanted to know when we were going to have the party. Apparently, he thought that losing a tooth is cause for a party - friends coming over, cake, balloons, games, the works. I broke it to him gently. Of course he kept asking what would happen if he lost two teeth, or all his teeth. I guess he's still bucking for a party.
So what should I do with the tooth?
After the irregularity of last week and yesterday, today we mostly stuck with the basics. We spent most of the day working through the 1st grade workbook, catching up on a couple of worksheets we didn't do last week and working on through more basic lessons on letters and numbers. I'm still attempting to impart counting by twos and even vs odd numbers. After much work, I think he finally got it, especially when Hypersteve reenforced it with an after dinner game of mancala.
After a late lunch we turned on the computer, after all, I did deem Tuesdays and Thursdays computer days. Otherwise Rocket Boy gets a bit too obsessed with it. We did math code breaking again - simple addition problems whose solutions correspond to letters to answer science questions. This time it was a fish theme. We followed it with time on the Museum of Natural History's kids' website, Ology. Going along with the fish theme, we stuck to the marine biology section and played all kinds of games and activities. It's fun to make a 6 year old with a missing tooth try to say "ichthyologist."
That's right, Rocket Boy lost his first tooth the other day! Of course he put it under his pillow and the tooth fairy did her job, but he wanted to know when we were going to have the party. Apparently, he thought that losing a tooth is cause for a party - friends coming over, cake, balloons, games, the works. I broke it to him gently. Of course he kept asking what would happen if he lost two teeth, or all his teeth. I guess he's still bucking for a party.
So what should I do with the tooth?
Monday, January 26, 2009
Homeschooling is where the heart, um car dealership, is
Monday, January 26, 2009
We were still in NJ after spending a nice long visit with Hypersteve’s mom. She now has a brand new knee. I’m actually really glad we didn’t get out to see her sooner. The hospital she was in was very hospital-y in all the anxiety producing ways. Her leg was swollen and infected and she just didn’t look like herself. It would have scared the pants off of Rocket Boy. Now she’s in an orthopedic recovery center that’s clean, roomy, warm feeling, with a good food and a very friendly staff that is not viciously overworked. And did I mention the game room? She’s feeling far better and is cheerfully agonizing through physical therapy.
Just down the street from the hospital is the Toyota dealership. Last year I lost my key fob (the only way I have of unlocking or starting the Prius) so Hypersteve and I have spent the last year switching off. Since it’s a smart key that automatically unlocks the car when I touch the door handle and starts the car when I press the power button, I can’t exactly take it down to the locksmith to make a spare. I have to go to the dealership where they will give me a new fob and program it to the car’s computer – for just under $300. That’s a lot for a key, but if we were just unlucky enough to loose the only key we have, we’d have to call a tow truck to take our car to the dealership where they would have to replace part of the car’s computer in addition to the cost of the keys. That would have run us close to $900 so I’m happy to shell out 1/3 of that. Of course the car also needed new front brakes and the pads replaced on the rear brakes. I had known that but had been putting it off. It was due for an oil change, a new cabin air filter, and a tire rotation. I was so happy they threw in a complimentary car wash. So 3 hours and nearly $1000 later, the car is happily purring and we will be able to open our doors and stop the car whenever we want. Considering it was all maintenance stuff that is part of what everyone has to pay to keep a car I don’t feel too bad. I’m getting a little sentimental about the car. It’s at 95K already. I’ve never owned a car for so long or so many miles (and so few tanks of gas, thank you sweet Prius!)
So we spent the time at the dealership working on reading and math. They had a whole bunch of kids books and Highlights magazine – none of which we had read before. We played long games of Uno – first addition Uno where Rocket Boy has to add the number of the card he’s laying down the number of the card before it. Then we did subtraction Uno the same way. We didn’t get into negative numbers, just subtracting the smaller from the bigger. We also had a long discussion about digit placement. He just does not believe that there is such a thing as ones, tens, hundreds place. He refused to accept it. I think I may need to get him an abacus or some counting beads or something. Maybe I’ll look into the Montessori number system.
That was the extent of school today, short day, basic lessons, and lots of playing and visiting grandma. S’all good.
We were still in NJ after spending a nice long visit with Hypersteve’s mom. She now has a brand new knee. I’m actually really glad we didn’t get out to see her sooner. The hospital she was in was very hospital-y in all the anxiety producing ways. Her leg was swollen and infected and she just didn’t look like herself. It would have scared the pants off of Rocket Boy. Now she’s in an orthopedic recovery center that’s clean, roomy, warm feeling, with a good food and a very friendly staff that is not viciously overworked. And did I mention the game room? She’s feeling far better and is cheerfully agonizing through physical therapy.
Just down the street from the hospital is the Toyota dealership. Last year I lost my key fob (the only way I have of unlocking or starting the Prius) so Hypersteve and I have spent the last year switching off. Since it’s a smart key that automatically unlocks the car when I touch the door handle and starts the car when I press the power button, I can’t exactly take it down to the locksmith to make a spare. I have to go to the dealership where they will give me a new fob and program it to the car’s computer – for just under $300. That’s a lot for a key, but if we were just unlucky enough to loose the only key we have, we’d have to call a tow truck to take our car to the dealership where they would have to replace part of the car’s computer in addition to the cost of the keys. That would have run us close to $900 so I’m happy to shell out 1/3 of that. Of course the car also needed new front brakes and the pads replaced on the rear brakes. I had known that but had been putting it off. It was due for an oil change, a new cabin air filter, and a tire rotation. I was so happy they threw in a complimentary car wash. So 3 hours and nearly $1000 later, the car is happily purring and we will be able to open our doors and stop the car whenever we want. Considering it was all maintenance stuff that is part of what everyone has to pay to keep a car I don’t feel too bad. I’m getting a little sentimental about the car. It’s at 95K already. I’ve never owned a car for so long or so many miles (and so few tanks of gas, thank you sweet Prius!)
So we spent the time at the dealership working on reading and math. They had a whole bunch of kids books and Highlights magazine – none of which we had read before. We played long games of Uno – first addition Uno where Rocket Boy has to add the number of the card he’s laying down the number of the card before it. Then we did subtraction Uno the same way. We didn’t get into negative numbers, just subtracting the smaller from the bigger. We also had a long discussion about digit placement. He just does not believe that there is such a thing as ones, tens, hundreds place. He refused to accept it. I think I may need to get him an abacus or some counting beads or something. Maybe I’ll look into the Montessori number system.
That was the extent of school today, short day, basic lessons, and lots of playing and visiting grandma. S’all good.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
With that many people loving science, we'll be ok, right?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
It was Cyber Chase Day at the New York Hall of Science. Rocket Boy had been looking forward to it for weeks, thanks to daily reminders on PBS. I was all for it, that was, until we actually walked in. The place was mobbed and ill equipped to handle such a huge group. The lines were long and the transactions took forever with lots of people asking oh so may redundant questions, especially if they had spent any of their long waiting time actually reading any of the admissions signs. After we finally got through the line we got into another line for the coat check, found out that we had to by coat check tickets when we got out admission, went back to admission, got back in the coat check line, got in line for Cyber Chase (free tickets, but handled separately from admission, all gone by the time we got there at noon L), then got in line for the bathroom. It took over 45 minutes from the time we walked in the door till we got into the line for our first exhibit.
After the third time we had someone get in front of us, I got very firm about letting other children and their parents know that several children had been waiting patiently in line and that their children could wait there, at the end. Had I not done that, Rocket Boy would never have gotten a chance to experiment with the tennis exhibit or try to pick up rocks from the bottom of the ocean. I am flabbergasted that some people just do not understand a basic social contract of first come, first served. Nor do they seem interested in teaching their children of being conscientious of others.
Aside from the crowds, the museum had some great exhibits, well designed to teach all sorts of concepts. We were both particularly mesmerized by the comet simulator (using dry ice dropped into a shallow pool). He also loved the Mobius strip experiment – absolutely amazed by cutting the strip in half. Rocket Boy got a little frenetic at one point, zooming from one exhibit to another, pushing buttons and levers, and running to the next. All flash no content. I stopped him and we took a break for lunch. We talked about the reasons for the exhibits, which is not just to push buttons, and resolved to address the next exhibits a little more calmly. The break worked and the afternoon was far less frenetic.
We will go back, but on a weekday and I will try to pair it with lessons during the week. We may even wait till the science playground is open in the spring. I’ve read about it in landscape magazines and can’t wait to try it out first hand. It looks fun!
It was Cyber Chase Day at the New York Hall of Science. Rocket Boy had been looking forward to it for weeks, thanks to daily reminders on PBS. I was all for it, that was, until we actually walked in. The place was mobbed and ill equipped to handle such a huge group. The lines were long and the transactions took forever with lots of people asking oh so may redundant questions, especially if they had spent any of their long waiting time actually reading any of the admissions signs. After we finally got through the line we got into another line for the coat check, found out that we had to by coat check tickets when we got out admission, went back to admission, got back in the coat check line, got in line for Cyber Chase (free tickets, but handled separately from admission, all gone by the time we got there at noon L), then got in line for the bathroom. It took over 45 minutes from the time we walked in the door till we got into the line for our first exhibit.
After the third time we had someone get in front of us, I got very firm about letting other children and their parents know that several children had been waiting patiently in line and that their children could wait there, at the end. Had I not done that, Rocket Boy would never have gotten a chance to experiment with the tennis exhibit or try to pick up rocks from the bottom of the ocean. I am flabbergasted that some people just do not understand a basic social contract of first come, first served. Nor do they seem interested in teaching their children of being conscientious of others.
Aside from the crowds, the museum had some great exhibits, well designed to teach all sorts of concepts. We were both particularly mesmerized by the comet simulator (using dry ice dropped into a shallow pool). He also loved the Mobius strip experiment – absolutely amazed by cutting the strip in half. Rocket Boy got a little frenetic at one point, zooming from one exhibit to another, pushing buttons and levers, and running to the next. All flash no content. I stopped him and we took a break for lunch. We talked about the reasons for the exhibits, which is not just to push buttons, and resolved to address the next exhibits a little more calmly. The break worked and the afternoon was far less frenetic.
We will go back, but on a weekday and I will try to pair it with lessons during the week. We may even wait till the science playground is open in the spring. I’ve read about it in landscape magazines and can’t wait to try it out first hand. It looks fun!
I love Frog & Toad, new pillows, and a stocked fridge
Friday, January 23, 2009
Wow! Why do I forget the days so quickly? I sit here on Sunday night, catching up on the last few days and I already have trouble recalling what happened on Friday.
We did, um, stuff. Right. It’s coming back to me. We planned to go to the NY Hall of Science all day Saturday, so I decided it would be a fine time to get some necessary errands run, teach for a half day, and make up some work the next day.
We went to Ikea to pick up some new pillows. After yet another night of poor sleep, I decided it was time. Luckily Ikea is right next to Fairway so we did the grocery shopping afterwards. I made it as much of a teaching trip as I could (though not as teach-y as the last time – that would have taken forever).
At home we made lunch then settled down for some workbooks and some reading. Rocket Boy read an entire chapter of Frog & Toad with almost no help. I love those books. I loved them when I was a kid and I love them more now that I’m teaching. So many of the easy readers are so explicitly illustrated, that Rocket Boy can guess most of the words instead of actually reading the words. Not with Frog & Toad. We added some more words to his word box, but couldn’t finish the task as it was time for tennis.
That night I slept deeply and well. Ahhhhh, new pillows!
Wow! Why do I forget the days so quickly? I sit here on Sunday night, catching up on the last few days and I already have trouble recalling what happened on Friday.
We did, um, stuff. Right. It’s coming back to me. We planned to go to the NY Hall of Science all day Saturday, so I decided it would be a fine time to get some necessary errands run, teach for a half day, and make up some work the next day.
We went to Ikea to pick up some new pillows. After yet another night of poor sleep, I decided it was time. Luckily Ikea is right next to Fairway so we did the grocery shopping afterwards. I made it as much of a teaching trip as I could (though not as teach-y as the last time – that would have taken forever).
At home we made lunch then settled down for some workbooks and some reading. Rocket Boy read an entire chapter of Frog & Toad with almost no help. I love those books. I loved them when I was a kid and I love them more now that I’m teaching. So many of the easy readers are so explicitly illustrated, that Rocket Boy can guess most of the words instead of actually reading the words. Not with Frog & Toad. We added some more words to his word box, but couldn’t finish the task as it was time for tennis.
That night I slept deeply and well. Ahhhhh, new pillows!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Paper Airplanes
Thursday January 22, 2009
We started out the day under assault. After feeling like they were finally under control, the roaches are back in the kitchen. So our usual leisurely morning was supplanting with moving the stove, laying down more poison (which I HATE using, but really I HATE the bugs way more), and more caulking of various cracks and crevices that got missed last time. Luckily for me Hypersteve did most of that while I slept. I’ve been exhausted lately. The new homeschooling schedule is making me tired; I keep wanting to nap in the afternoons. I guess I just did not anticipate how much energy it takes to engage a 6 year old all day long. I’m sure I’ll adjust after a few weeks, but really it just makes me think that I need to do a lot more exercise to get my energy levels back up.
No one wanted breakfast at home after this morning's visitors so we headed to the diner. We have a greasy spoon right around the corner. It’s not great, but it’s fine for eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches; except last time we went there we found that they had increased their prices dramatically. Used to be you could get 2 eggs, coffee, toast, home fries, and a mini OJ for $2.75. For that price, I could put up with the greasy spoon-ness of it, but not when they’re charging $4.75. Goodbye George’s! So we hopped into the car and went to a place further away, but where the food is good, cheap, and the wait staff knows us. We had a great time, especially since we haven’t had a lot of all together family time lately. I’ve been trying to be better about what I eat so I got poached eggs with whole-wheat toast and grits, instead of the usual over easy and home fries. I’m sure I cut a huge amount of fat from my meal by making those choices.
Then it was back home and back to school. Rocket Boy really wanted to make paper airplanes, so I found us an appropriate website. We talked about flight and a little bit about engineering, then we talked about what might influence how far a plane flies and I had him come up with some variables. Then I had him write up a science experiment, complete with experimental goals. We made the airplanes then tested their distance down our long hall. We charted the results, creating a point value for each flight. We did 6 test flights in total. I had Rocket Boy add up the values and determine which plane flew the furthest. It took most of the day, but we did math, science, reading, and writing: all under the auspices of paper airplanes. Homeschool is so much more fun than regular school.
We started out the day under assault. After feeling like they were finally under control, the roaches are back in the kitchen. So our usual leisurely morning was supplanting with moving the stove, laying down more poison (which I HATE using, but really I HATE the bugs way more), and more caulking of various cracks and crevices that got missed last time. Luckily for me Hypersteve did most of that while I slept. I’ve been exhausted lately. The new homeschooling schedule is making me tired; I keep wanting to nap in the afternoons. I guess I just did not anticipate how much energy it takes to engage a 6 year old all day long. I’m sure I’ll adjust after a few weeks, but really it just makes me think that I need to do a lot more exercise to get my energy levels back up.
No one wanted breakfast at home after this morning's visitors so we headed to the diner. We have a greasy spoon right around the corner. It’s not great, but it’s fine for eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches; except last time we went there we found that they had increased their prices dramatically. Used to be you could get 2 eggs, coffee, toast, home fries, and a mini OJ for $2.75. For that price, I could put up with the greasy spoon-ness of it, but not when they’re charging $4.75. Goodbye George’s! So we hopped into the car and went to a place further away, but where the food is good, cheap, and the wait staff knows us. We had a great time, especially since we haven’t had a lot of all together family time lately. I’ve been trying to be better about what I eat so I got poached eggs with whole-wheat toast and grits, instead of the usual over easy and home fries. I’m sure I cut a huge amount of fat from my meal by making those choices.
Then it was back home and back to school. Rocket Boy really wanted to make paper airplanes, so I found us an appropriate website. We talked about flight and a little bit about engineering, then we talked about what might influence how far a plane flies and I had him come up with some variables. Then I had him write up a science experiment, complete with experimental goals. We made the airplanes then tested their distance down our long hall. We charted the results, creating a point value for each flight. We did 6 test flights in total. I had Rocket Boy add up the values and determine which plane flew the furthest. It took most of the day, but we did math, science, reading, and writing: all under the auspices of paper airplanes. Homeschool is so much more fun than regular school.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Wed Is The First Regular School Day This Week
Wednesday January 21, 2009
Back to normal
This was the first complete school day of the week. We both needed to ease into it. We started the day (after a Choose & Do playing Mousetrap) by going through some of the worksheets in our basic curriculum book. We did first sounds, last sounds. As usual Rocket Boy was getting mighty frustrated with his letter formation. I decided to try an altogether different tactic. He told me his favorite lower case letter is “n” so I capitalized on that to remind him that if he’s really good at n that means he can easily write all the letters that are part of the n family. “Letters don’t have families!” So I spent a long, long time explaining how n, m, r, and h are all related in shape. That blew his mind a bit and we spent a good amount of time using the dry erase board morphing those letters into one another. We did the same with o, l, and v. I was surprised and impressed at how well he took to understanding the lowercase when I approached it that way. Tonight I might make up a few of my own worksheets that have him writing the letter families.
As a sideways strategy towards strengthening his writing confidence, we did an exercise from the Drawing With Children book that involves some shape copying. If we do those regularly I think he will get a little more hand control or at least we will be able to identify what stoke or movement is causing him trouble. Usually he as fun with those exercises, but this time he was getting frustrated with himself. Each time I asked him to check back with the original and evaluate his work he got upset at his marks. He clearly had had enough of writing (it was lunchtime).
While he was waiting for lunch to be ready he did a few addition worksheets and a counting by 5s sheet. After a delicious lunch (pirogue, applesauce (for him not me), and steamed broccoli tossed in butter and garlic) we had a little quiet reading time – Christmas at Mud Flat and a book about a cat on moving day, but I am just that lazy that I won’t go in to the other room to confirm the title. At that point I was seriously beat. It was all I could to stay awake. No more cozy books on the couch. We moved on to playing card games: alphabet go fish, alphabet memory, and a crazy run around the house looking for the right card game with constantly evolving rules that Rocket Boy made up on the spot. One day I’ll need to read some Calvin & Hobbes to him. He’ll appreciate Calvinball.
That took us to 3:00 and I officially called it day. On went PBS for some afternoon shows and I promptly fell asleep on the couch as Rocket Boy climbed and bounced around me. Tonight I must go to sleep at a decent hour. We did fine today, but would have done better had I not been so tired.
Back to normal
This was the first complete school day of the week. We both needed to ease into it. We started the day (after a Choose & Do playing Mousetrap) by going through some of the worksheets in our basic curriculum book. We did first sounds, last sounds. As usual Rocket Boy was getting mighty frustrated with his letter formation. I decided to try an altogether different tactic. He told me his favorite lower case letter is “n” so I capitalized on that to remind him that if he’s really good at n that means he can easily write all the letters that are part of the n family. “Letters don’t have families!” So I spent a long, long time explaining how n, m, r, and h are all related in shape. That blew his mind a bit and we spent a good amount of time using the dry erase board morphing those letters into one another. We did the same with o, l, and v. I was surprised and impressed at how well he took to understanding the lowercase when I approached it that way. Tonight I might make up a few of my own worksheets that have him writing the letter families.
As a sideways strategy towards strengthening his writing confidence, we did an exercise from the Drawing With Children book that involves some shape copying. If we do those regularly I think he will get a little more hand control or at least we will be able to identify what stoke or movement is causing him trouble. Usually he as fun with those exercises, but this time he was getting frustrated with himself. Each time I asked him to check back with the original and evaluate his work he got upset at his marks. He clearly had had enough of writing (it was lunchtime).
While he was waiting for lunch to be ready he did a few addition worksheets and a counting by 5s sheet. After a delicious lunch (pirogue, applesauce (for him not me), and steamed broccoli tossed in butter and garlic) we had a little quiet reading time – Christmas at Mud Flat and a book about a cat on moving day, but I am just that lazy that I won’t go in to the other room to confirm the title. At that point I was seriously beat. It was all I could to stay awake. No more cozy books on the couch. We moved on to playing card games: alphabet go fish, alphabet memory, and a crazy run around the house looking for the right card game with constantly evolving rules that Rocket Boy made up on the spot. One day I’ll need to read some Calvin & Hobbes to him. He’ll appreciate Calvinball.
That took us to 3:00 and I officially called it day. On went PBS for some afternoon shows and I promptly fell asleep on the couch as Rocket Boy climbed and bounced around me. Tonight I must go to sleep at a decent hour. We did fine today, but would have done better had I not been so tired.
A New President is the Best Lesson of All
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Today is the big day, the day our country can finally start over. Definitely not the day for school as usual, well at least not entirely. His first activity was choose & do – computer this time. I have computer limited to Tuesdays and Thursdays or he would want it all the time. Luckily the PBS Kids site has lots of games that involve reading and math skills. After that we did reading and writing – he’s still struggling with forming letters, getting very frustrated with it, but I am happy to say his word recognition is growing by the day. We also did a lesson on government, complete with a fun journal exercise where we imagined what would happen if dogs ran the government. It was a very silly way to get across the idea of how lawmakers make laws in the interest of the people they represent. I was considering putting in a Schoolhouse Rocks video, but it was time to go.
We left to go to the NY Explorers play space where they were having a kid friendly Inauguration watching party. Rocket Boy listened to about half of it but then got sucked into playing. He found a kid who nearly perfectly matched him in play style, so they played happily while we watched more of the coverage.
Afterwards we got lunch nearby and by that time it was time for Rocket Boy and Hypersteve to head off for chess and playing all afternoon while I got a few hours to myself. Chess was a no go – the library changed the day from Tuesday to Thursday without updating the website, but they got to have a mad snowball fight in the park before heading home. Hypersteve even took it up on himself to work though a few pages of an addition workbook.
Today is the big day, the day our country can finally start over. Definitely not the day for school as usual, well at least not entirely. His first activity was choose & do – computer this time. I have computer limited to Tuesdays and Thursdays or he would want it all the time. Luckily the PBS Kids site has lots of games that involve reading and math skills. After that we did reading and writing – he’s still struggling with forming letters, getting very frustrated with it, but I am happy to say his word recognition is growing by the day. We also did a lesson on government, complete with a fun journal exercise where we imagined what would happen if dogs ran the government. It was a very silly way to get across the idea of how lawmakers make laws in the interest of the people they represent. I was considering putting in a Schoolhouse Rocks video, but it was time to go.
We left to go to the NY Explorers play space where they were having a kid friendly Inauguration watching party. Rocket Boy listened to about half of it but then got sucked into playing. He found a kid who nearly perfectly matched him in play style, so they played happily while we watched more of the coverage.
Afterwards we got lunch nearby and by that time it was time for Rocket Boy and Hypersteve to head off for chess and playing all afternoon while I got a few hours to myself. Chess was a no go – the library changed the day from Tuesday to Thursday without updating the website, but they got to have a mad snowball fight in the park before heading home. Hypersteve even took it up on himself to work though a few pages of an addition workbook.
Volunteering on MLK day
Monday January 19, 2009
Martin Luther King Jr Day. Since we are homeschooling and since Hypersteve is a freelancer, days off don’t really mean much. In fact I had thought to ignore the holiday and go on with school as usual, even though all the public schools are closed, of course I would spend a little extra time on social studies with a nice discussion about Martin Luther King Jr. We started the day with some basic letter writing practice and some word recognition. As we worked I had NPR on in the background. They were talking almost entirely about Obama’s call that this should be a national day of service (Congress declared MLK day a day of service 7 years ago, but with. I used to do a lot of volunteer work back when I was a kid and would like to help Rocket Boy get into the same habit. Without the time limitations of regular school, we can schedule it in pretty easily. Anyway, it was still early in the day so I decided to do a quick search for volunteer opportunities that might be appropriate for a 6 year old. That’s a pretty tall order. It has to be meaningful for him but it also has to be significant to the organization. I used to lead a lot of volunteer groups and know that unskilled volunteers are almost as much of a liability as a help.
We found Children for Children, a group connects kid volunteers with agencies. They were having a service extravaganza of a NYC high school. It sounded perfect. I declared a quasi-school day.
We got to the high school and there were hundreds of kids and about a dozen service projects – everything from writing birthday cards for seniors at a nursing home, to decorating and packing bags of books to go to underserved schools. Some of the projects were kind of inane, but we found a group making blankets for a shelter – those silly no-sew fleece blankets which are basically two pieces of fleece, with the edges cut into small strips and the strips knotted together – it was right up our alley. They had a group crocheting too, and Rocket Boy really wanted to do that, but they didn’t have enough hooks.
It was great, we worked for a few hours, we talked about what volunteering is and why it is important, and we talked about civil rights and MLK.
Not reading, writing, and arithmetic, but a really productive fulfilling day.
Martin Luther King Jr Day. Since we are homeschooling and since Hypersteve is a freelancer, days off don’t really mean much. In fact I had thought to ignore the holiday and go on with school as usual, even though all the public schools are closed, of course I would spend a little extra time on social studies with a nice discussion about Martin Luther King Jr. We started the day with some basic letter writing practice and some word recognition. As we worked I had NPR on in the background. They were talking almost entirely about Obama’s call that this should be a national day of service (Congress declared MLK day a day of service 7 years ago, but with. I used to do a lot of volunteer work back when I was a kid and would like to help Rocket Boy get into the same habit. Without the time limitations of regular school, we can schedule it in pretty easily. Anyway, it was still early in the day so I decided to do a quick search for volunteer opportunities that might be appropriate for a 6 year old. That’s a pretty tall order. It has to be meaningful for him but it also has to be significant to the organization. I used to lead a lot of volunteer groups and know that unskilled volunteers are almost as much of a liability as a help.
We found Children for Children, a group connects kid volunteers with agencies. They were having a service extravaganza of a NYC high school. It sounded perfect. I declared a quasi-school day.
We got to the high school and there were hundreds of kids and about a dozen service projects – everything from writing birthday cards for seniors at a nursing home, to decorating and packing bags of books to go to underserved schools. Some of the projects were kind of inane, but we found a group making blankets for a shelter – those silly no-sew fleece blankets which are basically two pieces of fleece, with the edges cut into small strips and the strips knotted together – it was right up our alley. They had a group crocheting too, and Rocket Boy really wanted to do that, but they didn’t have enough hooks.
It was great, we worked for a few hours, we talked about what volunteering is and why it is important, and we talked about civil rights and MLK.
Not reading, writing, and arithmetic, but a really productive fulfilling day.
Friday, January 16, 2009
All Reading & the Magic of Reverse Psychology
Friday January 16, 2009
I have to say, I love that home schooling keeps us from having to rush out the door every day to get to school on time. Getting Rocket Boy out the door has always been a bone of contention, especially to go to school, which he never liked.
Mornings are so much more relaxed now. Rocket Boy gets up and watches PBS for a while. Either Steve or I set him up with breakfast. I sleep another hour or just have a leisurely start of my day. We start at 9 and inevitably Rocket Boy chooses to have Choose & Do time – any game, book, or activity of his choice. Today, yet again he asked to play Scooby Do’s Haunted House Game. It’s not in the least educational, but it does help him transition into official school time.
After that, we sat down for writing time. I’d love for Rocket Boy to be up for journaling, but he is simply not comfortable with writing. Actually this makes me realize I never addressed in any of my logs what grade I’m teaching. Well it’s a little of K and a lot of 1st grade, and then some more advanced stuff, depending on his strengths. I’m actually using a Learning At Home 1st Grade book as my guide, just to make sure I’m not missing anything. There are a few bits he’s just not ready for (writing) and a bunch that he is way beyond. I know there are lots of curriculums out there I could be using, but to be quite honest, there are too many choices and it makes my head swim to try to sort them out. My time is pretty limited since I’m full on with him for so much of the day. By the time he’s in bed it’s 8:30 or 9 and I’ve only got a couple of hours left in me to clean house and do all the things I need to do otherwise. Not much time left for the massive amounts of reading and analysis that would go into finding the right curriculum. Besides he’s got one foot in either grade, so we’re going to have to customize anything we get anyway.
So on to writing. It makes him extremely frustrated, complete with anxious panting. We focused on the fundamentals of letter formation, again with me having him critique himself – i.e. write this letter 5 times and pick out the best one and tell me why. We went through the alphabet a number of times and aging he got frustrated at my trying to help him hold his pencil a little differently. I encouraged, I hugged, and I reminded him that when he was a baby he didn’t suddenly get up and walk – he fell a whole bunch. That morphed into silliness about letters tripping and falling until he was all smiles. We tried writing some more but the smile did not last. Then I pulled out the good old reverse psychology. “No! There is *no * way you’ll be able to write a perfect “E” I just don’t believe it!” It worked like a charm. Aside form the alphabet practice we went over vowels vs. consonants, and long sounds vs. short sounds.
Rocket Boy and his dad spent yesterday afternoon playing chess at the library and got a nice pile of books, so we spent another big chunk of time reading, with Rocket Boy reading to me as much as he could. We made a collection of new words for him to add to his word box (16 more today) and used the words to practice more letter formation, vowel identification, and long vs. short sounds. Somehow the earlier lesson folded into this one quite gracefully.
After that it was time for his first tennis lesson (which he loved) and we called it a day.
Over dinner one thing we discussed was adding more science. We are all big fans of Radio Lab and Science Friday. So we talked about having our very own Science Friday. He charmingly asked if we could be on the radio too. It occurred to me that it might be fun to make our own home schooling science pod cast. I have the digital equipment, a little radio knowledge, and I have friends with lots of know how (hi Sally!) It might be a worthwhile project. Now I just have to find a spare second to think it through. This new lifestyle makes me very happy, but extremely tired. I’m used to being the energizer bunny, always ready to continue when others are dropping onto the couch. My energy levels the past few weeks have been lousy. Being full time mom, with Hypersteve around less (he’s doing far more work to make up for me not working) is exhausting in a way I can’t quite comprehend. It has put me on a de-cluttering kick because if there’s less stuff in my life there’s less I have to keep track of or clean. Right now I need less responsibility, not more. I barely have time to do all the basic housework as it is, much less carve out time for special projects which I have stacked and waiting in the wings. But I shouldn’t complain. I figure after a few weeks we’ll get into a nice rhythm and I’ll be able to regulate my sleep better. Even with my erratic sleep and the pains of adjusting to a new lifestyle, I find we are all just plain happier.
I have to say, I love that home schooling keeps us from having to rush out the door every day to get to school on time. Getting Rocket Boy out the door has always been a bone of contention, especially to go to school, which he never liked.
Mornings are so much more relaxed now. Rocket Boy gets up and watches PBS for a while. Either Steve or I set him up with breakfast. I sleep another hour or just have a leisurely start of my day. We start at 9 and inevitably Rocket Boy chooses to have Choose & Do time – any game, book, or activity of his choice. Today, yet again he asked to play Scooby Do’s Haunted House Game. It’s not in the least educational, but it does help him transition into official school time.
After that, we sat down for writing time. I’d love for Rocket Boy to be up for journaling, but he is simply not comfortable with writing. Actually this makes me realize I never addressed in any of my logs what grade I’m teaching. Well it’s a little of K and a lot of 1st grade, and then some more advanced stuff, depending on his strengths. I’m actually using a Learning At Home 1st Grade book as my guide, just to make sure I’m not missing anything. There are a few bits he’s just not ready for (writing) and a bunch that he is way beyond. I know there are lots of curriculums out there I could be using, but to be quite honest, there are too many choices and it makes my head swim to try to sort them out. My time is pretty limited since I’m full on with him for so much of the day. By the time he’s in bed it’s 8:30 or 9 and I’ve only got a couple of hours left in me to clean house and do all the things I need to do otherwise. Not much time left for the massive amounts of reading and analysis that would go into finding the right curriculum. Besides he’s got one foot in either grade, so we’re going to have to customize anything we get anyway.
So on to writing. It makes him extremely frustrated, complete with anxious panting. We focused on the fundamentals of letter formation, again with me having him critique himself – i.e. write this letter 5 times and pick out the best one and tell me why. We went through the alphabet a number of times and aging he got frustrated at my trying to help him hold his pencil a little differently. I encouraged, I hugged, and I reminded him that when he was a baby he didn’t suddenly get up and walk – he fell a whole bunch. That morphed into silliness about letters tripping and falling until he was all smiles. We tried writing some more but the smile did not last. Then I pulled out the good old reverse psychology. “No! There is *no * way you’ll be able to write a perfect “E” I just don’t believe it!” It worked like a charm. Aside form the alphabet practice we went over vowels vs. consonants, and long sounds vs. short sounds.
Rocket Boy and his dad spent yesterday afternoon playing chess at the library and got a nice pile of books, so we spent another big chunk of time reading, with Rocket Boy reading to me as much as he could. We made a collection of new words for him to add to his word box (16 more today) and used the words to practice more letter formation, vowel identification, and long vs. short sounds. Somehow the earlier lesson folded into this one quite gracefully.
After that it was time for his first tennis lesson (which he loved) and we called it a day.
Over dinner one thing we discussed was adding more science. We are all big fans of Radio Lab and Science Friday. So we talked about having our very own Science Friday. He charmingly asked if we could be on the radio too. It occurred to me that it might be fun to make our own home schooling science pod cast. I have the digital equipment, a little radio knowledge, and I have friends with lots of know how (hi Sally!) It might be a worthwhile project. Now I just have to find a spare second to think it through. This new lifestyle makes me very happy, but extremely tired. I’m used to being the energizer bunny, always ready to continue when others are dropping onto the couch. My energy levels the past few weeks have been lousy. Being full time mom, with Hypersteve around less (he’s doing far more work to make up for me not working) is exhausting in a way I can’t quite comprehend. It has put me on a de-cluttering kick because if there’s less stuff in my life there’s less I have to keep track of or clean. Right now I need less responsibility, not more. I barely have time to do all the basic housework as it is, much less carve out time for special projects which I have stacked and waiting in the wings. But I shouldn’t complain. I figure after a few weeks we’ll get into a nice rhythm and I’ll be able to regulate my sleep better. Even with my erratic sleep and the pains of adjusting to a new lifestyle, I find we are all just plain happier.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ecosystems and butterflies, two by two
Thursday January 15, 2009
Yawn . . . oh excuse me. Last night was date night, which was fabulous. I love going to a venerable NYC institution. It makes me feel like I’m not a complete shut-in. Of course today I’m sleepy because of it – not so much earlier in the day, but now that Rocket Boy’s school day is over and he’s out for Thursday afternoon daddy time, boy am I dragging.
I had, what I was thinking of as a slow day, but in reality it was just fine. Our start time is a pretty rigid 9 am, but we’ve ended anywhere from 2:30 to dinnertime. If Rocket Boy is excited and on a roll, I just keep going with him. If he’s losing it, well I call the school day done. Luckily for me he does not have a firm grasp of telling time so I can really milk it when I want.
Today was largely science and art. We spent the morning on habitats and ecosystems, including a neat little interactive dot-to-dot at the Ology web site. Instead of connecting to the next number, you connect to the next item in the food chain. Rocket Boy couldn’t get enough. On almost each ecosystem, butterflies were art of the system so we went on a butterfly tangent and did some art. I printed out a line drawing of a monarch then sat the boy down at Hypersteve’s light box to trace it. We talked about composition and tilted the paper so the butterfly would appear to be entering the page angled from the bottom left. While he traced, I read to Rocket Boy all about monarchs and what they eat, how they migrate, and about metamorphosis. It took him forever to trace the whole thing, but I think it’s a good thing. It’s helping him learn more fine motor control of a pencil. Hopefully that kind of careful mark making will help him exert more control when it comes to writing. I’m actually thinking that I need to print out a writing sheet that I can put on the light box for him. He seems to really like it and concentrates well while doing it. Besides we get to hang out in the studio with Hypersteve, which makes us all happy.
After the hour long tracing extravaganza (he really sat for an hour!) we compared the angled tracing to the straight on shot and talked more about composition. Then we went back to the living room to color. I pulled out all sorts of colored pencils in various shades of yellow, orange, brown, and red. I had him test each color on a new sheet of paper, then test what happens when you blend certain colors. His desk has some bumpy bits and he realized that when you rub the pencil over those spots, the texture comes right through. He got excited and ran around the house trying out textures. His favorite was the wood grain from the laminate floors. For faux wood they have lots of wood grain texture, in fact probably more texture than my actual wood floors have with their coats and coats of polyurethane. After a while we sat and colored together. He put me in charge of black – mostly because there is a lot of intricate black around lots of little dots. It would have driven him crazy to do that part. He did all the orangish bits. I have to say, it’s a beautiful collaboration.
Then came lunch. Rocket Boy said he wanted to rest so we climbed on the couch and read the three stories from the easy reader “Eek! Stories to Make You Shriek” and we read a silly barnyard yarn called “Bob.” The stories nearly drained all the energy out of me. I was so sleepy I barely finished my sentences.
I had to move around or I was doomed, I also needed some outside help. Enter Schoolhouse Rocks. I put n the number two song and Rocket Boy and I went through a worksheet with 1-100 printed on it, circling all the even numbers. Then I tried to explain the concept of counting by twos. I don’t think I handled it so well, even with telling the story of Noah’s Ark and doing a drawing activity. I had him draw his family with all our hands in the air. Then I had him count the people, then count the hands, then count by twos pointing at each body but indicating the number of hands. We kept adding people to the paper. He had a blast adding more people and counting, but I still don’t think he really got it. I have to look into how to introduce counting by twos. 5s and 10s seem so much easier since I can use coins.
At that point it was three and time for Hypersteve to take Rocket Boy to chess club, where they are right this minute.
Yawn . . . oh excuse me. Last night was date night, which was fabulous. I love going to a venerable NYC institution. It makes me feel like I’m not a complete shut-in. Of course today I’m sleepy because of it – not so much earlier in the day, but now that Rocket Boy’s school day is over and he’s out for Thursday afternoon daddy time, boy am I dragging.
I had, what I was thinking of as a slow day, but in reality it was just fine. Our start time is a pretty rigid 9 am, but we’ve ended anywhere from 2:30 to dinnertime. If Rocket Boy is excited and on a roll, I just keep going with him. If he’s losing it, well I call the school day done. Luckily for me he does not have a firm grasp of telling time so I can really milk it when I want.
Today was largely science and art. We spent the morning on habitats and ecosystems, including a neat little interactive dot-to-dot at the Ology web site. Instead of connecting to the next number, you connect to the next item in the food chain. Rocket Boy couldn’t get enough. On almost each ecosystem, butterflies were art of the system so we went on a butterfly tangent and did some art. I printed out a line drawing of a monarch then sat the boy down at Hypersteve’s light box to trace it. We talked about composition and tilted the paper so the butterfly would appear to be entering the page angled from the bottom left. While he traced, I read to Rocket Boy all about monarchs and what they eat, how they migrate, and about metamorphosis. It took him forever to trace the whole thing, but I think it’s a good thing. It’s helping him learn more fine motor control of a pencil. Hopefully that kind of careful mark making will help him exert more control when it comes to writing. I’m actually thinking that I need to print out a writing sheet that I can put on the light box for him. He seems to really like it and concentrates well while doing it. Besides we get to hang out in the studio with Hypersteve, which makes us all happy.
After the hour long tracing extravaganza (he really sat for an hour!) we compared the angled tracing to the straight on shot and talked more about composition. Then we went back to the living room to color. I pulled out all sorts of colored pencils in various shades of yellow, orange, brown, and red. I had him test each color on a new sheet of paper, then test what happens when you blend certain colors. His desk has some bumpy bits and he realized that when you rub the pencil over those spots, the texture comes right through. He got excited and ran around the house trying out textures. His favorite was the wood grain from the laminate floors. For faux wood they have lots of wood grain texture, in fact probably more texture than my actual wood floors have with their coats and coats of polyurethane. After a while we sat and colored together. He put me in charge of black – mostly because there is a lot of intricate black around lots of little dots. It would have driven him crazy to do that part. He did all the orangish bits. I have to say, it’s a beautiful collaboration.
Then came lunch. Rocket Boy said he wanted to rest so we climbed on the couch and read the three stories from the easy reader “Eek! Stories to Make You Shriek” and we read a silly barnyard yarn called “Bob.” The stories nearly drained all the energy out of me. I was so sleepy I barely finished my sentences.
I had to move around or I was doomed, I also needed some outside help. Enter Schoolhouse Rocks. I put n the number two song and Rocket Boy and I went through a worksheet with 1-100 printed on it, circling all the even numbers. Then I tried to explain the concept of counting by twos. I don’t think I handled it so well, even with telling the story of Noah’s Ark and doing a drawing activity. I had him draw his family with all our hands in the air. Then I had him count the people, then count the hands, then count by twos pointing at each body but indicating the number of hands. We kept adding people to the paper. He had a blast adding more people and counting, but I still don’t think he really got it. I have to look into how to introduce counting by twos. 5s and 10s seem so much easier since I can use coins.
At that point it was three and time for Hypersteve to take Rocket Boy to chess club, where they are right this minute.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Reading & Writing Basics
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Whoo hoo, the school day is over! In 2 hours the babysitter will be here. In that time I have to shower, get dressed (very warmly as we have to brave the teens. Even after 4 years in Syracuse I don’t like it when it’s below 20. I’ll happily take the snow, but keep the teens and single digit temps, kthnx), make dinner, replace the cat litter, put away three loads of laundry, log in the schoolwork we did today, and vacuum Rocket Boy’s room and the living room. Phew.
Date night here we come!
Today Rocket Boy and I stuck to the basics of reading and math. Rocket Boy was definitely not himself – seeming tired and rubbing his eyes a lot. It was a good day to cuddle on the couch and read lots of stories. He even asked for some rest time! We read three It was a Dark and Silly Night stories from the Little Lit collection, Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats, and an all-time favorite Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. I have to say I am a bit annoyed at Lyle, maybe it’s because we’ve also been reading a lot of Madeline lately and I am more than a bit over reading about over privledged people. At least Lyle and most of the characters in the book are not entitled snobs. We did all your basic reading comprehension questions and did a bit of artwork based on Lyle. The crocodile is trying to win over a skittish cat by giving her his most toothsome smile, which only terrifies her. Rocket Boy did a drawing of what the cat perceived when Lyle smiled – all teeth. I had him read to me as much as he could – about 6 pages before he got whiny and started rubbing his eyes again. Not bad since there is a decent amount of text on each page. We also used Lyle for the basis of adding more words to our word box – 14 more today. Rocket Boy is still getting frustrated at writing, but he’s so excited about new words that it keeps him on track. We turned words into math by creating a line graph so we can chart how many words he earns each day. So far he has 44 in his box.
Since the writing really tried him, we took a break to play letter go fish – I have deck that has upper and lower case letters to match. We then used the deck to do a word family exercise. One of today’s words is cat, I pulled out the “a” and the “t” then we went through the rest of the deck adding new letters in front. Each time we made a real word, Rocket Boy wrote it in his notebook and drew a picture. Then we made up a cute little story about a fat cat mistaking a rat for a mat and sitting on him. Writing was still hard for him, but since the “a” and the “t” were consistent with each word, it did go easier than yesterday with the 26 completely different words. I have to find new ways to bring more writing into the day and to make it more fun. If I can inject it in fun small doses, he’ll build the confidence he’s lacking.
We ended the day with some math – counting by 5s and by 10s – including playing the Schoolhouse Rock 5 song over and over again. It will take a while for him to get the 5s, but we’re on our way. I’d reinforce the lesson with nickles, but we turned them all in to the bank the other day.
Whoo hoo, the school day is over! In 2 hours the babysitter will be here. In that time I have to shower, get dressed (very warmly as we have to brave the teens. Even after 4 years in Syracuse I don’t like it when it’s below 20. I’ll happily take the snow, but keep the teens and single digit temps, kthnx), make dinner, replace the cat litter, put away three loads of laundry, log in the schoolwork we did today, and vacuum Rocket Boy’s room and the living room. Phew.
Date night here we come!
Today Rocket Boy and I stuck to the basics of reading and math. Rocket Boy was definitely not himself – seeming tired and rubbing his eyes a lot. It was a good day to cuddle on the couch and read lots of stories. He even asked for some rest time! We read three It was a Dark and Silly Night stories from the Little Lit collection, Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats, and an all-time favorite Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. I have to say I am a bit annoyed at Lyle, maybe it’s because we’ve also been reading a lot of Madeline lately and I am more than a bit over reading about over privledged people. At least Lyle and most of the characters in the book are not entitled snobs. We did all your basic reading comprehension questions and did a bit of artwork based on Lyle. The crocodile is trying to win over a skittish cat by giving her his most toothsome smile, which only terrifies her. Rocket Boy did a drawing of what the cat perceived when Lyle smiled – all teeth. I had him read to me as much as he could – about 6 pages before he got whiny and started rubbing his eyes again. Not bad since there is a decent amount of text on each page. We also used Lyle for the basis of adding more words to our word box – 14 more today. Rocket Boy is still getting frustrated at writing, but he’s so excited about new words that it keeps him on track. We turned words into math by creating a line graph so we can chart how many words he earns each day. So far he has 44 in his box.
Since the writing really tried him, we took a break to play letter go fish – I have deck that has upper and lower case letters to match. We then used the deck to do a word family exercise. One of today’s words is cat, I pulled out the “a” and the “t” then we went through the rest of the deck adding new letters in front. Each time we made a real word, Rocket Boy wrote it in his notebook and drew a picture. Then we made up a cute little story about a fat cat mistaking a rat for a mat and sitting on him. Writing was still hard for him, but since the “a” and the “t” were consistent with each word, it did go easier than yesterday with the 26 completely different words. I have to find new ways to bring more writing into the day and to make it more fun. If I can inject it in fun small doses, he’ll build the confidence he’s lacking.
We ended the day with some math – counting by 5s and by 10s – including playing the Schoolhouse Rock 5 song over and over again. It will take a while for him to get the 5s, but we’re on our way. I’d reinforce the lesson with nickles, but we turned them all in to the bank the other day.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
G is for Groceries
January 13, 2009
I was up way too late last night cleaning house, but at least all the holiday stuff is put away and one of the cabinets in the kitchen does not look like a schizophrenic lives here. Of course that means that today I am feeling that there’s not enough coffee in the house to make me feel awake and Rocket Boy is full of his usual energy.
Since I’m not working I’m fully embracing the role of stay at home wife and home school teaching mom. That means all the childcare and all the housework fall to me. Hypersteve and I need to work out a new division of labor. Since he’s the only earner, he’s working a little extra these days and doing less of house stuff. The housework shouldn’t be only my job, but I need to be shouldering more of it we just have to sort out which more of it I do, what he still does, and what we outsource so I don’t stay up till 1 am cleaning, leaving me ill equipped to handle a day of full energy Rocket Boy.
Even so the day is moving nicely. We started out with choose & do – mousetrap, the game went quickly this time, thank goodness. Then on to science – we used the Museum of Natural History’s ology site to do all sorts of science activities – mainly paleontology. Rocket Boy did really well with a logic game sorting out the sedimentary rock layers and the fossils found within it. Next we did some activities with graphs and charts.
That took us through most of our morning. I have desperately needed to get some grocery shopping done, so I will integrate that into today’s lesson. To prep we played an alphabet game, going through alphabet cards and putting them in the right order. He was bursting with energy so in between each letter of the alphabet I had him run a sprint from one side of the house to the other (about 120’ each time). That calmed him a bit. Then we tried to make a list of the items that we could find in the store. Writing is a struggle for him. After a few words his attention really begins to wane. I have to be fully on him and helping with every single letter. What should have been a few minutes of writing turned into a much longer struggle. Finally we were off to Fairway, a set of alphabet cards in hand. Each time we added an item he had to identify its first letter, then tell me where in the alphabet to find that letter. If he did both correctly he won the card.
It was the longest grocery shopping trip ever.
I was up way too late last night cleaning house, but at least all the holiday stuff is put away and one of the cabinets in the kitchen does not look like a schizophrenic lives here. Of course that means that today I am feeling that there’s not enough coffee in the house to make me feel awake and Rocket Boy is full of his usual energy.
Since I’m not working I’m fully embracing the role of stay at home wife and home school teaching mom. That means all the childcare and all the housework fall to me. Hypersteve and I need to work out a new division of labor. Since he’s the only earner, he’s working a little extra these days and doing less of house stuff. The housework shouldn’t be only my job, but I need to be shouldering more of it we just have to sort out which more of it I do, what he still does, and what we outsource so I don’t stay up till 1 am cleaning, leaving me ill equipped to handle a day of full energy Rocket Boy.
Even so the day is moving nicely. We started out with choose & do – mousetrap, the game went quickly this time, thank goodness. Then on to science – we used the Museum of Natural History’s ology site to do all sorts of science activities – mainly paleontology. Rocket Boy did really well with a logic game sorting out the sedimentary rock layers and the fossils found within it. Next we did some activities with graphs and charts.
That took us through most of our morning. I have desperately needed to get some grocery shopping done, so I will integrate that into today’s lesson. To prep we played an alphabet game, going through alphabet cards and putting them in the right order. He was bursting with energy so in between each letter of the alphabet I had him run a sprint from one side of the house to the other (about 120’ each time). That calmed him a bit. Then we tried to make a list of the items that we could find in the store. Writing is a struggle for him. After a few words his attention really begins to wane. I have to be fully on him and helping with every single letter. What should have been a few minutes of writing turned into a much longer struggle. Finally we were off to Fairway, a set of alphabet cards in hand. Each time we added an item he had to identify its first letter, then tell me where in the alphabet to find that letter. If he did both correctly he won the card.
It was the longest grocery shopping trip ever.
Money Monday
January 12, 2009
This is about Monday, only I’m writing it on Tuesday and I can’t quite remember any of it anymore.
We did lots of alphabet work today – Rocket Boy sat and wrote out letters more times than I thought possible. He’s doing this annoying thing where he purposefully does something exaggeratedly wrong in an attempt to clown around – a “P” with a giant loop, an “H” with a crazy curly leg. It could be fun, except he’s not really doing the letters correctly. I wouldn’t mind some clowning if he could show me his proficiency first. I suspect it’s a coping mechanism. He doesn’t really know how to do it so he clowns. My correcting him only makes him act out more so I countered it by letting him do an alphabet as he saw fit, then I had him correct his own work, marking an x next to the letters that were wrong. Next I had him rewrite those letters. I’m not sure if it really worked, but if I let him turn a critical eye on his own work, I’d be able to judge if he knows correct letter formation or if he’s having some recognition problem. Turns out he knows what’s wrong. Making the judgment call himself might motivate him better.
Next it was math and money time. We emptied out the two quart mason jars full of coins onto the table then sorted them, talking about cents and how many make up a dollar. We talked about the kinds of coins, the presidents, and even got to compare some foreign coins. Somehow euros and Canadian ended up in the jar. I need to dig up the other foreign coins we have, but I can’t imagine where they are now. We had a big talk about bartering and the development of money when it became impractical to walk around with three cows in your wallet (giggles galore). Next was the big field trip to the bank. We opened a passbook savings account for Rocket Boy, depositing all the coins and the birthday/Christmas money he got. We have another account for him for college, but it is an investment account that took a big hit recently. Things will bounce back in time for him to go to college, but in the meantime I felt perfectly fine setting up an account for him that is fully liquid. TD bank is extremely kid friendly – handing out crayons, an activity book, and a piggy bank to their new customer.
Then we met Hypersteve for lunch. We got back home with only about an hour of time left. I pulled out alphabet cards and we played a highly managed version of Go Fish in which we asked “Do you have the letter that comes after/before . . .” we need to strengthen his letter order recognition. He still has to recite the alphabet to himself to know what goes next. I’m looking for more ways to get him used to knowing that N follows M without having to sing the song every time.
I think we called it a day after that, or at least I can’t remember anything else we did.
At least the field trip to the bank made an impression.
This is about Monday, only I’m writing it on Tuesday and I can’t quite remember any of it anymore.
We did lots of alphabet work today – Rocket Boy sat and wrote out letters more times than I thought possible. He’s doing this annoying thing where he purposefully does something exaggeratedly wrong in an attempt to clown around – a “P” with a giant loop, an “H” with a crazy curly leg. It could be fun, except he’s not really doing the letters correctly. I wouldn’t mind some clowning if he could show me his proficiency first. I suspect it’s a coping mechanism. He doesn’t really know how to do it so he clowns. My correcting him only makes him act out more so I countered it by letting him do an alphabet as he saw fit, then I had him correct his own work, marking an x next to the letters that were wrong. Next I had him rewrite those letters. I’m not sure if it really worked, but if I let him turn a critical eye on his own work, I’d be able to judge if he knows correct letter formation or if he’s having some recognition problem. Turns out he knows what’s wrong. Making the judgment call himself might motivate him better.
Next it was math and money time. We emptied out the two quart mason jars full of coins onto the table then sorted them, talking about cents and how many make up a dollar. We talked about the kinds of coins, the presidents, and even got to compare some foreign coins. Somehow euros and Canadian ended up in the jar. I need to dig up the other foreign coins we have, but I can’t imagine where they are now. We had a big talk about bartering and the development of money when it became impractical to walk around with three cows in your wallet (giggles galore). Next was the big field trip to the bank. We opened a passbook savings account for Rocket Boy, depositing all the coins and the birthday/Christmas money he got. We have another account for him for college, but it is an investment account that took a big hit recently. Things will bounce back in time for him to go to college, but in the meantime I felt perfectly fine setting up an account for him that is fully liquid. TD bank is extremely kid friendly – handing out crayons, an activity book, and a piggy bank to their new customer.
Then we met Hypersteve for lunch. We got back home with only about an hour of time left. I pulled out alphabet cards and we played a highly managed version of Go Fish in which we asked “Do you have the letter that comes after/before . . .” we need to strengthen his letter order recognition. He still has to recite the alphabet to himself to know what goes next. I’m looking for more ways to get him used to knowing that N follows M without having to sing the song every time.
I think we called it a day after that, or at least I can’t remember anything else we did.
At least the field trip to the bank made an impression.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
First (in our actual home) homeschool day
January 9, 2009
Home sweet home. Today is our first home schooling day at our actual home. The hard part was that the place was in disarray – our suitcases still unpacked, the tree still up, and the detritus of Steve home alone for a week all around. I tried very hard to ignore the disorder and do schoolwork as usual, but we just weren’t well set up.
I managed to eek out a few bursts of cleaning and organizing while I set him on a task, but we still have a long way to go. It was a little harder to keep him focused – after all his home is filled with all the cool new toys he got for the holidays, even so I still feel like we had a really productive day – with lots of reading and math. We added at least six more words to his word box based on Bedtime for Francis. We also had a really neat discussion about the reason for fairy and folk tales that was paired with reading The Changeling – a kids folktale we picked up when we were in Wales a couple of years ago.
While were adding to his word box, Rocket Boy started to get really antsy and downright bouncy – jumping on the couch or spinning around in between reading almost every word. He was at a point where he needed to change activities but was also so excited about adding words to his collection that we just needed to barrel through the rest of the story (or at least that page of the story).
It was time for hopping math. We made lily pads with numbers on them and laid them on the floor. I then called out questions and he had to hop to the right answer and then hop that many times. “What number comes after 3?” “What number is before 2?” What is 2+2?” He got the wiggles out and got lots of math practice in. We both really liked this game and I think I see many more lily pads in my future.
Home sweet home. Today is our first home schooling day at our actual home. The hard part was that the place was in disarray – our suitcases still unpacked, the tree still up, and the detritus of Steve home alone for a week all around. I tried very hard to ignore the disorder and do schoolwork as usual, but we just weren’t well set up.
I managed to eek out a few bursts of cleaning and organizing while I set him on a task, but we still have a long way to go. It was a little harder to keep him focused – after all his home is filled with all the cool new toys he got for the holidays, even so I still feel like we had a really productive day – with lots of reading and math. We added at least six more words to his word box based on Bedtime for Francis. We also had a really neat discussion about the reason for fairy and folk tales that was paired with reading The Changeling – a kids folktale we picked up when we were in Wales a couple of years ago.
While were adding to his word box, Rocket Boy started to get really antsy and downright bouncy – jumping on the couch or spinning around in between reading almost every word. He was at a point where he needed to change activities but was also so excited about adding words to his collection that we just needed to barrel through the rest of the story (or at least that page of the story).
It was time for hopping math. We made lily pads with numbers on them and laid them on the floor. I then called out questions and he had to hop to the right answer and then hop that many times. “What number comes after 3?” “What number is before 2?” What is 2+2?” He got the wiggles out and got lots of math practice in. We both really liked this game and I think I see many more lily pads in my future.
Homeschooling in the Car
January 8, 2008
Traveling
In the beginning of 2008 I took a 9-6 Mon-Fri job. It is the first time I had had a traditional schedule in over 10 years. In the last decade I have either run my own business or been in grad school. The one 40 hour a week job I did have was at my discretion. During some of that time I had RocketBoy in daycare or pre-school. We could come and go as we (mostly) pleased. I also worked my rear off, often working crazy hours, but at least I decided when to come and go. The same for my husband – he’s been a freelance artist for his entire working career. Needless to say, the workaday job only lasted a few months – it felt somehow undignified to have to ask someone for a day off or an adjustment to my hours.
I got the same feeling when we had RocketBoy in the public school. When we missed a day I got a call from the central office, notifying me that he was out and giving a stern warning that if he missed more than 10% of the school days he would not be eligible for promotion to the next grade. That’s reassuring if you’ve got a older kid who might be skipping school, but for a 6 year old it just feels a bit big brother-ish.
Why do I even mention this - because today we are homeschooling in the car as we drive from Maine to NYC. Sure it’s limited, but we were able to go through about 40 pages of a workbook covering all the basics. In addition we had all sorts of neat discussions about geography and weather. We read a couple of books and RocketBoy got to listen to a few stories on the iPod – greek mythology this time.
One thing I am very glad about is that neither of us get car sick.
Traveling
In the beginning of 2008 I took a 9-6 Mon-Fri job. It is the first time I had had a traditional schedule in over 10 years. In the last decade I have either run my own business or been in grad school. The one 40 hour a week job I did have was at my discretion. During some of that time I had RocketBoy in daycare or pre-school. We could come and go as we (mostly) pleased. I also worked my rear off, often working crazy hours, but at least I decided when to come and go. The same for my husband – he’s been a freelance artist for his entire working career. Needless to say, the workaday job only lasted a few months – it felt somehow undignified to have to ask someone for a day off or an adjustment to my hours.
I got the same feeling when we had RocketBoy in the public school. When we missed a day I got a call from the central office, notifying me that he was out and giving a stern warning that if he missed more than 10% of the school days he would not be eligible for promotion to the next grade. That’s reassuring if you’ve got a older kid who might be skipping school, but for a 6 year old it just feels a bit big brother-ish.
Why do I even mention this - because today we are homeschooling in the car as we drive from Maine to NYC. Sure it’s limited, but we were able to go through about 40 pages of a workbook covering all the basics. In addition we had all sorts of neat discussions about geography and weather. We read a couple of books and RocketBoy got to listen to a few stories on the iPod – greek mythology this time.
One thing I am very glad about is that neither of us get car sick.
Half Day & Packing
January 7, 2009
Homeschooling Day 3
I woke up early today, yet not feeling rested or motivated to take on a whole day of me and RocketBoy on our own. I think the 9am start time is great for us. It gives me the time I need to really get with it and RocketBoy happily gets some tv time. We’ve been so restrictive with the tv lately that I think giving him some regularly scheduled time to watch makes it less of a forbidden fruit. I’m even considering coordinating lessons with certain PBS favorites. I’ll happily let him watch Cyber Chase then use the concepts in a math lesson.
Today he was all about reading. We started out with “The Treasure” by Uri Schulevich (sp?). First we read very slowly, stopping at each word RocketBoy can read. He carefully printed each word on a cue card and placed it in his new “word box.” I think we added over a dozen today before his attention started to wane. Then we just sat and I read the story for the story’s sake – not a single interruption to define a word or ask him to read something. Then I asked him a ton of questions about the story – I am duly impressed with his comprehension – he was readily able to retell the major events and only faltered at the metaphorical bit. We then went on all sorts of tangents imagining what if. It was funs and silly and decidedly bouncy. In fact RocketBoy bounced away from his chair a few times so I decided a wiggle break was in order.
Earlier RocketBoy noticed that I had an activity book. It is actually the “School At Home” book for 1st grade with 36 weeks of lesson plans and activities. After moving his body, he asked to do some pages out of the book – really simple stuff for him – beginning sounds, a maze following alphabetical order, and lower case vs capital letters. I turned the lower case/capital one into a math lesson by having him count how many of each and making a graph.
After that he really wanted to plan UNO again. This time we did it with addition – he had to add the card placed to the card below it. He did really well.
Then we had luch and things broke down a bit. I got word from my father that he was on his way back and someone wanted to see about renting the place at 2. I needed to do some serious cleaning and packing in no time. In went Word World again, and again I had him pick out words and write them in his notebook. Then I had him pick his favorite and draw and write a story about it. This time it was watermelon. Leave it to RocketBoy to pick the longest word. He drew it growing from a seed to a full-grown fruit. He wrote a couple of words about it. I got us packed up.
After my dad got back it was mayhem. We were trying to get out by nightfall, but had lots to do to extract us from our home for the last 5 days. RocketBoy Really wanted to do social studies again – in the form of a giant United States floor puzzle. That was great except that he really did not want to do it alone which ended up frustrating us both a bit. We managed to do the puzzle in between me straightening up. Not the ideal situation. It really has to be either or. I think he was feeling a little lonely. It’s been just the three of us for quite a few days, mostly just him and me. I think he’ll be quite happy to be back in NYC with his dad and some playmates (must get aggressive about planning more playdates!)
We got ourselves into the car and on the road by 6 – after dark, but at least we ended up doing to the rive to town behind the snow plow. Slow, sure, but nice to have a freshly cleared road. At the hotel at 11, with a long dinner in between. The driving was slow snowy/icy. Home tomorrow, hopefully with better weather.
Homeschooling Day 3
I woke up early today, yet not feeling rested or motivated to take on a whole day of me and RocketBoy on our own. I think the 9am start time is great for us. It gives me the time I need to really get with it and RocketBoy happily gets some tv time. We’ve been so restrictive with the tv lately that I think giving him some regularly scheduled time to watch makes it less of a forbidden fruit. I’m even considering coordinating lessons with certain PBS favorites. I’ll happily let him watch Cyber Chase then use the concepts in a math lesson.
Today he was all about reading. We started out with “The Treasure” by Uri Schulevich (sp?). First we read very slowly, stopping at each word RocketBoy can read. He carefully printed each word on a cue card and placed it in his new “word box.” I think we added over a dozen today before his attention started to wane. Then we just sat and I read the story for the story’s sake – not a single interruption to define a word or ask him to read something. Then I asked him a ton of questions about the story – I am duly impressed with his comprehension – he was readily able to retell the major events and only faltered at the metaphorical bit. We then went on all sorts of tangents imagining what if. It was funs and silly and decidedly bouncy. In fact RocketBoy bounced away from his chair a few times so I decided a wiggle break was in order.
Earlier RocketBoy noticed that I had an activity book. It is actually the “School At Home” book for 1st grade with 36 weeks of lesson plans and activities. After moving his body, he asked to do some pages out of the book – really simple stuff for him – beginning sounds, a maze following alphabetical order, and lower case vs capital letters. I turned the lower case/capital one into a math lesson by having him count how many of each and making a graph.
After that he really wanted to plan UNO again. This time we did it with addition – he had to add the card placed to the card below it. He did really well.
Then we had luch and things broke down a bit. I got word from my father that he was on his way back and someone wanted to see about renting the place at 2. I needed to do some serious cleaning and packing in no time. In went Word World again, and again I had him pick out words and write them in his notebook. Then I had him pick his favorite and draw and write a story about it. This time it was watermelon. Leave it to RocketBoy to pick the longest word. He drew it growing from a seed to a full-grown fruit. He wrote a couple of words about it. I got us packed up.
After my dad got back it was mayhem. We were trying to get out by nightfall, but had lots to do to extract us from our home for the last 5 days. RocketBoy Really wanted to do social studies again – in the form of a giant United States floor puzzle. That was great except that he really did not want to do it alone which ended up frustrating us both a bit. We managed to do the puzzle in between me straightening up. Not the ideal situation. It really has to be either or. I think he was feeling a little lonely. It’s been just the three of us for quite a few days, mostly just him and me. I think he’ll be quite happy to be back in NYC with his dad and some playmates (must get aggressive about planning more playdates!)
We got ourselves into the car and on the road by 6 – after dark, but at least we ended up doing to the rive to town behind the snow plow. Slow, sure, but nice to have a freshly cleared road. At the hotel at 11, with a long dinner in between. The driving was slow snowy/icy. Home tomorrow, hopefully with better weather.
Field Trip Day
January 6, 2009
Homeschooling Day 2
The everlasting ick that I seem to have caught has morphed again. Over the weekend it was a sore throat and post-nasal drip, Monday digestive nastiness and joint aches later in the evening, and today I woke with my sinuses in misery. I’m not sure what RocketBoy learned yesterday, but I learned that if I could teach through a stomach bug, I could manage through anything.
He woke up at 7:15 filled with “I love you” and “when does school start?” This is a huge contrast to before we took him out of school when the first question out of his mouth was “Is today a school day?” followed by a groan when 5 times out of seven I answered “yes.” I had to remind him of the strict (made up yesterday when I couldn’t get out of bed) rule that school starts at 9 sharp. Not a minute before. Addendum to this rule: before school starts he has to be dressed, breakfast eaten, and teeth brushed. Also, he can watch TV before school as long as everything else gets done. I still shake my head in disbelief that some rules he just accepts as unquestionable and other he pushes till they break. This one he buys. I’ll happily take it.
First, RocketBoy wanted to go through his bag of treasures. We spread newspaper on the table and sorted his finds into groups: Lobster claws, mussels, barnacles, seaweed, rocks, seashells, pine cones, and sea urchin. We talked about each group in more detail and made lots of little observations (you’d think after all the lobster I’ve enjoyed, I would have noticed the hair-like fuzzy bits on the claws). We did not talk about overall beach nature and wave dynamics because RocketBoy was getting antsy. Instead we counted all of the items and RocketBoy carefully recorded them in his notebook. This part was pulling teeth. He really did not want to do it after the first few were done and kept rubbing his eyes. Time for a snack. Even after the snack it was tough to get him to finish, but I persisted and he did. By the end he was really excited again because he counted 64 rocks. He was blown away by the number - nothing else in his collection was past the teens. Since he seemed to like big numbers I decided to add on to the math lesson and we worked on adding up the numbers of all his treasures – 120 total. There went the whole morning – math, science & nature, and writing. We stopped for choose and do time. “Choose and do’s” are what his Syracuse prechool, Jowonio, called free play time. It is a happy association and I think RocketBoy is delighted to have “choose and do” again.
[Side note – Jowonio might just be the most wonderful school in the universe. I still miss it and wish I could find something like it again. There is a charter school in NYC whose founder is an ex-Jowonio teacher and is modeling her elementary after Jowonio, but because of the lottery system and the district preference, we have no hope of ever getting our boy there. If Jowonio existed past pre-k I’d consider moving back to Syracuse. It was that good. Even now, if we have any other children I will regret that they will not get to experience Jowonio. Thank you Ellen, Pam, Jed, Audrey, and all the others that make that place wonderful!]
For choose and do we played a couple of rounds of UNO and RocketBoy asked to chop the carrots to go into the chicken soup I was making (so sad that I had to make my own chicken soup – when you’re sick someone else should do that for you). He asked if we could make cooking part of homeschooling. My answer is a big fat yes!
After that it was field trip time. We went to a hatchery run by the Fish & Wildlife service. Their last visitor had been in October, so they were happy to see us. We were there on an egg day – when the freshly fertilized eggs get transferred into hatching trays. We walked around to all the tanks – each with a larger atlantic salmon. Eggs, egg fry, fry, , smolt, adult. They’re trying to restore what has been badly overfished.
Then home, bath, dinner (the soup was excellent by the way – not bad considering I had no herbs, maybe even better than usual), and an after-dinner giant floor puzzle of the United States.
Now RocketBoy is finally sleeping. Tomorrow we need to get to the beach early, before the snow and ice, and get more reading in.
Homeschooling Day 2
The everlasting ick that I seem to have caught has morphed again. Over the weekend it was a sore throat and post-nasal drip, Monday digestive nastiness and joint aches later in the evening, and today I woke with my sinuses in misery. I’m not sure what RocketBoy learned yesterday, but I learned that if I could teach through a stomach bug, I could manage through anything.
He woke up at 7:15 filled with “I love you” and “when does school start?” This is a huge contrast to before we took him out of school when the first question out of his mouth was “Is today a school day?” followed by a groan when 5 times out of seven I answered “yes.” I had to remind him of the strict (made up yesterday when I couldn’t get out of bed) rule that school starts at 9 sharp. Not a minute before. Addendum to this rule: before school starts he has to be dressed, breakfast eaten, and teeth brushed. Also, he can watch TV before school as long as everything else gets done. I still shake my head in disbelief that some rules he just accepts as unquestionable and other he pushes till they break. This one he buys. I’ll happily take it.
First, RocketBoy wanted to go through his bag of treasures. We spread newspaper on the table and sorted his finds into groups: Lobster claws, mussels, barnacles, seaweed, rocks, seashells, pine cones, and sea urchin. We talked about each group in more detail and made lots of little observations (you’d think after all the lobster I’ve enjoyed, I would have noticed the hair-like fuzzy bits on the claws). We did not talk about overall beach nature and wave dynamics because RocketBoy was getting antsy. Instead we counted all of the items and RocketBoy carefully recorded them in his notebook. This part was pulling teeth. He really did not want to do it after the first few were done and kept rubbing his eyes. Time for a snack. Even after the snack it was tough to get him to finish, but I persisted and he did. By the end he was really excited again because he counted 64 rocks. He was blown away by the number - nothing else in his collection was past the teens. Since he seemed to like big numbers I decided to add on to the math lesson and we worked on adding up the numbers of all his treasures – 120 total. There went the whole morning – math, science & nature, and writing. We stopped for choose and do time. “Choose and do’s” are what his Syracuse prechool, Jowonio, called free play time. It is a happy association and I think RocketBoy is delighted to have “choose and do” again.
[Side note – Jowonio might just be the most wonderful school in the universe. I still miss it and wish I could find something like it again. There is a charter school in NYC whose founder is an ex-Jowonio teacher and is modeling her elementary after Jowonio, but because of the lottery system and the district preference, we have no hope of ever getting our boy there. If Jowonio existed past pre-k I’d consider moving back to Syracuse. It was that good. Even now, if we have any other children I will regret that they will not get to experience Jowonio. Thank you Ellen, Pam, Jed, Audrey, and all the others that make that place wonderful!]
For choose and do we played a couple of rounds of UNO and RocketBoy asked to chop the carrots to go into the chicken soup I was making (so sad that I had to make my own chicken soup – when you’re sick someone else should do that for you). He asked if we could make cooking part of homeschooling. My answer is a big fat yes!
After that it was field trip time. We went to a hatchery run by the Fish & Wildlife service. Their last visitor had been in October, so they were happy to see us. We were there on an egg day – when the freshly fertilized eggs get transferred into hatching trays. We walked around to all the tanks – each with a larger atlantic salmon. Eggs, egg fry, fry, , smolt, adult. They’re trying to restore what has been badly overfished.
Then home, bath, dinner (the soup was excellent by the way – not bad considering I had no herbs, maybe even better than usual), and an after-dinner giant floor puzzle of the United States.
Now RocketBoy is finally sleeping. Tomorrow we need to get to the beach early, before the snow and ice, and get more reading in.
Homeschooling Day 1 – An Inauspicious Beginning
January 5th, 2009
Homeschooling Day 1 – An Inauspicious Beginning
What not to do the night before your first day of homeschooling? Get a stomach bug. I went to sleep pretty early (10pm!) for me at least, with high hopes of being rested when RocketBoy demands that I wake up. Well I was up at 3 am sweaty and nauseous. It just got worse from there. At one point I remember sitting on the bathroom floor trying to think if there was any sort of cushion I drag in so I could sleep comfortably near the toilet all the while missing my first tiny on-my-own in NYC apartment with the bathroom so small that one could sit on the toilet while comfortably leaning one’s head on the sink.
I could have given up on starting that day, but I decided to stick with it, heavily leaning on my friend the DVD player since my father was working and my husband was 500 miles away. We went through the cards, RocketBoy choosing “Reading and Writing” first. Hooray! In went a DVD of World World. I sat RocketBoy with his notebook and instructions to write seven words that he wanted to learn and draw pictures of them. That bought me about 30 minutes more sleep and a trip downstairs where there was some immodium stashed. I mustered enough energy to really work with him for the next half hour. He picked his favorite word from the seven, “cake” and we made a list of all the –ake words we could think of, then made up a story using them.
Next he wanted “Science and Nature.” In went the DVD of Winged Migration and I got another desperately needed nap. He came and sat on the bed near me and we talked about why birds migrate and why some don’t. We talked about geography and why some places are warm year round. Considering how not with-it I felt, I think we did smashingly. Next came lunch. I was starting to feel hungry and had some oatmeal, with happy results, but I lost all energy afterwards. When RocketBoy asked if he could play UNO I said sure. I could sit in a cushy chair and play for a while – it was about all I could do. I feel I have to justify that at the kindergarten/1st grade stage playing UNO is a math lesson, really it is. I swear.
A little later grandpa came in and suggested a trip to the beach. I was feeling much better by then since the immodium was clearly working. Even so, I kept swinging between feeling fine and feeling utterly drained. I relaxed in the car while my dad drove the 25 minutes of back country roads to the beach. Downeast Maine is nothing but coastline, but much of it is bay or lake or private property. Even though we can see water from the porch of the house, we can’t actually access a public ocean beach for quite a distance. There are lakes and inlets closer, but most of those are iced over – we wanted a proper beach. The drive was fine by me. A long car ride means RocketBoy got to listen to a book on CD (Magic Schoolbus Wild West) and I got downtime.
RocketBoy loved it there and spent ages just throwing rocks into the ocean. After lots of running and throwing (exercise time!) I got him a bag so he could collect treasures from the shore – perfect for tomorrow’s lesson. We had to cajole him into the car after 45 minutes. Apparently he was having so much fun, he didn’t notice that it was 25 degrees out. The rest of us did. I wish I had had the werewithal to take pictures, not this time.
We hit the grocery store and got back home in time for dinner, a bath, and some Wallace and Grommit.
Not bad for our first day.
Homeschooling Day 1 – An Inauspicious Beginning
What not to do the night before your first day of homeschooling? Get a stomach bug. I went to sleep pretty early (10pm!) for me at least, with high hopes of being rested when RocketBoy demands that I wake up. Well I was up at 3 am sweaty and nauseous. It just got worse from there. At one point I remember sitting on the bathroom floor trying to think if there was any sort of cushion I drag in so I could sleep comfortably near the toilet all the while missing my first tiny on-my-own in NYC apartment with the bathroom so small that one could sit on the toilet while comfortably leaning one’s head on the sink.
I could have given up on starting that day, but I decided to stick with it, heavily leaning on my friend the DVD player since my father was working and my husband was 500 miles away. We went through the cards, RocketBoy choosing “Reading and Writing” first. Hooray! In went a DVD of World World. I sat RocketBoy with his notebook and instructions to write seven words that he wanted to learn and draw pictures of them. That bought me about 30 minutes more sleep and a trip downstairs where there was some immodium stashed. I mustered enough energy to really work with him for the next half hour. He picked his favorite word from the seven, “cake” and we made a list of all the –ake words we could think of, then made up a story using them.
Next he wanted “Science and Nature.” In went the DVD of Winged Migration and I got another desperately needed nap. He came and sat on the bed near me and we talked about why birds migrate and why some don’t. We talked about geography and why some places are warm year round. Considering how not with-it I felt, I think we did smashingly. Next came lunch. I was starting to feel hungry and had some oatmeal, with happy results, but I lost all energy afterwards. When RocketBoy asked if he could play UNO I said sure. I could sit in a cushy chair and play for a while – it was about all I could do. I feel I have to justify that at the kindergarten/1st grade stage playing UNO is a math lesson, really it is. I swear.
A little later grandpa came in and suggested a trip to the beach. I was feeling much better by then since the immodium was clearly working. Even so, I kept swinging between feeling fine and feeling utterly drained. I relaxed in the car while my dad drove the 25 minutes of back country roads to the beach. Downeast Maine is nothing but coastline, but much of it is bay or lake or private property. Even though we can see water from the porch of the house, we can’t actually access a public ocean beach for quite a distance. There are lakes and inlets closer, but most of those are iced over – we wanted a proper beach. The drive was fine by me. A long car ride means RocketBoy got to listen to a book on CD (Magic Schoolbus Wild West) and I got downtime.
RocketBoy loved it there and spent ages just throwing rocks into the ocean. After lots of running and throwing (exercise time!) I got him a bag so he could collect treasures from the shore – perfect for tomorrow’s lesson. We had to cajole him into the car after 45 minutes. Apparently he was having so much fun, he didn’t notice that it was 25 degrees out. The rest of us did. I wish I had had the werewithal to take pictures, not this time.
We hit the grocery store and got back home in time for dinner, a bath, and some Wallace and Grommit.
Not bad for our first day.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Getting Ready for Homeschooling
Sunday, January 4th 2009
I had planned all along to start Monday, the day all the other kids are going back to school after the winter break. How do you make god laugh? Make a plan.
Last week we got word that Aunt Jeanne (or Great Aunt or Great Great Aunt, depending on your generation) had passed. She was in her nineties and it wasn’t unexpected. Now I am not at all close with the Maine end of the family. In fact I have barely met most of them. My dad is not the most social of creatures and he is my connection to them. Normally I would not think to run to the funeral of someone I haven’t seen in 15 years, but my dad was flying up from Florida and tickets to NYC are far cheaper than to Portland. Besides, Rocket Boy has never met them and I thought it would be good for him to recognize that he has other family, so we packed the car and off we went.
We got to Maine on Friday night for the wake, Saturday was the funeral and then up to my Dad’s house Downeast.
I had planned to do some shopping to set up our new homeschooling system, could be done in Maine just as well, right? So Sunday night I ended up in that store I usually swear never to go into, but I got what I needed. Because RocketBoy has only just turned 6 and he is the precious, precious child I love so much, I knew that I would need some visual and tactile way of organizing our day or I would be sunk. We’re using cards and wallet insert that holds credit cards. Each card has a subject and represents a half hour (math x2, science and nature x2, reading and writing x2, social studies x1, computer x1, TV x2, exercise x1, choose & do x2). I let RocketBoy choose a card, and put it inside the zipper part of the insert and we work on that subject next. Pair that with a stopwatch and we have a nice orderly way to go through our day that allows me to meet my targets and RocketBoy to feel like he’s got some measure of control. I don’t imagine that we’ll use all the cards every day and we may end up adding more cards as we work the kink out.
I originally wanted to make the cards sized to correspond to a daily schedule sheet, so we could keep easier track of stuff. In this ad hoc situation we don’t have that together yet. Let’s see how it works.
I had planned all along to start Monday, the day all the other kids are going back to school after the winter break. How do you make god laugh? Make a plan.
Last week we got word that Aunt Jeanne (or Great Aunt or Great Great Aunt, depending on your generation) had passed. She was in her nineties and it wasn’t unexpected. Now I am not at all close with the Maine end of the family. In fact I have barely met most of them. My dad is not the most social of creatures and he is my connection to them. Normally I would not think to run to the funeral of someone I haven’t seen in 15 years, but my dad was flying up from Florida and tickets to NYC are far cheaper than to Portland. Besides, Rocket Boy has never met them and I thought it would be good for him to recognize that he has other family, so we packed the car and off we went.
We got to Maine on Friday night for the wake, Saturday was the funeral and then up to my Dad’s house Downeast.
I had planned to do some shopping to set up our new homeschooling system, could be done in Maine just as well, right? So Sunday night I ended up in that store I usually swear never to go into, but I got what I needed. Because RocketBoy has only just turned 6 and he is the precious, precious child I love so much, I knew that I would need some visual and tactile way of organizing our day or I would be sunk. We’re using cards and wallet insert that holds credit cards. Each card has a subject and represents a half hour (math x2, science and nature x2, reading and writing x2, social studies x1, computer x1, TV x2, exercise x1, choose & do x2). I let RocketBoy choose a card, and put it inside the zipper part of the insert and we work on that subject next. Pair that with a stopwatch and we have a nice orderly way to go through our day that allows me to meet my targets and RocketBoy to feel like he’s got some measure of control. I don’t imagine that we’ll use all the cards every day and we may end up adding more cards as we work the kink out.
I originally wanted to make the cards sized to correspond to a daily schedule sheet, so we could keep easier track of stuff. In this ad hoc situation we don’t have that together yet. Let’s see how it works.
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