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.