By Rosanna Ward
What happened to the last 10 days? Well, they certainly flew by, that is for sure. Last week we did good to get the basics covered as our life was so busy outside of school. Of course, I think that is the beauty of homeschooling. My children experience much of their learning in the real world. I am finding that it is really hard to “do” school for six or even three hours a day with one little boy. He is a quick learner.
But this week I am determined to settle into a more steady school routine. In my initial planning, I forgot to schedule Mondays and Tuesdays as “flex” days. Those are the days my husband has off of work and likes to do stuff with the boys. So I need to make sure I plan seat work only and let dad take care of the rest of the days plans.
Today, we ate a leisurely breakfast together, then dad played MarioCart with the boys while I did some chores. By 10 am, Joel was seated at his desk doing math. He did his facts practice, a lesson in his Horizons workbook, and some addition wrap ups.
By 10:30 Joel was taking a quick break to feed and water the dog, which we had forgotten to do earlier. Then we read some of The Dinosaur Mystery and Joel did some Dinosaur Dot to Dots. After this short Science class, Joel read out of his McGuffey reader and then copied his new memory verses. At about 11:15, Joel took another break for a quick snack and drink and then we did phonics and spelling together with Horizons.
By 11:45 we were done, and dad was ready to take us to the park. The boys had fun at two different parks, and I’m bummed I forgot to take pictures. Both boys fell asleep on the way home so while they took afternoon naps (which Joel doesn’t usually do), I went grocery shopping at Sam’s. So we really did just two hours of schoolwork but we covered everything except History, which I may read to him tonight before bed. The two days a week we spend with my sister and her kid’s we do a lot of History and Science stuff, so I don’t sweat the days we short these subjects at home.
I am amazed at Joel’s reading and comprehension abilities, but we definitely need to work on his writing and spelling. And he understand math concepts right away, but we are still working on memorizing addition and subtraction facts and breaking the finger counting habit. If any of you have any advice in this area, I would greatly appreciate it. And I will try to do better at getting pictures.