A few Sundays ago, I was so tired that when my husband suggested I nap after church and walk over to my Mom’s house for dinner a little late, I slept until 5PM. We decided that I was probably anemic, so I’ve started writing if I took my vitamin or not on the calender so I actually take it. I’m also cooking a little more meat than usual, and serving Orange Juice with it.
This sort of made me realize that my scheduled plans were too intense for me as well as for B. The problem with researching a co-op class after agreeing to teach it to a group of kids is that if you later discover that it is too intense a proposition, you still have to do it, and so do they: and so does B. Well, by Susan Wise Bauer’s description, it’s too soon for most of the kids. So I made the paper part of the research project optional. But it still takes a very long time to discuss a research project, research it, organize it…
So I’ve given B some reading days, not made him do copywork or spelling work, or writing, after all he has to do all of that while writing notes. He still has to prepare for flute lessons, Latin lessons with Grandma, and do math when we seem to be functioning well. Math right now is either 1/2 hour by the clock or 5 pages his choice of the Key To books. The one half hour by the clock is so that he doesn’t look up at the end of M’s nap time to see that he has done 1 1/2 hours of math and no Latin or other stuff.
The ‘Oh no, we will get behind.’ drums are beating very hard in my head, but no one else seems to hear them.
In the middle of all this re-arrangement, and work lightening, I realized that M could now form all the lower case cursive letters and looked up what our next step was in the manual. I figured it was to print the multi-letter phonogram worksheets in preparation for eventually dictating the spelling words in the W.I.S.E. Guide. Was I ever surprised! The next step was the words in the W.I.S.E. Guide. The hand writing sheets now go along with words.
I didn’t expect to get here until next year, we aren’t even reporting him as a student yet. But he happens to be ready and motivated. Ya thing it has anything to do with the one chocolate chip per word policy?
Also in the middle of all this work lightening/rearranging, we looked at the calender and saw that the deadline for B’s Lego Brickmaster contest was approaching and that if he was going to get his model photos in the mail, we needed to spend a morning tidying them up and typing the essays. So we did. And the ‘oh no we will get behind,’ drums were joined by the ‘shouldn’t you be teaching him to take the consequences for procrastination?’ drums. I told both drummers that essays were writing practice, he is learning time management by seeing me talk to him about it, and that if I wanted to be merciful, I was just going to do. They didn’t stop drumming, and I was merciful ungraciously. But DH said I was a cream puff mom anyway.