Yesterday we began our homeschooling adventure. It was a few days earlier than I had planned to start school. Sam's preschool begins September 2nd and I thought it would be nice and neat if Chris started school the same day. However, the school bus drove past our house yesterday morning and it seems school is in session ... everywhere.
Handwriting practice was our first challenge of the day. How do you spell Anderson when you are a six year old boy with the attention span of a gnat? Really, are the "r" and "s" truly necessary? Anderon would be a nice last name wouldn't it? Failing to recieve approval for that surname it was suggested that perhaps we'd rather be Andeeson's instead. Today we finally have all the letters in all the right places. Chris thinks we should do all our writing on the computer so he doesn't have to use his pencil and think about how to hold it. Can I send him back to public school yet? It's only their second day.... he can't have missed too much.
Reading and math are going well. I really like the Math U See curriculum. It's so very logical and if you don't get it when you write the problem you'll figure it out by the time you've built the problem using the blocks. Very logical, very easy. The little boys like the reading raceway. They keep trying to drive the little cling cars on the track instead of doing the work to advance your vehicle to the next space. Chris gets a little upset at them, but for the most part it's a good time for everybody.
It's a little weird to break for lunch and then take the time to cook, clean up, and do a little grocery shopping in the middle of the school day. Chris likes to come back out before dinner (we're using our enclosed patio as a school room, it's also my sewing room) and work on his special interest for the day (otherwise known as his current obsession). Currently he's learing about the different states (because he's fixated on license plates at he moment). Luckily we got a good deal on a set of maps at Costco, so we have a nice large map of the United States.
We're still doing "school light" since I really didn't want to start until after Labor Day. I think it's a good thing Chris pushed me to start early since I've found a few kinks that we needed to work out. If my official start date had passed, the time taken away from lessons would have bothered me much more. We are spending a lot more time on the mechanics of school (do you know how hard it is to find the paper with a dotted line in the middle) than I had anticipated.
No comments:
Post a Comment