I've completely ignored this blog for almost 2 years, but I'd like to try to start it up again. I thought I'd start with an activity our homeschool group did last month: journaling a randomly chosen homeschool day. To refresh your memory on the cast of characters, P is 9 and our only girl, E just turned 8 (he was still 7 when I journaled this day), B is 4 and H is 2.
Feb 25, 2014
My watch is misbehaving itself. When I got up at 6:30, it
read 6:15, so I reset it. After breakfast it read 9:00, which astonished me –
how is it possible that we took that long? But it was really 8:45 (still
showing that we dawdled… oh, well). I still need to dress H and work on
breakfast dishes, but after that we can start school. It’s 9:15 now. Really.
9:45. We still haven’t started school. I discovered that E
had been dawdling upstairs instead of doing his morning chores. H fought me
tooth and nail as I attempted to dress him, which took 20 minutes instead of 5.
He’s been weepy and clingy all morning, which makes everything drag on and take
twice as long. I read a book to B and H to attempt to cheer H up and give
myself some chance of not having to hold him continually. It worked somewhat;
finding a new ball for him to play with has also helped. E keeps on stopping to
chat, instead of doing his chores. I’m going to start P on school, since she’s
been extremely diligent and helpful (as usual) and deserves to be done sooner
than E.
10:00. Finally ready to start school with both kids. E threw
a fit when I told P she could start (and be done) before him.
11:15. Khan Academy was down, so E couldn’t do that part of
his math assignment. As a result, he and P are back on the same schedule now. E
has been furious much of the morning. The chicken turd in the bathtub didn’t
help. (If we only had an outdoor faucet, E’s chore of changing the chickens’ drinking
water wouldn’t have to involve the indoors at all, but at least no one is
washing hands in the bathtub. I’ve talked several times about the advantages of
dumping all you can in the toilet before moving the waterer to the bathtub;
perhaps this will convince him: if you make a mess, you have to clean it up).
And he likes Khan Academy, so it being broken was infuriating for him. When I
tried to set up a movie for the little guys, the computer had decided not to
work, so I had to restart it while also trying to listen to E’s reading. Now
it’s back, so hopefully they’ll be out of our hair for a little while.
1:15. E’s writing assignment was easy for him, which helped
his mood considerably. Despite multiple interruptions from the little boys (who
kept touching the computer and stopping the DVD) I finished reading aloud our
poetry and literature selections, started lunch at 12:00, and now am ready to
put H down for a nap. P informs me at lunch that she dislikes school. Further
questioning reveals that she likes most of it, but dislikes challenging word
problems and exercise. E informs us that those are his 2 favorite parts of
school. Khan Academy is back up, so E can do his math assignment while P and B
play and I convince H that sleep is the best strategy.
3:05. I massively blew a fuse at H. While I was writing the
above, he found the oats that I had soaking in a pot on the stove, took a dirty
bowl from lunch, and scooped out a bowlful. This is not the eighteenth time he
has caused messes by interfering with things on the stove – not just annoying,
but dangerous. So I hauled him into the kitchen and spanked him while holding
the evidence in front of him. Unfortunately, like his head, his little behind
is made of construction-grade steel and concrete, so he barely seemed to
notice. AAAAAAAH! What do I DO with this kid? Well, put him down for a nap,
obviously, and then sing a bit with the other kids to try to lift my spirits
(this week’s memory verse happens to be part of one of my favorite songs), and
then do spelling. I set the timer for 15 minutes for each kid’s lesson while the
others do art in the kitchen. B is big enough to want his own spelling lesson,
plus his own reading lesson, so spelling plus B’s reading takes a full hour.
Usually H sleeps long enough, but this time he didn’t. Having him awake during
spelling is a disaster because of the large number of tiny magnet tiles our
spelling program uses, so I hurried through most of P’s lesson while holding H
in my arms. I’d still like to get through history and science, plus a new Latin
lesson for both kids. They start getting antsy to play with friends at 4pm, but
they can deal. So there.
4:57. We’re done! As I wander around the living room and
kitchen, I come upon E’s drawing notebook. He has made a beautiful freehand
copy of North America from the map on our table – I could barely do better
myself. I did not tell him to do this, though I had actually been thinking it
might be profitable to suggest they copy maps occasionally during their drawing
time. Both little boys seem to make school drag on for such a long time – only
about a third of my time is spent teaching, and two thirds is spent either
cleaning up the mess H just made (he found a box of birthday candles and dumped
them on the kitchen floor, and was trying to get into the sugar), or
interacting with B (No, I will not stop what I’m doing to search online for a
decent dot-to-dot whale because the one I found on my first try printed badly,
and no, we will not have a long, involved conversation on 3 different topics
that have nothing to do with the Reformation, Vietnam, the 15 1st
magnitude stars that are visible from the Northern Hemisphere, or Latin
vocabulary and grammar). Both P and E
have made their Latin flashcards for the week, and E did not throw a huge fit
when I made him correct his spelling of “sorpin” to “scorpion”. The living room
didn’t take that long for P and me to clean up while E was finishing his
flashcards, and now the little boys are happily playing with Legos and the big
kids have gone looking for their friends. I can smell dinner in the crockpot.
Ahhh…
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