The Homeschool Mom’s Journal — Week 2

In my life this week…

It’s been busy, but productive for the most part. I spent a long night worrying about a friend and a custody case. I wish the outcome had been made better by that, but it wasn’t. I received some new yarn in the mail and a new project that I’m going to be working on. Oh, and I started a challenge (Little Leaps of Love) and started a photography class that will hopefully help me finally learn how to get the best pictures out of my camera.

In our homeschool this week

Ben continued working on memorizing “The Days of the Week.” He’s almost got it. We worked a bit on addresses and he is all over the notion that my sister is also his aunt (now if we could get him to believe that his Nana and Gramps are my mom and dad, we’d be all set). He’s demonstrated solid understanding of the tens and skip counting. He read me two books (short chapters 1 per day over the week) that he picked out from the library himself. He is an amazing speller. If we can get him to connect what he learns in spelling to his reading, he’s going to start seeing how this all comes together.

Places We’re Going, People We’re Seeing

It was a big week for Ben. He ran errands with me on Saturday and even carried a big box into the UPS store for me. We went to the trail near our house and walked around for a while. We also went to the library, where Ben was completely in control of the books that he picked out. Although I did convince him to get some books on Brazil so he could read more about the country after doing his Little Passports lesson. On Sunday, we went to church and Ben got the sermon box. This is a nifty little box that our rector uses to do an extemporaneous sermon for the kids. It can be fun to see how he ties the sometimes rather odd choices from the kids to the lesson for the week. As of this moment, Ben is undecided about what he’s putting in the box. We’ll see what he does.

My Favorite Thing This Week Was…

Getting the Project Life materials and not having P think I’m nuts. He actually liked the idea of a book that is more about our family rather than about the kids. I like the idea, too (which is why I thought of it) and have already started working on filling in January.

What’s Working/Not Working For Us…

Ben had the meltdown to end all meltdowns on Wednesday. It was horrible. Over spelling words. Or more precisely over writing down phrases that were dictated to him. As you’ll see below, he CAN write, but the act of writing makes him intensely miserable. So, he went to war over spelling and math (both of which needed him to write).

We took Thursday off to regroup and brainstorm. We decided that if he could spell his words using letter tiles that would work for now, but that he would write his own math since there’s really not a lot of writing in RightStart Math at this level. We also agreed we’d go back to practicing more with his Zaner-Blosser books until he feels more confident with his letters. So, while this is not working for us in the short term, I think he learned a lot from working with me to develop a solution that he could live with and that I could live with.

Homeschool Questions/Thoughts I Have…

I keep having to remind myself that a) the beauty of homeschooling is the flexibility but you actually have to be flexible to be able to enjoy that and b) that we’re not always going to do everything or get everything done. And that’s okay.

A Photo, Video, Link, or Quote to share…

Proof that Ben can write even if he doesn’t want to and doesn’t enjoy it.