Realizations

My friends were right. I am exhausted! I think things are starting to move towards something like regularity. It's still hard to judge.

I spent the first week attempting to follow my own altered version of the Lesson Plan book provided with the Calvert material. I pretty much disregarded the Phonics book, skipped through the Spelling book and massively compacted the Math. What I was left with still felt too much like busy work. Then I began to panic. What things did I absolutely have to use from the curriculum in order to allow JT to pass the assessments? Was I short-changing him by skipping too much? I am so incredibly thankful to have a friend that has been cyber schooling longer than I have. She is full of encouragement and advice. The kind of advice you can take and use!

I called her and vented one day because I could not get JT to sit and do one lousy math worksheet. It took one ENTIRE hour to complete. Now, this had nothing to do with the level of challenge. He just didn't want to do it. He wanted to draw a picture of a space battle (which he did in the space between the math problems). This was a creative drawing, spaceships and planets named after elements; planet Neon being attacked by the spaceship named Hydrogen. However, it was not the right time for Art! How strict must I be with our schedule? An important thing to know about me is that I am a list person. I get great joy from crossing things off the to-do list. In fact, right after I had our last son, I felt like I could never get anything done. I would write things on my list after I had done them, i.e., "took a shower", and cross it off to feel that satisfaction. My friend was straight with me and told me to stop trying to pack in so much stuff that really wasn't necessary. She made me realize that JT will get more new learning time in half an hour at home than he would have in a whole day in a brick and mortar school. That idea really struck a chord with me. I had the power to give him that learning, if I could just stop feeling the need to follow the drill I had been given.

So, this morning I said to JT, "I think this 3rd grade Science book is too easy for you. I believe you already know most of what is in here. What do you think?" He agreed with me. I happen to have a 6th grade Science text book from the same series. I told him if he would look at the chapter in the 3rd grade book and be sure he could answer the questions, we would move on to the 6th grade book instead. We had a wonderful day! The stress level was much lower. We went outside and dropped rocks off the deck to prove that objects of different weights really do fall at the same speed. I did have to do a little arm twisting to complete the dreaded Composition assignment. But as a reward for minimal whining, we did the enrichment activity included in the History assignment about Molly Pitcher. We cooked Johnny Cakes for lunch!

So, my new plan of attack will be to keep the individual subject lessons as brief as possible. I will also attempt to offer fun, hands on activities after every lesson that requires sitting still. When JT asks a question requiring more information than I can pull from my brain, we will spend the time to look it up. I realized I was doing the same thing to him that his previous school had done. He would ask a deep, probing question and I would say, "Not now, we have to finish this worksheet." Wasn't that one of the reasons for bringing him home? I want to allow him the chance to immerse himself in something he's interested in. Why continue having him do the busy work, just because it's in the box. Sometimes I can be so dense.....