Week 4 - Tuesday, 8/28

I must learn to say, "No, I can't do that." This was just one of the many mistakes I made today.  Let me explain.

9:00 - I can hear Bear and Boo up and playing already, so I tell them to head on down to the schoolroom while I get my coffee and Bug. They swing through the kitchen, fill up their water bottles and grab some peanuts, and then head on down. Bug moans and groans about being tired and not wanting to rise. I bite my tongue and skip the "if you went to a brick & mortar school you would have been up hours ago" bit and just tell her that I understand mornings aren't her thing but I still need to see her body in the schoolroom soon.

Mistake #1: "Soon" is ambiguous and allows her to think that as long as it feels "too soon" she is being obedient.
What I Should Have Done: Gave her a set fifteen minutes, with lines as a consequence for every minute she ran over.

9:30 - Boo is plowing through her independent work and Bear is mastering the /sh/ sound on Time4Learning when Bug stumbles into the room and flops into her chair. There is a math assignment from yesterday, open and ready to go, and I tell her to finish that up and then start her independent work for the day. She then proceeds to pull an "Office Space" kinda morning while my attention is focused on Bear.

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Bob Slydell: You see, what we're trying to do is get a feeling for how people spend their time at work so if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Bob Slydell: Great.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh - after that I sorta space out for an hour.
Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

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Mistake #2: Letting her sit and pace herself. I was trying to let go and allow her to work on her own timing, but she doesn't work and just gets a sore bum from sitting so long.
What I Should Have Done: Set a timer on my phone for fifteen minute check-ins and praised any forward movement, while giving goals for the next check-in.

11:00 - Bear is done with all of her school work, including a full chapter of The Apple and the Arrow. The schedule called for just a few pages, but she was so engaged in the story, and Boo was listening intently while finishing up her handwriting, that I kept on reading. By this point, Boo has completed all of her independent work. Bug has been working on the same math assignment that she started at 9:30. She is now at the half-way mark. We have plans to have lunch at a friend's house and I send them off to get dressed and pack their lunches. Bug will be bringing her math, and hopefully getting it done there.

12:15-1:30 - Lunch with friends.  The kids sat and ate in one room while I talked shop with my friend, comparing curriculums and school time.  The kids became incredibly rowdy after eating and took advantage of the lack of supervision to tackle each other.  I went in and calmed things down, told Bug to find a chair in the living room and work on her math, and then the remaining kids moved into bedrooms where the rough housing picked right back up.  Bear ended up walking into a door frame and came crying for me.  That was our cue to leave and head on over to the next play date.  Someday the kids will all be old enough to play calm and quiet games while their mother's chat.  Someday.

1:30-3:30 - Swimming at the community pool.  Most of the public schools here are back in session and the community pool was delightfully uncrowded.  We met some friends there and Bear reveled in her new identity as a fish.  Just two days ago she decided to try swimming under water and was surprised at how fun and easy it is.  I don't really know when she found time to breathe during the two hours, but she certainly improved her under water swimming skills.  Boo played a mermaid game with her friend and went off the diving board a few times.  Bug had to sit at a picnic table and finish up her math, but her friend joined her.  Since this friend uses the same math program she was able to be a help and encourager and Bug was soon ready to get in the pool.  Then she showed her budding maturity and hung by the wall talking to her helpful one and another friend who came a bit later.  No games.  No diving board even.  Just hung out and talked about clothes, nails, and plans for classes during the school year.

3:30-4:30 - We went home and the girls took showers to wash the pool water out of their hair and then got some snacks.  Swimming always makes them tired and hungry.

Mistake #3: Doing too much.  This is when I was wishing that we had either skipped the lunch or the swimming because they were ready to crash and yet still had a half of a day of school to get through. 
What I Should Have Done:  Understood that there is such a thing as too much fun and said no to swimming, as I had made the lunch plans first.

4:30-6:00 - I checked over Bug's math and found that she had done almost half of the problems incorrectly.  I copied them out and had her redo them, watching all the while so that I could see where the errors came into play.  She did just fine with the multiplication, correctly working the four problems she had missed. The double digit long division was another story.  She really didn't get how to make a good initial guess, and was creating "fact dumps" along the sides of the page, but misnumbering them.  For example, if the problem read 147 ÷ 23, she would have running down the side of her paper 1-46, 2-69, 3-92, and so on.  All of her answers were one off because of this.    So while I talked Bug through some better strategies, Boo completed her math and practiced her spelling list with the Spelling City app on my iPhone.  When she was ready to take her test, I just gave her a test form and told her to use the Test Me function, but write her answers on the paper instead of typing them in.  This way I wouldn't take my eyes off Bug.  Then Boo moved on to her reading, covering two chapters of Freedom Train and answering the questions.

Bug did finally get her math done and started the independent work that she should have done in the morning while I moved on to history with Boo.  I'm reading from Lincoln: A Photobiography, a great book full of quotes from Lincoln and his friends that strives to give a factual accounting of his life, with the positives and negatives of his character fairly shown.  While I read, Boo works on coloring in items from her Civil War History Pockets activities.  Today she colored the North and South headings, and when I was done reading sorted the fact cards into the two categories.  She did this quickly and told me that she learned it all from You Wouldn't Want to Be a Civil War Soldier.  I had picked it up at the library and she read it on the way home, and again yesterday during some down time.  I guess my work here is done, she knows all she needs to know about the Civil War, and I can take off the next few weeks!  Ha ha!  If only...

6:00 - Boo and Bear got a surprise visit from the School Fairy because they were completely caught up.  Boo got a box of Nerds, and Bear got a bag of m&m's.  Bug suddenly wanted to keep going, but I told her that the school house has to shut down at six because the teacher has to get some laundry done, the dishwasher loaded, and dinner started.  I have random days marked on my calendar for School Fairy visits and hopefully we will get things to a place where Bug will be on pace and get her prizes.  Otherwise I may just hang it up and pack her off to public school.  :o)

No, not really.  I wouldn't do that.  But I will cut out tumbling, choir, clubs, and dance if necessary.  Four weeks in and still wondering how I'm going to get her through the next 32. *sigh*

 Linking up with the Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-Up.