Some days we get to bedtime and I realize that the kids didn’t finish all of their schoolwork. Then I spend a few days (or weeks) feeling overwhelmed and stressed about it before I realize that the problem is obvious — and it really should be, considering how often this cycle repeats itself — and the solution is simple:
No electronics before school.
Duh, right?
I finally reached that conclusion again yesterday, after a week and a half of pulling my hair out over our lack of progress. I slip into the problem innocently enough. Pete wakes up pretty early, so sure why not he can have his Kindle FreeTime while I get ready & dressed. Except then Poppy wakes up and lolls about with her iPod for good long while because it’s not fair, and Pete has a bad attitude because his time ran out, and then nobody wants to do school. And really, why would they want to practice cursive when their little brains are coming fresh off of that Angry Birds overstimulation?
So today I’m kicking myself for falling into that pattern yet again, and yet again I’m going to try to change things up next week. And I’m hoping this time I’ll learn the lesson for keeps.
Math
Yesterday Poppy called me over while she was working on her Teaching Textbooks lesson and asking for help with a problem.
“It wants me to add fractions,” she said, “and I’ve never done that!”
Turns out she’d somehow skipped two lessons and started straight in on the quiz. Something tells me she’ll be getting an introduction to fractions when she goes back to do Lesson 104 next week.
Extracurricular
It’s a big day for Poppy: She’s going to be testing for her white-yellow belt at tae kwon do! She’s been working really hard toward this, and she’s excited and nervous.
Reading
We finished “Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder yesterday, and the whole time we were reading it I was struck by how much more abundant Almanzo’s childhood was than his future wife’s. And also by how much pie the Wilders consumed.
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sounds like we get caught up in the same cycles. It happens to all of us, really. Thanks for sharing a real life at schooling our kids, and the reminder to pick up and carry on.
I totally agree! Electronics in the AM seem to be the root cause of a lot of our nonsense. If it makes you feel any better, I realized today…I never gave my daughter her tests on Friday. At this point, I’m thinking, “Oh well.” Thank God for homeschool flexibility!
My kids use TT for math lab (they have another main math curriculum) and I find I have to go into the gradebook, look at the individual lesson and note the problems they had to do 2 times or got wrong and note whether they watched the video that explained what they did wrong. I usually let them finish for the week, then on Sat we do ‘homework’ where I sit and go over those areas with them. I make them do the questions on paper before putting them in the computer, that way I really can tell if they are getting it.