Monday, September 21, 2009

Week Two: Figuring things out

In my second week of my first real year of homeschooling (boy don't I sound green to all of this!) I have certainly figured out many things.

1. Language arts are a breeze. No reason to waste the fresh brain moments of the morning on those.

2.Math is not so much of a breeze. If there were one subject I wish I could leave out, it would certainly be math. Unfortunately, it is the one subject which leaves NO room for "skimming over." So...

3. Math is best done first thing in the morning. His goal is to focus (yeah, I know, he is a six year old boy) and my goal is to make his smile as much as I can through the lesson. With the helps of games, manipulatives, and a solid curriculum to go off of, we just may get him to add and subtract yet!

4. Between difficult lessons is a great time for Jake to be motivated for some physical exercise! A good time to practice sit-ups, push-ups and jumping jacks for Judo class.

5. The babies. Okay...honestly, I have not figured out much about how they fit into the equation yet. Sleeping moments are taken full advantage of and many things are frankly ignored. My hopes that they would take a liking to Sesame Street I honestly haven't figured out why I am having (or should have) to vacuum every day now rather than once or twice a week. Whatever they get all over the carpet is (mostly) a mystery. (side note so you can get the look of "what kind of mother is she?" off your face, there is only one corner and a hallway that I cannot see when the babies are in the other room by themselves...and there are no safety hazards in that corner ;) They are not completely unsupervised, however, which leads to

6. Max. Hmm...what can I say about Max? I think if he had figured out what he wanted to do for more than ten minutes, I could figure out something for him to do. Max is in that stage of wanting to be TOTALLY involved one minute and HATING SCHOOL the next minute. Typically he runs back and forth between the table, the kitchen (it never hurts to ask (100 times) for a snack, right?) and the Littles. He really makes a pretty good watchman over them. Just the other day he runs down to tell me that "the babies are putting their snack in the toilette!!!" Ugh. Expecting to find lots of Cheerios in the toilette bowl, to my disgust, I find lots of Cheerios in their mouth. Yes. They were dipping. "Well thank you Max for letting me know. Now next time, could you PLEASE shut the door after you go to the bathroom?!" My sister made me feel better by informing me of a list she found of places that are dirtier than toilette bowls.

7. Max and the babies can play games together! For ten-fifteen minutes, (usually during part of math) Max's job is to play WITH the babies...what they want to do...and he can't make them scream. He is doing a great job, although listening to him try to explain hide-and-seek today was quite humorous. "Otay...you hide...and I will tount. wu, two, fee....BABIES!!! Go hide!!!! fo, five, Otay...here...hide here and STAY!" si, seben..."What are you doing out here?! Oh great!"

8. The best assessment I can do is to turn the boys loose after a history lesson or science lesson to play with their playmobil. For that is where their playroom becomes the classroom. Also a good indication of our lessons sinking in is to listen to their after bedtime talk.
9. Everyone loves when daddy comes home!

10. I have time for little else...so forgive me if the blog gets neglected. However, because I know what it means to certain ones of you...I will try.
A nice moment between Ollie and Jake. "Little elf man" is by far the most needy during school time.
Finding one of the plant groups we are studying: simple plants. They have spores. I am beginning to understand why my mom was such a whiz at Jeopardy! Homeschooling has an amazing way at bringing out the random facts you forget from school...or didn't care enough to learn well. Jake's favorite plant? The carnivorous pitcher plant, of course!

10 comments:

alpidarkomama said...

Jodi - all of this sounds eerily familiar!! :) It's quite a journey. :)

-Kerith

Coraly said...

Maisen and Max must have the same idea... to learn or not to learn. Maisen so wants to sit and "and do work" but with books, dolls and a new fury stuffed kitty named Stripe, who would want to sit and learn classification! Not I!

The Singlers said...

so you can get the look of "what kind of mother is she?" off your face, there is only one corner and a hallway that I cannot see when the babies are in the other room by themselves...and there are no safety hazards in that corner

Okay Jodi - that just cracks me up. I aspire to be a mom like you. And as for the babies, World Word works at our house. Samantha really likes it. Maybe it would work at yours! And now, my children are showing the fussy virus has infected our house.

Kellie said...

That was an awesome post, I loved it! Especially the dipping cheerios and the hide and go seek game. The way you wrote Max's quote, it sounded just like him :)

Kat said...

I laughed and almost cried it is SOOO familiar. With our five we TOTALLY have moments, days, weeks like that and you have made me feel SOOO much better :). Thank you for brightening my day! Can't wait to add our two newest blessings who I KNOW will find the hidden corner (and probably the dog food).

JPB said...

Excellent! Sounds like par for the course.

Enjoy it while you can. It seems like just yesterday Dietrich was starting. Now we're counting down his last days of homeschool.

Taia said...

This post is so Yoder! (not like another person I read, whose comment was, "If I go to Hell, I will have to homeschool my children and smock."

I recommend Set as a great game to develop mathematical intuition.

Knowing my struggles with NO homeschooling and needy babies, I can only imagine yours.

Sheri said...

I am sitting here by myself (for a change!) and had to laugh out loud. Could just see Max teaching the Hide and Seek!!!! Oh to hear that little voice again. And Jake and the Carnivorous plant - so very Jake!!!!
Every child has had the toilet experience so have no fear!!!!

Love to see you all and give you hugs! And thanks for all of the posts - I wait for them (I know it doesn't look like it this time but it's a busy time here with the Roger's family!)

Eyes_Wide_Open said...

My blog post may be coming.

It's go great to know we're not alone in this journey.

Always here for ya sis.

And I know it's mutual.

I got a giggle as we're having a break at 9 am due to removal of permanent marker (AGAIN) from the dry erase board.

I understand on the Jeopardy comment too. I am learning so much!

Mainely Me said...

I took a deep, thankful breath as I finished reading the post and the comments from "my home schooled kids", so very thankful that you are all getting to experience the joys, and yes, those stretching frustrations of being both parent and teacher. Jodi, the dipping account had Dad and I laughing so hard! And Max's hide and seek endeavor was priceless. Bless his little heart for trying!