No crying in homeschool
Day in the life for a Friday in June.
The younger kids will not sleep in their own beds and show up randomly in mine. I love their snuggly darling cuddly little bodies and I also really want some better sleep. I am exhausted this morning, so the kids talk to each other and watch construction vehicles drive by on our street and debate whether or not there are bears in Africa. C insists that his read-to-me book said there were bears in Africa, and M thinks there are not, and then they want to talk about what kind of bears might live in Peru because they just started listening to the second Paddington book. I doze and eventually convince my middle child to go make me a cup of coffee for fifty cents. He makes excellent coffee. I emerge from bed, make oatmeal, mediate disagreements about who has dumped honey nut cheerios all over the floor, and have more coffee. While the oatmeal is cooking, we look up bears around the world. Turns out there used to be bears in Africa until the late 1800s (Atlas bears), which makes sense, because bears like mountains and Africa certainly has mountains. We decide that perhaps Paddington is a spectacled bear, which lives in the Andes in South America and is small, but the coloring isn’t quite the same as the coloring described in the book, but individual bears have different coloring, right?, and we talk about genetics as I finally serve breakfast at ten a.m.
12 - M reluctantly transfers to reading. He reads two chapters of Alvin Ho but refuses to read the chapter called “how to avoid school.” The irony. S practices clarinet. M plays with C. I start making lunch.
1 - S works on his science unit from RSO Biology 2. He’s learning about nutrition labels. M does his spellbook (spelling, grammar, art, and handwriting, all in one) and his science. He documents the changes in his moss garden in his science notebook and updates the B&R page for this unit in his notebook. (More handwriting and art!) C still will not get dressed but is happily playing in the living room.
2 - S reads a book on the winter solstice in Mongolia and reads more from Pie in the Sky. M resets CodeCombat so that he can learn JavaScript with it instead of Python. He is excited for the restart, and S is excited to watch over his shoulder. M switches out the laundry and S empties the dishwasher.
3 - I spend awhile wrangling with formatting on Blogger. S works on his Radio Shack electronics kit. (I found this, unopened, in a thrift store awhile ago and he is working his way through the book. I don’t know much about electronics and can definitely say that he knows a lot more than me now. He’s planning to work on his electronics scout merit badge after this.) M CodeCombats. C explains his newly built Lego creation, which is a Lego store and a Lego factory. It has a very involved backstory. Also he has finally put on actual pants! Success.
4 - The kids all do art. C makes a book out of scratch paper and carefully writes “author and illustrator Calvin” on it in surprisingly legible handwriting. M starts doing the lesson in our Artistic Pursuits book. We talk about artists and art and what mediums they might use to make art. We look up the Netherlands on Google Maps and talk about the painting by Pieter de Hooch that his book details. He is ready for the actual art making portion of the lesson, but we cannot locate the correct pencil in the messy art supply area. S does his art lesson independently while I grumble and sort all the art supplies and complain about the trash and broken Prismacolors and random Legos tossed into the container. I sharpen so many pencils that I get blisters on my fingers, which leaves me feeling martyred. When we are almost done sorting, I locate the automatic pencil sharpener, of course without batteries. M helps me sort and then finds the Draw Write Now book that he used to use. “These were so fun!” he says and does a lesson that involves drawing a horse and carefully writing a few sentences. We will finish his art lesson tomorrow - I found the correct supplies! S does a calligraphy lesson, which is my way of tricking him into doing handwriting practice without fighting. The kids help me clean up the main areas of the house and they start doing their screentime while I cook dinner.
6 - I am tired and the kids are welcome to just do whatever kids do as long as there isn’t any fighting or whining. They choose (surprise) magnatiles and CodeCombat.
10 - finally eating. M gets dressed, brushes teeth, does a few quick minutes of Bitsbox before we start math. C eats and eats and eats, heads to the living room to play a little, comes back to the table to eat, etc. S shows up, eats cereal, retreats for his eternal shower. M and I start on his math. Halfway through our reading of the Beast Academy comic for this particular lesson, he gets stuck on 64x10. He has known how to multiply by tens for years now. I do not understand what the sticking point is and he stops responding to my questions and I get annoyed and yell, “64 times 10! Just add a zero!” and he runs away upstairs crying. I take a few deep breaths and stop being ridiculous. Homeschooling should never involve crying, and once tears get involved the lesson should stop, but I do not take my own advice. I call him back after a minute and he reluctantly and tearfully comes down the stairs. BA was working on teaching him to multiply large numbers x 5 by multiplying by 10 and then halving the result. M was not listening and was trying to multiply by 5 in his head and getting really frustrated when his answer wasn’t matching what I was saying. He needed to listen, and I needed to notice that he was no longer participating in the lesson that I was attempting to teach him. We hugged it out, took a deep breath, discovered that once he did what I was asking, it was very, very easy to accomplish. We worked through the rest of the problem sets and a few challenge problems with no trouble. M has three units left to finish the chapter, and then the test, so he wanted to try one of tomorrow’s units to lessen his workload tomorrow. I should have said no, but I didn’t, and it turned out to be a speed drill. More crying later as I tried to convince him that he is not bad at math because he couldn’t think of 8x7 quickly. We decide to swear off of speed drills.
11 - aftermath of the sad math. M does coding to make himself feel better. C still won’t get dressed and is still eating cold oatmeal. S has emerged from the shower and has started reading Pie in the Sky. C returns to playing in the living room. M and S work on coding together, heads bent close, earnestly talking, while S coaches M through a tricky spot. I leave them alone to talk through it.
12 - M reluctantly transfers to reading. He reads two chapters of Alvin Ho but refuses to read the chapter called “how to avoid school.” The irony. S practices clarinet. M plays with C. I start making lunch.
1 - S works on his science unit from RSO Biology 2. He’s learning about nutrition labels. M does his spellbook (spelling, grammar, art, and handwriting, all in one) and his science. He documents the changes in his moss garden in his science notebook and updates the B&R page for this unit in his notebook. (More handwriting and art!) C still will not get dressed but is happily playing in the living room.
2 - S reads a book on the winter solstice in Mongolia and reads more from Pie in the Sky. M resets CodeCombat so that he can learn JavaScript with it instead of Python. He is excited for the restart, and S is excited to watch over his shoulder. M switches out the laundry and S empties the dishwasher.
3 - I spend awhile wrangling with formatting on Blogger. S works on his Radio Shack electronics kit. (I found this, unopened, in a thrift store awhile ago and he is working his way through the book. I don’t know much about electronics and can definitely say that he knows a lot more than me now. He’s planning to work on his electronics scout merit badge after this.) M CodeCombats. C explains his newly built Lego creation, which is a Lego store and a Lego factory. It has a very involved backstory. Also he has finally put on actual pants! Success.
4 - The kids all do art. C makes a book out of scratch paper and carefully writes “author and illustrator Calvin” on it in surprisingly legible handwriting. M starts doing the lesson in our Artistic Pursuits book. We talk about artists and art and what mediums they might use to make art. We look up the Netherlands on Google Maps and talk about the painting by Pieter de Hooch that his book details. He is ready for the actual art making portion of the lesson, but we cannot locate the correct pencil in the messy art supply area. S does his art lesson independently while I grumble and sort all the art supplies and complain about the trash and broken Prismacolors and random Legos tossed into the container. I sharpen so many pencils that I get blisters on my fingers, which leaves me feeling martyred. When we are almost done sorting, I locate the automatic pencil sharpener, of course without batteries. M helps me sort and then finds the Draw Write Now book that he used to use. “These were so fun!” he says and does a lesson that involves drawing a horse and carefully writing a few sentences. We will finish his art lesson tomorrow - I found the correct supplies! S does a calligraphy lesson, which is my way of tricking him into doing handwriting practice without fighting. The kids help me clean up the main areas of the house and they start doing their screentime while I cook dinner.
6 - I am tired and the kids are welcome to just do whatever kids do as long as there isn’t any fighting or whining. They choose (surprise) magnatiles and CodeCombat.
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