Spring Fever

Well, my big plans for doing "regular" school during spring break totally broke down. We had family in and through and it just didn't work out. Oh well. The best laid plans of mice and men... or something. Anyway, we got maybe 2 days of school done through the week. Better than nuthin' I suppose. So we are still behind in school. I've just kind of accepted the fact that we may not get through every lesson by the end of school. I'm not doing school past the last week in May, so we'll do what we can do. Any left over lessons/pages I think we will do as review times during the summer. With twins joining the family I have no idea how well any scholastic plans will work out, but in my head I have an hour or less of "school review" each day with the Lad. I have been saving the pages labeled "extra practice" in a folder for summer. I know he needs to keep working on writing and reading especially. Hopefully just doing it for a little while will not cause stress issues for the child. ;) He does need to work on some of his cursive letter formations (capitol letters especially) and getting his blends and sounds down faster. I know I haven't been as "present" with him in his school this year, but the pregnancy and other factors have made it more difficult. I was discussing with Hurb last night about how next year I think I will need to keep him in the living room with headphones during school so that I can monitor his involvement much better. Live and learn. This year hasn't been perfect by any means, but it has showed me that homeschool is possible, and that my monkeys WILL learn even if we don't do school "perfectly" each and every day. :) Sill I want to be improving too, so hopefully the "summer school" plans and changing things up a bit for next year will make a positive difference.

Catch up and Saturday School

Last week we passed the 100 day. I had been building this up in the lad's mind because he has learned to count to 100 so it is an important number to him. We didn't do anything "special" though I had thought about doing some 100's counting activities, but no. I explained to him that after lesson 100 we would only have 60 days of school left! He got pretty excited about that. ;) As I mentioned in my last post a zillion years ago, we were going to try to catch up during Jan by piggy backing school days. However, the lad reverted to fighting me about school, so we were lucky to just get one regular day done. PLUS I was dealing with morning sickness.... or all day sickness if you like. ;) That's right! Our home is growing by 2! We are having twins!! So on top of all that comes along with pregnancy, school is just something that we're coasting through right now. The Lad has learned his entire alphabet, and his short and long vowel sounds. He is starting to learn to write the capital letters in cursive now that he's been through all the small letters. He is doing simple math, and doing well with it, and we are reading through his "I Can Read" books. I think we're making a success out of this first year, even if we've hit some bumps along the way. I have had him do his "main" subjects a couple of times on Saturdays. Though some weekends roll around and the last thing I can even think about doing is school. So we don't. :) I will be evaluating his lessons each week from here on out and we'll be skipping a few that don't seem "vital." I know that it is not an ideal way to do school, but we have to adjust for things happening in our family. He will not be taking an official spring break, but using those days to catch up a bit too. The truth is, we don't know how this summer will look with the babies on the way, and there is no way we will be doing school through June and July. So there it is. :) On the whining about school front we have made progress recently. I had a serious chat with the Lad about his attitude towards school. We talked heart to heart, and I let him know that I knew he could have a happy heart about his school. We agreed that on days when he didn't complain and did have a happy heart, that he would get to play games on the iPad after school. We also agreed that if he chose to complain he would not get that privilege. The first day it was wonderful!! The second he reverted and lost his play time. He has been doing consistently better since then, and that makes each day much much easier!