Homeschool Friday

I find it more difficult to blog lately.  I’m going to blame it mostly on the fact that we took away the television almost 2 weeks ago, now.  I must admit, the second week is a bit tougher than the first.  The kids have not asked for it, but there have been times in the last week where I just want them to get away from me and let me finish just one thought, and have caught the words “go watch a movie” only milliseconds before they come out of my mouth.  Then I have to fight the words from coming out because I just want to be left alone for a few minutes!

I think I’ve survived because Solveig finally goes to bed when the other kids do, instead of staying awake until midnight.  I finally have my evenings back to sew or do as I please.  I showed up to homeschool group on Tuesday afternoon with my kids, and one of my friends asked me how I was.  I looked up and said “is this where I drop my kids off for school and day care?  Show me where to sign.”  She laughed and put her arm around me, and said, we’ve all been there.  I know that.  Sometimes the touching and talking and questions and noise gets to be so overwhelming.  Going without the television breaks has been tough, but I’m glad I’ve stuck it out.

It was funny, though, that during David’s story time at homeschool group, we were reading a story about all the animals coming out in Spring.  David started talking about an animal he knew about.  The mom reading (the same one who put her arm around me) asked him if he ever saw that animal.  “Only on t.v.” he said.  This happened about 3 other times, and I was in shock that we haven’t watched t.v. for 2 weeks and he still just talks about t.v.  He does do other things, I promise!  I felt like defending myself to the other moms.  They all knew we’d given up t.v. for the summer, so they were just giggling whenever David brought up his list of favorite shows to the class over and over again.

As I said on Wednesday, we’re reading The Wheel on the School and that’s been a lot of fun.  I got lots of copies of the handwriting masters from our new program, and have been working with Silje on that so much more and let me tell you, it has been so nice!  One whole page she had filled with the lowercase “a.”  All but 2 were perfect.  She got a huge high 5 for that, and she was able to tell me what happened to the 2 incorrect ones without me even prompting.  She said, “Well, with this one I started the circle at 12 o’clock instead of 2 o’clock, and with the other one, I pulled straight down from 2 o’clock instead of pulling down from 3 o’clock, which made my line cut inside the circle.”  If you couldn’t tell, you learn to write by the points on a clock.  It’s amazing to me that she sees where she went wrong herself, self corrected, and she’s picking it up so quickly!  Not only that, it’s not “this letter is neater than this one,” but there are objective rules to follow. 

Kids love rules.  I don’t care what anyone says.  They’re always ready to point out what is fair and not fair.  What is right and wrong.  They love knowing these things.  So having objective rules for handwriting is so far a hit in our house.  Plus, we’re getting more familiar with the clock, and she’s learning to pay attention to details.

David still likes to just trace the circles for the handwriting.  I haven’t moved him to letters yet.  I’ve explained to him the points on the clocks, and he practices staying on the dotted circle line, and starting and stopping at the right points.  I think that’s all he can do at his age, but I’m so pleased he’s even willing to do that.  Silje obviously has a huge upper hand to David with much better fine motor skills.  She’s been writing for years, and coloring even longer.  Although he’s only 15 months younger, he’s just recently been still enough to hold a crayon or paintbrush.  I also see that if he’s not in the mood to write, there is no point in making him.  He cannot follow a circle to save his life when there are ants in his pants.  The only thing to do is to get him some shoes and send him out to ride his bike in the yard for a long time, and hope he’s settled in the afternoon.

At any rate, so far we’re a fan of The Works People and their program.  Although I still think the program would benefit from a professional technical writer to organize the information in a better way.  Other than that, it’s just genius.

I’ve lost my temper a few times extra this week.  I’ve been frustrated.  I’ve been blessed.  I worry that I push too hard, like always.  I’ve finally found a definition for my homeschooling philosophy: overkill.  Finding the balance between letting kids be kids, and trying to raise a respectful, polite, thoughtful, compassionate child is really tough.  Having no escape from each other is a coin that has two sides.  It’s so good, and sometimes so annoying.

Fortunately, Silje is always quick to forgive, and I try to be quick to apologize.  That’s the best way to have a relationship, I think.  The struggle with most relationships, whether a marriage, or friends, or parent/child, is the struggle of sin.  We all do it:  Silje, me, Knut, everyone.  This process of homeschooling, I think has been so refining for both Silje and I this year.  Hard things are often the best things.  If they weren’t so hard, they wouldn’t be so good.

Side note, I’m up for a top 25 homeschool blog.  If you like reading the homeschool posts, than click on the little button to the left now, or if it strikes your fancy, every day until the 11th of May.  I know I’m not that big of a blogger compared to the others, but it’d still be kinda cool.