Teacher Notes

*Sigh* We had a good week.  Getting back into school after vacation was really tough.  I didn’t say before, but one day we didn’t do school because I thought it was Saturday, and didn’t realize it was actually a Thursday until I was getting ready for the next day (which I thought was Sunday) and realized I was all mixed up.

I wanted to do some flower disection with Silje this week, but I couldn’t seem to remember to buy some flowers when I was in town.  I’m really looking forward to that for the main reason that it will bring fresh flowers in our house.

Silje passed a huge milestone in Chinese this week.  She was extremely excited about that.  She’s probably more excited about a Valentine making party I suggested we have with her little friends from homeschool group.  The party planner in her is coming out in full force.

We finished reading together A Door in the Wall which honestly is the first book we have read on our homeschooling journey that we both didn’t like.  We’re now onto Robin Hood and it’s a bit better.  We’re submerged in medieval times right now.

We’re going through a huge change because this week was the first week that David was doing school work everyday.  He’s in kindergarten, and we’ve been working pretty much when he’s in the mood.  That sounds so “unschoolish” for me, but I’ve been waiting for him to mature a bit to handle the work.  Even so, for a kindergarten-er, he’s reading fairly well, and doing 1st grade math so we’ve got time to wait for his maturity to catch up.

This week, though, has been amazing.  We’ve gotten into a great routine that fits us both and he does way more work than he needs.  He does about 4 lessons of Saxon math a day (a grade level ahead) and then I require that he does one lesson from his McGuffey reader a day. (Last fall I required he did 3 lessons a week, and I fit them to when it worked.  He’s fully capable of every day now without any battles, so that’s what we do.)

He’s also been reading aloud to me Adventures of Little Bear which might just be his favorite book of all right now.  He is loving Little Bear and his friends so much and sometimes has to stop reading because he’s laughing so hard.

Even so, he does not read on his own time like Silje does, but asks to do math pretty much all the time.  When he doesn’t have a worksheet in front of him, he asks me to quiz him and I have to think of addition and subtraction problems (still in the single digits) to try to “trick him.”

We’ve also started doing a little Bible together, just David and I.  Silje really excels in this subject, and where she excels he normally doesn’t put forth any effort so I’ve decided to split this subject up for the time being and work with them individually instead of as a group.  I just don’t want them to be competitive in this subject.

I’ve been trying hard to keep all the kids close.  I’m still so inspired by the woman at Raising Godly Tomatoes to keep my kids close and not push them off or try some way to occupy them away from me when I’m annoyed.  I don’t think I follow anyone else’s parenting plan to the letter because my own family is unique.  However, sometimes I think we younger moms need the wisdom of mothers like her who have a bit of wisdom to pass on. 

Elias has been in our classroom/dining room all the time.  It’s been great because we’ve actually been able to devote some serious time to potty training, although I’m a bit discouraged how that’s been going. 

I brought the Pack ‘n’ Play into the classroom/dining room so Solveig can be forced to stay with us since she’s always on the move now and I don’t like her disassembling the bookshelves as often as she likes to do.  Actually, she’s started listening so much lately it’s been fun.  We’ve been doing a lot of “games” together where I tell her “no” when she is out of the Pack ‘n’ Play and walking near something I don’t want her to touch like the dictionary.  She’ll smile and step back, and wait for me to say with a smile “now come here!” and she walks to me in the fastest pace she can muster. 

I can tell she’s really sensitive because even when I tell her “no” I have to do it in a sweet voice.  If there is any firmness in my tone at all she bursts into tears and comes to me for a hug.  She’ll obey the sweet voice, so we’ll stick with that for now.  I prefer that anyway.  We know not all of my kids are like that…

So that’s what our school has looked like this week.  Today we’re going to go in search of some skiing and friends, and may bring some school along.