If day 1 was fantastic day 2 was a real reality check!
Breakfast was a nightmare! One of the other kids got to the Sugar Puffs first so S had a meltdown! So a time out was issued and eventually complied with! Now normally on a school day, we would deal with this, move on and then eventually I would sigh a huge sigh of relief to get them all packed off to school and enjoy the peace for a while. This morning though I felt a real sense of doom that this was the mood being set for a morning's work!
Today was hard work! We did get a lot done but S was definitely wanted to push the boundaries and to determine just who was in charge for the day! His desire to get all his smiley faces for his task was big but he didn't seem to realise that he had to put in the effort in the tasks to get them in the first place! We still managed all that I'd planned to do and more which I feel is quite a major achievement bearing in mind the attitude that went into the day! We did have to finish the session with a wee chat about who actually is the boss in this situation. This is a real steep learning curve for both of us! S announced that he didn't realise home school teachers were strict! For me the blend of mum and teacher is a hard one to do and I don't want to have to nag him all the time!
Despite all of that there were plenty glimmers of just how fab home schooling can be. S's reading comprehension today was about apples and how apple orchards are dealt with. I remembered half way through that there is an apple tree at the end of our garden. Admittedly it is not a very impressive one (our last house had 3 trees laden with apples every year) but it has produced a wee crop of apples this year. So, after we'd read the passage and answered the questions I took S outside and we picked some apples, discussed the tree and what stage it was at, took some photos of the apples and then came back inside and worked on our fractions using the apples we'd just picked! How's that for cross-curricular teaching!! Another lovely time was tonight. S's topic is frogs! He LOVES frogs! Today as part of our topic work we watched a dvd about "friends and foes" in the frog world. S watched a cobra snake eat a frog and a water scorpion catch a tadpole. He loved this and was so excited to tell his brother and sisters all about it later on over tea. So, tonight just before bed we all sat down to watch this part of the documentary again. They all loved it so much that we sat watching more! I never really imagined my 4 very active kids sitting watching a nature documentary at bedtime!!
So it's been a very mixed day. Planning is taking me ages just now. Each day brings lots of ideas for me to work on and seeing how S learns and how I teach (particulary new things like "fractions"!!) leads me to need to work out just exactly what I am doing the next day in detail. I am learning I need to be much more organised. Tomorrow we will need to get out. I could see how in home schooling you could feel completely caged in very quickly so must sort that quickly! Thankfully the kids have been really good at helping to keep the house tidy. "Mummy dustbin" now comes to our house every evening and puts anything and everything that is on the floor that shouldn't be in the bin! "Mummy dustbin" has definitely helped my sanity as the kids are taking her very seriously (finally!!!!). Long may that continue!
Right - I think that is enough for now! I'm not intending all my posts to be long. But I suppose at this beginning phase there is lots to write about! Any advice would be so welcomed!!
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