Two days have been survived in this experiment. I shouldn't say survived, actually. To be honest, it's been great. Being generally cynical about most things, I'll chalk it up to the novelty factor of the whole experience but really, what's not to like about having the flexibility to let the kids sleep in to get over their jet-lag and have a long leisurely breakfast--pancakes with maple syrup as opposed to a cold bowl of cereal with a side order of me screaming at them to hurry up or we'll be late?
The first day, I decided to keep the schooling light, especially since I have no idea what I am doing. We kept T home with us because he was so jet-lagged from the trip to L.A., and I wasn't sure how much we'd be able to do with him around. So, we had breakfast, hung out for a few minutes, made our beds, cleared the breakfast things. Then L got to pick where she was going to "do school", and she chose the living room, on a low fold-out table we got in Korea that lets you sit on the floor. We started with identifying coins (I was surprised to find out that L didn't know her pennies from her quarters over the holidays). I had her make rubbings of all the different coins, and we talked about how many cents each one was worth. We also looked at the pictures on them and I told her about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson & Teddy Roosevelt. (A confession: I was actually unsure at first whether that was really Roosevelt or Truman. Had to look it up.) Then she labelled the rubbings, wrote the names of the coins and their values. And that was it for Math that day.
For Language Arts, she picked a beginning reading book and read it to me ("Rags Has A Bath" from the Reading Rod series that someone gave her). Then we took a page of handwriting exercises from Donna Young's web site and practised penmanship. Before bed, she read a Bob Book, from volume 2.
In between, we took breaks, had snacks, and played with T (who was busy drawing and sitting in my lap and doing "homework"). We were all done in about an hour. When she spoke with D on the phone that afternoon, L said homeschool was "Fantastic!"
Yesterday, Day #2, was also good. The kids stayed up all night playing--D had to go in and pretend to be the bad guy at around 1 am-- so we decided we needed to to short-circuit the jetlag by being more hardcore about getting them up early. So at 7:30, T was woken up and dragged off to school at the regular time (poor thing fell asleep at the lunch table at noon, I was told). L and I cleared up, made our beds and started school. We went back to coin learning, and to help her remember the relative values we played a game I made up called "Money War", which is basically the same as the card game "War", but with coins. We took the loose change jar, covered it with a towel, and then both stuck our hands in and grabbed a coin. On the count of three, we put the coins on the table and compared. L had to name the coins, tell me their values and which coin was worth more. Whoever had the higher-value coin kept them both. She loved the game & by the end of match could tell me not only their names and values, but also the guys on the heads. She also made out like a bandit. The next time we do school, I think I'm going to have her graph the values, and maybe how many of each coin she has in her piggy bank.
We also did 2 pages of a math workbook I got at Barnes & Noble. Nothing great, just something to keep her in practice until we get the math book we've ordered: Progress in Mathematics. We also just did any number game I could come up with as we went through our day: on the elevator, I'd ask her what floor we would be on if we were 2 floors above the 5th, 3 floors below the 9th, etc. In the laundry room, I'd ask her how many quarters make a dollar, how many I'd need to put in the machine if I'd already put in X number of quarters, etc. She loves that kind of stuff and is always begging to play.
For LA, she read another beginning reader book, we did another page of penmanship, and she wrote some sentences about pictures she printed from the web site Starfall. On a picture of a girl labelled All About Me, she wrote: I rily lov me bcos I am vry prity. (I asked her about being smart and kind, and she rolled her eyes and said, "You said to write one sentence, momma.") On a picture of a bunk bed, she wrote: My bonk is vry prity. I lov my moma, my dady and my bonk.
Oh, and we also did the introduction to The Story Of The World, History for the Classical Child. It introduced the concepts of History and Archeology. We talked about what history was, what a historian is and how they are different from archeologists. It led to a conversation about G-Gma (her great-grandmother who passed away when L was 2), and G-Gma's g-gma. Next chapter is about the Fertile Crescent. I think Lily's going to really enjoy this class.
Of course, none of this was done all in one go. We did laundry in between, had lunch, snuggled. It was waaaaayyyy too cold to go out, so both days we just stayed in and worked and played. No pressure.
The interesting phenomena for me was my own reaction to this. Before I started (and still to some extent), I worried a lot about how I was going to deal with spending so much time with L, and not have time for myself. But during the actual doing of it, I felt none of that internal pressure I usually feel -- that I'm not doing enough, that I should be doing something else, why the hell am I home when there's so much to do outside, and why the hell am I out when there's so much to do at home. While we were doing school, even during the breaks when we were doing laundry or washing dishes or just hanging out, I really felt like I was doing exactly what I should be doing. It was really comfortable. And I think L has never had so much of my attention before. Usually, when we're together, I'm knitting, or on the computer, or trying to knit or get on the computer. Even when I'm physically with her, my mind is usually elsewhere. But for the past 2 days, I was really there with her, focused on her. And she's reacted with so much affection. All day long, she's been hugging me, telling me how much she loves me, how I'm the best mommy in the world. If I wasn't so happy about it, I'd wonder what the aliens did with my kid.
The downsides are that I'm not getting the time to work at all during the day, and I feel that pressure in the back of my head. I really need to figure that out. Also, by 3 p.m. when T came home, I was sort of done, and there he was looking for some Mommy-love. Then L needed to adjust from having me all to herself to sharing and so the time from 3 to when D came home, which was early, thank god, was a little rough. We will also have to work on that. The secret, I suspect, is to figure out a schedule and just get everyone on it, so they know what to expect.
Anyway, today's my day off. A is babysitting the two of them (I gave her some worksheets to do with L), and I'm here, trying to work. Of course, spending all this time blogging about homeschool isn't exactly working, but I've got this off my mind now, so time to focus. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go.
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