Two weeks of school have already passed by and our schedule is proving once again, to suck. There is no other way to put it--it sucks and I can't wait until May! :) The only day we have together is Sunday and we are all pretty wiped out by then. And may I mention that I hate waking up at 6:45 am?? Hate it!! I used to be a morning person, but now I think I am a night person. I can't sleep anymore--insomnia keeps me up until 2 or 3 am, and then I wake up every hour on the hour. I have nightmares about numbers and car accidents--I don't know which freaks me out more.
My weirdest number nightmares I used to have were when I was an undergrad. I would *wake up* (or so I thought) and look at my alarm clock and it would be some definite integral I had to solve in order to figure out what time it was...those were fun days!! Not.
Simon's homeschooling is progressing into a relaxed homeschool. We are not sticklers for when or how it happens--sometimes we do worksheets in the morning, or afternoon, or sometimes just before bed...sometimes we don't do them at all, or sometimes he decides he wants to do five in a row. Sometimes when we are driving, Simon decides he wants to play the "minus and plus" game where I ask him a subtraction problem and after he answers I ask Gwen an addition problem. Simon does pretty well with subtracting two numbers under 20 in his head. Gwen, well...she is just guessing on the addition problems :)
The Saxon Math doesn't seem so bad now that we have moved a little past the first 20 worksheets. It is very repetitive, but I don't think there is anything terribly wrong with that. We went to my sister's house last week and she quizzed Simon on what he is learning in homeschool and if he liked it or not.
Last Friday for our *field trip* we went to the zoo, but the weather turned cold and we didn't stay as long as I would have liked. If the weather is nice this Friday, I think we will go to a Metropark Nature Center. I also want to go to the apple orchard sometime this fall, but I am hoping to take a Wednesday off for that so the whole family can go.
Oh, and I am happy to report that our mangled sunflower has produced a flower that no animal has eaten yet!! I took a couple of pics of it, but it is so small, it hardly looks like a sunflower. Once I use up the roll of film I will post our sad little flower :)
My last thought for the day is about bullies and how they are supposed to make our lives better somehow :) I signed up for a free 7 day subscription to classmates.com just to see who had signed my profile, only to find that this person, I'll call her TB, had signed my profile and I just about threw up. The girl who tormented me throughout junior high, stole crap from my locker, used to prank call me, and finally, ALMOST beat the crap out of me at the mall (until some nice guys intervened to save my butt) had signed my profile? Are you freaking kidding me? This happened over 20 years ago, and she still freaks me out! Yes, bullies are a great thing--I think everyone should have one!! Yes...yes...sure...why not? It only helps us later in life somehow???
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5 comments:
Hi Barbnocity!
It is good to hear how you find homeschooling to be relaxing - that is what it should be.
We went to my sister's house last week and she quizzed Simon on what he is learning in homeschool and if he liked it or not.
What did he say?
Have you seen the JumpMath program? Although originally designed for kids having trouble with mathematics, it is great for building numerate, confident, math-enjoying kids.
RegularNut wrote an article about, inter alia, the program. (Not sure how to create a link on your blog, but you can search for "mighton" on the LiveSearch function on our blog if you are interested).
The link to the program is also in that article. (I am sure I have managed to put links in articles here before, but cannot get them to work today, oh well .. :-( )
And NO, I don't think bullies have any redeeming value, other than teaching us to deal with the armpit section of society. I laughed at your initials for your tormentor, TB:
"In the past, tuberculosis was called consumption, because it seemed to consume people from within."
I have watched uncontrolled bullying consume a child. (All the quotes are from Wikipedia)
"Tuberculosis is a common and deadly infectious disease."
As is bullying.
"In many patients the infection waxes and wanes."
It would seem that some people are more likely to be bullied than others. Often it goes away for a while, only to return with a vengeance later.
"Tuberculosis can be a difficult disease to diagnose, due mainly to the difficulty in culturing this slow-growing organism in the laboratory."
Bullying almost never happens when teachers are around, does it?
Keep well, and keep up the blogging!
Sheesh, I figured it out, brainflatulence strikes again!
Here are the links for the previous comment:
John Mighton, Math and Childhood Trauma
JumpMath
HTH
BigNut
I've had similar hypnagogic hallucinations many times. Instead of solving differential integrals mine would typically involve a chess problem or playing a board game of some sort.
Sometimes this would be conflated with whatever fantasy-anxiety component was present in the dream -- typically I had to solve the chess problem to figure out what time was displayed on the clock, in order to avoid being captured by persecutors.
Hi, Bignut and Paul!!
TB really were the initials of my own personal junior high bully!! I thought they were appropriate :) We saw the JUMP math program info on your blog, too--that is definitely something we will be looking into, also.
As for Simon talking about homeschooling, he only mentions he is doing math worksheets--I don't think he considers all the science, coloring, and reading part of school :) But he said he likes doing school at home...
Paul--my dreams usually preceded some big assignment or test, so maybe my persecutors were just my math professors--HA!
:) Barb
I like following families as their homeschool journey goes from "We're gonna do classical"...to "We're becoming more eclectic"...to "We are leaning towards unschooling"...to "We are strict advocates of unschooling as a lifestyle"
Not saying this is you guys. (Yet)
;)
(I declare myself offically allowed to say all this cuz I love you guys so much and cause I been there.)
:)
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