August 5 - Day 3

Here they are getting to work on their contributions to the mission.

Today was an incredibly difficult start. DragonGirl finally made the discovery that even though we were homeschooling, life still has routines. She did NOT want to put on clothes today, and she spent about a half hour crawling around the house with a comforter over her head. Eventually she got dressed when I told MonkeyBoy I'd take him to the library.

He wanted to go to the library because he is avoiding doing any "desk work". Getting him to write a note in his journal or do ONE math worksheet has been an adventure. He's super good at distracting me and then before I know it he's off playing video games and hasn't done one ounce of work. I need to keep an eye on this.

At the library MB only wanted to look at books with recipes for sweets, and we ended up with probably eight books on cookies, cakes, smoothies, and the like. DG would only look at nonfiction trade books on animals. What was interesting, however, is that MB said the next time we went he'd like to get some books on sports. Then hubby asked him if he wanted to play a sport like baseball. When all was said and done, we had discussed several sports, and looked in the park district catalog to find him a basketball league to play on. I'm going to ask him again tonight, but I think he's going to play basketball this fall! I think this will be good for him because I know he's athletic, and the teamwork would do him some good too.

I tried helping DG with her math sheets to no avail. That girl has NO concept of place value. It's so discouraging because I know she was mastering it last year. Even the fourth grade stuff she couldn't do.

What was amazing today was our work on our mission statement. I took the kids outside because I didn't want to feel stupid using my teacher persona. We have a house full of people right now, and I often wonder if they think I'm an idiot when I work with the kids. :)  We chatted about the mission statement, and then I gave them both a big sheet of paper to write down things they were happy about and looking forward to in homeschool. DG wrote in words, which surprised me because she's usually super visual and artistic. MB drew, which also surprised me a bit, but I went with it. When all was said and done, we put all of their thoughts together, and DG even started rhyming things. Our final mission statement is this:

The Lambert family (sort of) likes to learn. Our house is our school. We go lots of places and meet lots of faces. We do school every day, but we like to play. School is going to be fun.

I loved this because I felt like it really embraced what my kiddos are about, and yet it also reflected my thoughts about their schooling.

Our final activity today is our Wednesday Thank You notes. Each Wednesday we will choose one person to send a thank you letter to - I wrote one to my parents as a guide, and then they chose a person to write to. The goal here is to get used to the letter-writing process, including addressing and stamping. MB lost momentum at the end, but he managed to stick it out until the stamp went on. I didn't even have the heart to make them do a reflection in their journals today because it was two o'clock before we finally finished, and they'd been going since before nine.

I was really pleased with a lot that happened today, and I'm looking forward to settling down into a good solid routine and lots of learning. One thing I need to remind myself to do is to allow them to choose their reading. This is SO HARD for me because I feel like they should be reading fiction constantly, but for some reason each of them chooses nonfiction. And MB - a cookbook? But he's been doing that for years . . . I need to come up with ways to embed some good reading strategy instruction, so I'm thinking maybe some newsela articles or Reading A-Z stuff. I need to release a bit and just feel them out, but I feel like I'm not doing my job if I don't instruct - instruct - instruct. Public school mentality. I must shed this. I must. Until next time!