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The Homeschool Mother Journal and Weekly Wrap-Up

The Homeschool Mother's Journal

In my life this week...

For the past few weeks I have been struggling with discipline issues, which is a big fault in my personality and temperament. That is the one thing I find challenging about homeschooling, but that is also a good thing as it forces me to keep working at it - my kids depend on it.

Another thing that has been going on with me is  that I am so out of shape that I have a lot of annoying muscle and tension pains. Last week I decided that, since we live on the 8th floor of an apartment building, to use the stairs to my advantage by using them as exercise. I take the boys and we run down and up the 8th sets of stairs twice. Last week we did it once or twice, this week we did it 3 times. I am pleased and really hope to keep that up. The boys really like doing it.

In our homeschool this week...

This week we were able to cover much more school than last week, so I am happy about that.

Wednesday I was sick with a stomach flu so we only did Math, which ended up having us doing some school on our day off Thursday. Math, which has always been Zach's black spot, had a rough time this week, as it was mainly about practicing additions and subtractions. The child hates seeing these sets of number sentences to be completed. It does not help that Singapore Math is big on mental Math and Zach is very lazy when it comes to any thing that demands focus and work, except when it is something he really wants to do at the moment. Today, saturday he still has some to complete.

In TOG we started a salt dough map which got broken by accident by one of the boys. I did not have the heart to redo it, so hopefully they will remember the main parts.

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The boys had fun in science learning about forces and friction and using marbles and ball. This eventually turned into learning to play a marble game.

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Places we're going and people we're seeing...

We stayed home this week, except for Zach's violin to which his dad had to take him since I was sick. The boys did have some friends over as I had to babysit them on Tuesday night.

My favorite thing this week was...

. . . getting school done and  seeing my 5 year old complete the 100 levels on the Tank game on the Wii (I know, very insignificant, but it was exciting looking at him. He has been very persistent at it, and reached his goal. Now if I could only get him to have higher goals. I have to admit,though, he is my task oriented child; yesterday he finished his school work within the hour after breakfast.)

What's working/not working for us...

My boys have a motto: books are for night. They love to read only about what interests them. They judge books on the way they look in the inside. For my oldest he does not like to read small words. In the past I have had him read classic with the audiobooks, and he loves that. However, more recently I have tried to have him read those classics without the audio and that has not gone over very well, meaning the books just sit there. So this week I have decided to read them with him. We started with Heidi from Classic Starts. He reads a paragraph and I read one. He seems to be ok with that arrangement. He's read the original version with the CD last year, so he does know the story and likes it.  I have The Three Musketeer here ready to do next as well. The classic Starts series is very nice, they are retold but not abridged. We got him The Huckleberry Finn a few weeks ago at Masterminds (it came with 2 CDs) and he has read it at least 3 time now. Unfortunately the ones from the library do not come with the audio.

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...

How do you teach Math to a child that understands concepts but has no number sense? Zach can answer a multiplication problem but it takes him a good 5 min to answer 50-6 (mentally). We spent most of yesterday reviewing subtracting on a number line. I know he understands what subtraction is, he just does not grasp the sense  or pattern behind it all. He is not a Math guy, he is my outside the box thinker. For him Math is total non-sense, even if he can do addition and subtraction with renaming and regrouping without a problem and know what to do given a Math problem. I do not know if I'm making sense, but I surely hope so. I need Help!!!!

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...

My search and rescue workers:

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Comments

Carrie said…
We used Singapore for Kinder. but that was all, as Hub felt it lacked drill. We switched to Math-U-See, which does a better job at teaching the whys and hows, and includes drill. Since he likes Wii, I would recommend looking at games on coolmath.com. And...it's horrible, and painful, but maybe doing 1 or 5 minute drills each day? At the beginning, they made my one daughter cry, but now she doesn't, and she loves getting even one problem farther than she did last time. Good luck to you.
March 12, 2011 at 7:49 AM
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