Getting to Know All About You

 

Week 1 of homeschooling is finished!  I learned so much this week about my son--his strengths, his weaknesses, and his familial tendencies.

This week I learned that Boy Wonder is a perfectionist.  If he can't do something perfectly, he doesn't want to do it at all.  I've always considered myself to be a perfectionist, but  I'm the kind of person who will practice until I get something perfect.  But not Boy Wonder--he's like his daddy.  Doing things well comes naturally to him and when they don't, he goes into avoidance mode.  This makes handwriting/copybook time rather stressful for both mommy and child.  I explained to him that refusal to "practice" his letters would result in more work.  I told him that my curriculum came with pages for slower kids who don't get concepts as quickly as he does.  Failure to do the assignments I give will result in getting extra slow-kid pages.  Okay, I know this sounds horrible, but appealing to his ego certainly worked!

I also learned that while neat handwriting skills are taking longer to achieve, I seriously underestimated Boy Wonder's ability to do math.  For a few months now, we've been practicing math skills while watching ballgames on TV.  Boy Wonder has this amazing gift of being able to add and subtract multiple digit numbers in his head in order to calculate point differentials during ballgames.  Silly me didn't realize that this gift was legitimate, and that first grade math would be well below my not-yet-kindergartner's ability.  (Seriously?)  Needless to say, when we got to day two of studying the number "0" he was completely bored.  By Wednesday, I picked up our pace in our math book and my son has opted to get ahead by doing math on the weekends as well.  His choice.  And how is this a bad plan?

I also accidentally discovered that my son not only listens to what I teach, but he comprehends it as well.  One afternoon he decided he wanted to play tsunamis with his brother.  In order to do that, he had to successfully teach my 3 year old what he had learned about tsunamis.  It was amazing how accurate and simple his explanation of a tsunamis was!  On another day, my boys decided to act out their history lesson together (my 3 year old had been listening too).  In chapter 1 of The Story of the World, volume 1, the main character was living as a nomad and searching for food.  She found a lizard, which her mother was going to cook into a stew for dinner.  Sure enough, that afternoon, my little Texans found a gecko in our backyard that they corned and attempted to capture for dinner.  (I'm pretty sure he lost a tail in the debacle.)  And no, I did not make lizard stew for dinner.

This week has been loads of fun.  I'm thinking about allowing Mr. Wonderful to substitute teach on his day off next Monday just so that he can appreciate the experience as well.  I had no idea that homeschooling would be such an interesting way to get to know my children better.  In the process, I'm finding that I'm getting to know myself better as well.

Footnote: The Story of the World series is pretty great.  It was designed for older elementary and Jr. High students, but it is so well written that my 5 year old is hooked!  You can order the audio version or the books online at Amazon.