– Christopher was saying he hates math and that makes me sad because I knew I was leaving him to his own devices with lessons. We talked about it and realized he is having a hard time with the more intensive work, it’s a lot more at this stage (Saxon 54) and the problems are far more intricate. He’s such an extrovert, too, and he does best if he can talk through things so we tried something new. We read through the lesson together and he does the new practice problems aloud with me and then we alternate him doing the written work alone or doing it orally with me. After a week of letting him do the oral math version he said he just may love math now. 🙂 What a simple solution… and it allows me to immediately correct any errors and see how he’s working through the problems.

– I’m reading aloud the history to the kids (Story of the World) and the Lamb’s Shakespeare for kids once a week each. It’s forcing me to pay much closer attention to the story and characters as we have to review what we read the week prior. I’m learning a lot even if the kids are not!

– Christopher’s grammar is becoming far more intensive (and boring) as well so I’m making sure he has the concept down and can do a couple of the exercises and we call it good. It’s a lot of sentence diagramming right now and I’m bored personally with reviewing predicate adjectives vs. predicate nominative. Bleh.

– Both kids are working on the BBC typing lessons and Ben’s asking if he can, too. I realized they could probably pick that up pretty quickly and since I’m happy with their cursive skills I’m comfortable with them learning typing now. I know it won’t be do the detriment of their handwriting, which is quite nice if not a bit slow still. They are still so young, I know their little hands still tire quickly while writing and I don’t want that to slow down the spilling of their creative ideas. I’m also willing to have them dictate stories and reports to me and I’ll type or write it up for them – until they are 10 I don’t expect they will have the handwriting speed or typing skills to quickly capture their own ideas without it frustrating them and I don’t ever want that to stifle them expressing creativity. I’ll also let them do the reports on video if they want to do it orally. I love technology! I think it can be dangerous if used at the expense of the basics like handwriting, but I think it can facilitate creativity as well.

– More later!