Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Day in the Life Of, Part Deux


I know I'm something like 5 days late posting this. I'm sure you understand about having a new baby and all. I can't even count the days anymore. How many days late with this am I. Five, four...six??? Never mind.

Anyway...

Other notes from the first day were: Ella likes a break. Recess was her favorite thing. I'm good with that. Usually we put down grammar and turn directly to some other task, like math. If she needs 10 minutes to go outside and run off some energy before embarking on the next learning adventure, fine with me. It's better than listening to her whining and it doesn't extend the day out a significant amount.
The second day was harder for her than the first day. Getting up at 6AM is NOT her thing. I repeat: ELLA DOES NOT LIKE TO GET UP AT 6AM. Talk about grumpy pants! She was very discouraged about how long the day was. Recess wasn't quite enough to make up for all the play time she was missing with her sisters. When asked she told us that one of the things she disliked the most about public school was how little she got to see her sisters. Granny put some fabulous ideas up in the comments and we capitalized on a couple of them. She hardly got to see her sisters at all except for when they were included in the lesson, like science includes Sarah. She didn't get to see Anna at all until she was out of school. We kept her downstairs. She didn't like that. Mom checked her hair for lice. That was funny. She was totally grossed out at the idea of bugs crawling around in her hair.

We ended up calling off the PS for Thursday because with guests here, we felt it was adding more stress than was warranted. I think a third day would have been just enough for Ella to really realize how lucky blessed she is to be homeschooled, but I'm happy with what she and we learned on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I don't know that school was that much different on Thursday and Friday, but we did give her more breaks between subjects and that has been our greatest help with the whining.

I have relaxed our rigorous spelling schedule as she is already doing the third grade spelling book, and was scheduled to finish the fourth grade spelling book this year. She's only in second grade. She doesn't like the spelling because it involves a lot of writing. So we're going to do that only once a week now instead of two lessons a week. We are going to get up at 7AM, eat a light breakfast and begin school no later than 9, but preferably at 8:30. That gives an hour and a half to eat, get dressed, do morning chores and not be hurried about it. We accomplish our best work in school earlier in the day. When the afternoon rolls around everyone gets sleepy and lazy and we accomplish less in a greater amount of time.

I don't think this post made very much sense. I'm sleepy.

Oh and the HOMEWORK!!! We had her up until almost 10 Tuesday night and past 10 Wednesday night doing homework. ROTFLOL! That was the best. She could barely keep her eyes open. She's nodding off to sleep and we're poking at her and prodding her, "Ella, get your homework done." Yeah, she didn't care for that either. However, we liked the homework. I liked that later in the day she was reminded again of what she was learning. I believe we will give her homework to do from now on only not nearly so much of it and we'll call it "laterwork" instead of homework.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So Ella decided she likes homeschool? :-D

Sounds like a good experience for all ;)

My kids (except Cassie) despise early mornings. They get it from their mama, who also despises early mornings. ;)

Johanna said...

You guys are mean taskmasters! It does sound like a good lesson, though. I am keeping in mind all the ideas for when Aaron reaches that stage. I think next year will be a bit of a shock to his system as our curriculum gets decidedly harder...

Kainoa said...

I love this idea for Ella! Also, where the heck did you get a no whining cone, that was too funny?!! You sure did take on a lot when you decided to try this experiment I give you so much credit, you must have SO much patience and staminia, I think I would cry from the stress! Great job on your part!