Blogosphere, I'm terrified every time I miss a day. Days shouldn't slip away against one's will. Sometimes I look at where the children are, and I think, we're not actually behind compared to public school kids. Then I return to the schedule on the armoire door and I panic: we're way behind where we could have and should have been by now. It bothers me that we're not meeting our minimum standards. It means I am powerless over their education.
I refuse to be powerless. I will get this stuff done.
It's not that I'm eating bon bons and watching soaps, or the modern equivalent, browsing the blogs. I've been wandering around my house like a zombie. On Tuesday I went to my doctor to say, "Take me off this anti-convulsant. I can't even focus my eyes." I had broken the washing machine that morning through plain stupidity. She did take me off the meds, and she said I'd feel better by Thursday. Today is Thursday and that seems to be true. Tuesday, aside from making progress with the medication problem, was a complete flop. No schoolwork, leftovers for supper. I gave myself permission to sleep the meds off.
Wednesday was better. The Daddio took the other children out of the house for the day so that I could give the Scientist his annual standardized test. He didn't test well. Knowing he was timed freaked him out. He looked at the number of problems first, told himself, "I can never get them done!" and the anxiety made it hard for him to think straight. I did what I could, but that wasn't much, since we'd had a couple of stressful days. I fixed the washing machine, but we still scrounged for supper rather than sharing a meal.
Today, all three big kids are catching up on math. I've said this before; it's what we do when I'm sick.
The Storyteller's math program came in workbooks that roughly equate to first, second and third grade levels. I took all the pages out of the books and arranged them in an order I prefer, stapling them into new workbooks. He's allowed to do any pages he wants so long as he goes in order within a skill. It apparently took him some effort to decide this morning. He's got the entire couch and coffee table covered in these stapled together pages, each set laid out haphazardly. He's stretched his limbs out too, and is kicking and singing while he fills in his pages. When he comes to the end of a page, he thrusts his fist with pencil in it into the air and calls out victoriously how many pages he has left.
The Scientist did three problems in Life of Fred, about finding the lowest common denominator, and had a complete meltdown. The author of this book often doesn't tell children how to do something, preferring for them to figure it out on their own. This is why we keep the Key to... series on hand. I assigned sunshine and a big cup of water, gave the Scientist some physical affection, and switched his assignment. Instead of puzzling indefinitely over the five problems left him in this lesson, I gave him some review drill in Key to..., telling him I'd set a timer to limit the amount of work he had to do. I asked him how long he thought was reasonable. He suggested thirty minutes. So, as I type, he is doing something he can definitely do, as much of it as he can in thirty minutes, no consequences if he doesn't get very far. This is a great confidence builder, I've learned, and having earlier skills down cold always helps him to figure out how to do newer things.
The Gamer skipped an assignment without permission a couple of days ago. Today he's making up for that. At some point he will get it through his skull that his assignments are not optional, right? He's assigned three hours of math with just a break to run around every forty-five minutes to prevent brain burn out. He either does his work when he chooses within the day I give it to him, or he does it the next day precisely when and how I tell him to do it. Anyway, he's got one third of pre-algebra down with flawless, one hundred percent mastery. Because we've used arithmetic programs rather than contemporary integrated mathematics programs that include some algebra and geometry every year of elementary school, he's doing a lot of catch up in functions and graphs, exponents and polynomials, variable expressions and equations, and of all kinds of geometrical stuff.
Aside from doing twice as much math and only math, it feels much more like a normal day, laundry getting done, dishes getting washed, supper plans and bicycling and being snuggly with fairy tales and whatnot. This is my Eden.
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