School

I survived my first day of focusing on homeschooling Kimball. Trust me, it wasn't easy to overlook the bombed out family room, or the mouunds of laundry waiting to be folded AND the other mound waiting to be put in the washer, or the dishes piling up in the sink or my own bed unmade,etc. But it is possible. Now my sister would probably argue that I ignore those things regularly and she's sort of right. I have never blatantly on purpose ignored them so I could sit at the kitchen table and look at them for a few hours while doing something completely different. Kimball did well--he had no complaining or tantrums (this would be a first for him), and did all the work I asked him to. It might have helped that the reading he was doing interested him and could be applied in the future. Since he has been wanting his OWN dog (I know, we already have TWO-but apparently they don't count because they belong to either ME or the family), I have picked out several books about different breeds of dogs for him to read to me. Stories about famous dogs like Hachiiko or the one stray dog that went up into space are grabbing his interest too. I know I'm receiving help from above because I don't think I'm smart enough to think of these things on my own. Aside from reading, we worked on math-we started a unit on measuring. It's funny because some of the things I just knowingly do, he doesn't--yet. I had to have him measure certain things--so I had him compare the two dogs tails. And my finger--and his height to Sam's and my height. Cameron wouldn't let us measure his arm after he got home from school so we could figure out if it's longer than a meter. My guess? It is since a meter is only 39.37 inches long. We looked up a few things on the globe, then practiced looking up words in the dictionary. When I look back--maybe it doesn't sound like we did a ton but it took a few hours to get all that done. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to more of the same. Maybe we'll do some games to teach geography, nouns and verbs. If I look at the sheer volume of things that I have to teach, then I get overwhelmed and start to shut down. So I have decided to take it one day at a time-ok two-I plan what to the next day after I'm done with school for the current day if that makes sense--and just keep it fun. How can verbs be fun though? (I'm sure I can figure out a way...if I think about it long enough.) Now, with this time I finally have to myself, I'm going to bed! But it was a good, busy, fun, productive day. I'm definitely going to need a nap tomorrow!