Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Schoolish update

Yesterday, I thought more about my ds and ended up reading a little story he loves with him (he read one or two words per page), then he practised writing m's, then he pulled out the word cards (just index cards with words on them) and he put a few silly sentences together. I did some oral math with him while I was cleaning up the kitchen last night and was reminded of how much he LOVES that. I need to pull out Ray's Arithmetic again and refresh my memory a bit about their approach. He really enjoyed that last year--as long as it didn't look like my questions were coming from a book. ;)



Dd and the 13yo spent a LONG time on Messenger Live yesterday with the girl I used to homeschool. She's moving to Belize today or tomorrow. I figured a good long computer time with her was allowable.

The 13yo, however, is NOT in the groove this week. Perhaps it's because he knows that half this week is TOTALLY SHOT. I mean, really. We're out tomorrow afternoon (we thought today that it'd be all day, but it turns out that where we're going doesn't open until noon!), he knows he has Thursday off for dd's birthday party day and he'll get Friday morning off school work so he can help dd prepare whatever we're bringing to a Halloween party we're going to. (Omg, I just realized--that means a costume, doesn't it????) There's only Halloween next week, so we should be able to get back into a good groove. I think, however, I'm going to have to tighten up a bit on him. He was going great with his project, but then when he's had enough, he goes back to kind of meandering. I need to decide whether I pick his requirements (like math) or if I have him pick, say, 3 different areas to work on in a given day (things that'll take some time, not just be done with in a few minutes), with him picking more after that if he gets that done.

Today, however, he spent a good hour or so doing science with his chemistry kit. While he still has this desire to just do whatever comes to mind (whether it's a good idea or a bad idea), he is getting more into finding it 'cool' and wanting to know why something does what it does. He's also very conscious about the fact that some of the chemicals we are using are poisonous if ingested, plus he got a lesson on how we need to check how to dispose of chemicals that have some sort of warning on them. Excellent science lessons. :)

The 16yo got a lot of work done yesterday, which was great. She's been really willing to work afternoons lately, but she's been coming down with something and loses her energy a bit and is slow and highly distractible! Ah well. This morning, she was a total mess, but still wanted to force herself to work. She did some CALM, plus had a dentist appointment. Not too bad for looking and feeling awful (and actually throwing up at one point, after which she said she felt much better).

We spent the afternoon out taking care of library, dd bought herself a game to go with her Nintendo DS, running some errands for her birthday party on Thursday... Tomorrow morning, I'm going to get the 16yo to do as much as she possibly can, plus maybe insist on the 13yo doing math or something. I'd much prefer he choose what he thinks would be best for him, so maybe I'll put it in his hands, but insist that he choose something.

Which somehow reminds me that I took out some library books today that I want to have a look at. I think I'll go do that now!

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