He's a morning kind of guy...
Dakota and I had a few personal errands to run early this morning, but we found out that it was "Be Late For Something" day so we laughed about getting to work and then headed out on our errands. We were fashionably late to start our lessons, but still had a great morning, doing all of our language arts, math and Spanish. We are way behind in our Story of the World lessons, but it is not a big deal. We will get through it when we get through it. We read the middle part of our Maps and Globes book and looked at our map and globe and talked about the difference. Then I let him paint a large blue Earth with the promise that he could paint again in the afternoon to add the continents. I was hoping this would negate our problems. He is so focused in the morning and we get things done in record time...but then comes lunch break...and I never really get him back.
We take an hour break at lunch and I know that I probably shouldn't give him that long because I am sure it's part of the problem, but by the time I cook his lunch then make my lunch and sit down to get myself together for the afternoon, an hour has flown by and we regroup to begin again. I try to save some fun things for the afternoon so it's not too much sitting or writing, but it doesn't seem to matter what I save, he's scattered and antsy. I let him finish his painting and then we did some fun science, talking about light and stars and making rainbows with cd discs. He got to make some known constellations with shiny stars and black construction paper and then I let him loose to create his own constellations, because if this boy is anything, it's creative. He loves to make up his own thing!
We started our second mystery for our mystery genre month. I honestly thought he would fight me to read anything besides Magic Tree House, but he was very open to the mysteries and after last week's Nate the Great, we began Cam Jansen today, in the Mystery of the Babe Ruth Baseball. This is a better read for him, since Nate the Great was way too easy. We did partner reading and he was actually disappointed when I stopped after chapter 2. He answered his comprehension questions and then we moved on to our last subject of the day.
We are doing at least a few months of Berenstain Bears units for health, talking about character building and favorable traits you need to make it in this world. I got the unit from www.enchantedhomeschoolingmom.com/blogspot.com and it is simple, but effective if you use it correctly and include lots of discussion. We had read our book, Trouble at School, yesterday and today we retold the story and talked about responsibility and consequences. I felt this was a good time to introduce his new chore chart...something he has begged for all summer. We talked about how I would not be nagging him, but would remind him once to do his chores. If, by 8pm, they were not done, then no money would be given out at all for that day. He makes $.75 a day, which doesn't seem like much, but that's $5.25 a week and I think that's good money for an eight year old boy. He agreed that this was fair and darned if he didn't ask if we could please read another Berenstain Bears book before we finished for the day. Go figure!
So Day 7 is in the books. Not the best day I have ever had, but certainly not the worst. Things seem to be going more smoothly so far and I am hoping that we continue this trend throughout the months ahead.
We take an hour break at lunch and I know that I probably shouldn't give him that long because I am sure it's part of the problem, but by the time I cook his lunch then make my lunch and sit down to get myself together for the afternoon, an hour has flown by and we regroup to begin again. I try to save some fun things for the afternoon so it's not too much sitting or writing, but it doesn't seem to matter what I save, he's scattered and antsy. I let him finish his painting and then we did some fun science, talking about light and stars and making rainbows with cd discs. He got to make some known constellations with shiny stars and black construction paper and then I let him loose to create his own constellations, because if this boy is anything, it's creative. He loves to make up his own thing!
We started our second mystery for our mystery genre month. I honestly thought he would fight me to read anything besides Magic Tree House, but he was very open to the mysteries and after last week's Nate the Great, we began Cam Jansen today, in the Mystery of the Babe Ruth Baseball. This is a better read for him, since Nate the Great was way too easy. We did partner reading and he was actually disappointed when I stopped after chapter 2. He answered his comprehension questions and then we moved on to our last subject of the day.
We are doing at least a few months of Berenstain Bears units for health, talking about character building and favorable traits you need to make it in this world. I got the unit from www.enchantedhomeschoolingmom.com/blogspot.com and it is simple, but effective if you use it correctly and include lots of discussion. We had read our book, Trouble at School, yesterday and today we retold the story and talked about responsibility and consequences. I felt this was a good time to introduce his new chore chart...something he has begged for all summer. We talked about how I would not be nagging him, but would remind him once to do his chores. If, by 8pm, they were not done, then no money would be given out at all for that day. He makes $.75 a day, which doesn't seem like much, but that's $5.25 a week and I think that's good money for an eight year old boy. He agreed that this was fair and darned if he didn't ask if we could please read another Berenstain Bears book before we finished for the day. Go figure!
So Day 7 is in the books. Not the best day I have ever had, but certainly not the worst. Things seem to be going more smoothly so far and I am hoping that we continue this trend throughout the months ahead.
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