Let's start with the good first. I started reading the bible to the kids this week. It's part of Thing 2's curriculum and we've been skipping it since the beginning of the year. The kids are beginning to think of it as a taboo subject which is not at all my intention. References to the bible are everywhere in our culture, in literature, even in our country's history. Religious convictions or not, the bible has played an important role in history. Everyone (myself included) should know at least a little about the bible. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-m-swenson-phd/five-things-everyone-shou_b_835721.html)
That said, I do want to temper the bible with healthy doses of science and reality, so after reading Genesis, I taught a lesson on the Big Bang and evolution. The kids were truly interested, asking lots of questions, so we decided to take a trip to the Field Museum to see their Evolving Planet exhibit. That was on Tuesday. The kids were so engaged! It was one of those moments of pure homeschooling joy. What better way to bring evolution to life? Even better, mid-week, very few people were at the museum and we had the exhibit almost entirely to ourselves. We meandered through, reading the descriptions of each period and watching various videos. I felt like the kids really began to understand the history of our planet and the history of life on earth. Beautiful.
The rest of our week unfolded in a fairly quotidian manner. We continue to do math and literacy daily. Thing 1 does spelling and grammar 3 times a week. We were a little light on literature and history this week, but we'll pick it up next week. Which brings me to our struggles...
Thing 1 is a whiner. OK, perhaps that's too harsh. How could I say such a thing about my own precious child? Well, you teach her 5 days a week and live with her!! You'd say it too. This issue - the complaining, the whining, the "but I'm too tiiiiiired Mom" is easily my biggest current challenge in homeschooling. This is not something she would ever have done at public school. She wanted to impress those teachers. Apparently, the unconditional love of a mother doesn't do much to motivate a child.
So what to do about this? When Thing 1 and I had a frank discussion last night at bedtime about the issue, she suggested (in a whiny tone, of course) that I should just "lessen the work." Not the answer I wanted to hear. The whole point of homeschooling is to provide a broader education than the public schools and if I lighten the load, we will only be doing the bare minimum. Instead, I think next week I need to crack down on the whining. I gave a lecture about how lucky the kids are to be homeschooled. I told them that other mommies send their kids to school so that they can go to the gym, have lunch with their friends, and get a part time job. "I could do that too," I said! "No, no, don't do that! We love being homeschooled!"
So, I explained, next week, I will vociferously enforce a no whining, no complaining, no bad attitude policy. We shall see.
Other than that, I have to say, I do enjoy being home with the kids. It's a more relaxed environment. We don't have to do the mad dash to school every morning and we get to spend lots of time together. We get to rush off to the museum on a moment's notice to study evolution and snuggle on the couch daily. Despite my own whining and complaining,
No comments:
Post a Comment