Smrt Lernins

Worst homeschooling day yet and proof-positive that any vigorous curriculum day must be fronted by a run with Officer Daddyman. We were all dragging this morning when we woke up, so I encourage Daddyman to stay in bed with sleeping Babypie while I took Tank to preschool. Officer Daddyman and the Captain skipped their morning run as a result.

Captain Science decided to test our new “if you don’t get it done during the pre-established time frame, it’ll be tacked on at the end of the day in lieu of fun stuff” policy. It’s 6 o’clock and he is still working on his writing assignment and has a few more history things to do. He dawdled over his history and only got half of it done, so I had him put it away.

We moved on to grammar (possessive nouns). He didn’t follow the simple instruction to read the chapter first, so he plowed right through all the work and did it completely incorrectly. I had him read the chapter again and redo just the first section. He did it incorrectly again. I had him read the chapter aloud and he finally got it right. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, and he has actually demonstrated in the past that he can use possessive nouns correctly in sentences, but he just would not pay attention to what he was supposed to do.

We finally finished grammar and started writing a little after lunch, and he’s been working on that ever since. It’s not hard — making a simple outline from a paragraph, making short lists of active verbs, adjectives, and -ly words, and then using those to write a short paragraph. It shouldn’t have taken him longer than an hour to do all of it, but he’s fought tooth and nail.

Because he wouldn’t do his work in a timely manner, he missed out on a trip to Nana’s house and on going to the McDonald’s playground. He was upset about that, so hopefully it inspires him to stay motivated in the future. This has been terribly frustrating.

We had our first homeschool co-op day yesterday. What a great experience! Captain Science took classes in martial arts, chess, math club, and filmmaking. I taught a creative writing class and Officer Daddyman taught martial arts.

I was initially worried about how my class would go. I’ve never taught creative writing to children before. Officer Daddyman told me not to worry about it, because these are “my people” and I’ll probably go in and be “queen of the homeschoolers.” They were certainly my people, and the kids seemed to enjoy the class a lot. I have to admit that I have more in common with kids (and parents) like these than I ever had in any other school environment, including private, Montessori, and public schools. The parents are a lot more like me. The kids are like my kids. It’s not at all cliquish like I’ve experienced elsewhere. So nice!

I’m impressed by the talent of some of these children. They already express themselves so well on the page. I think we can get some great material out of them during this class. If I get their permission, I’ll even share some of their work here (names removed, of course).

Our first class was “Show, Don’t Tell,” a common trope of writing. The kids all drew a feeling or experience (“I’m hot” or “I’m sad,” for example) from an envelope and then wrote a short paragraph expressing that feeling without saying the actual word. They all understood the concept right away and many of them came up with great ways to show what they were feeling.

I wouldn’t say I wish we could do the co-op more days a week, because it was a long and exhausting day, but I’m really looking forward to continuing. Captain Science is, too! He played the role of “dead body” in their first film and was so proud of himself.