"I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience." -- Anne Sullivan

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Better Days

This week has gone a lot better than the last few, thanks mostly to some more tweaking of our system and a mattress pad. Yes, a mattress pad! Luke was still not sleeping at all during the day, and waking up every hour during the night. He always fell asleep in our arms, and as soon as he hit the crib, he was awake and screaming. I ended up putting him in bed with me a lot, and every time he zonked right out. So I thought that the crib mattress being so hard might be the problem. I got the mattress pad Monday, and he only woke up twice. Then Tuesday he took a TWO HOUR nap(!) and slept that night from 10-5. What a difference some sleep makes...

I also started "officially" including Caleb in our lessons. Every day he would ask, "You teach me?" so instead of waiting till he naps(which is never guaranteed anyway), we read the FIAR story with him and then while Gracie does seatwork he gets a coloring page of a shape, letter, number, or, Thomas the train(I don't tell him Thomas isn't actually "schoo-work", as he calls it) He's a smart little bugger and has known the alphabet since he was two, which further proves that kids are learning all the time, as I never taught him any letters. I still don't know how he picked them up.

After that we break for some lunch, then I do try to get Caleb and Luke to sleep, and Gracie and I work on phonics and math. I like to have at least math with no interruptions, as this seems to be what she is least interested in. Phonics is a breeze, but I am still doing the easy lessons because they include some good rules, and the easiness boosts her confidence anyway.

Then, for Bible, I passed the buck to Jeremiah. I wanted him to be included in some way so that Gracie would look at him as someone to learn from too, not just "Mom is the answer person". So they do that after dinner, which also frees up time for me during the day. We use Christian Light Bible, which I have to say is kind of dry and predictable. Every day is the same, read the passage, read the story, color the picture. I will definitely be looking for something else next year. Anyway, Jeremiah is doing really great with that, he taught her how to look up verses, which I didn't think to teach her yet. He also asks her to read as much of it as she can, and I was really, really surprised by how much she could read! I just take for granted that "it's the Bible, she can't read that yet", so it was really cool to see Jeremiah bring something out of her that I didn't even know was there.

I also ordered a 30-trial of the Muzzy Spanish program. I have been looking at programs since before we started, but I didn't know what was good, and they're always over $100. A lot of them had books for parents to read, which wouldn't work for us because I would mispronounce everything! I remembered Muzzy commercials from when I was kid and looked it up. It think it's mostly DVDs and CDs, so I don't have to do much of the teaching. ( I do know "taco", "burrito", and also, "cinnamon twists", lol) We can try it free for 30 days and if we want to keep it, we can pay monthly for 5 months. It is definitely becoming more and more useful, almost necessary, to know Spanish, and now is the time for them to learn it. Maybe I'll pick some up too. I am pretty excited about it.

Lastly, the biggest change of all- I started relaxing. One day I was doing the dishes, after making applesauce all morning. Luke was screaming, the house was a mess, and there was still school to do. I was getting stressed. My heart started racing like it was in my throat. Then I realized, this is ridiculous. Who am I trying to impress? Jeremiah doesn't care. My kids don't care. Why do I care? I don't have to bake all morning and clean the house and do schoolwork. I was making myself unhappy, and if momma ain't happy... it's true! My kids will never look back and remember that there was dishes on the counter in 2010. But they will remember if I was miserable. So I let it go. As long as we have clothes to wear, dishes to use, and clean bathrooms, we're good, and I can use the weekends to get caught up. I have the whole rest of my life to clean my house, but I only have a few precious years to raise my kids.

Besides, when they're bigger, they can clean it themselves :)

2 comments:

  1. I have to constantly tell myself to let go. It is so hard to not feel like you have to do everything...I know I always felt like I had something to prove.

    We are using Hooked on Spanish this year. It was like $200 but I found it for $15 at a discount book store! It is through a CD-ROM, so I use it as their computer time too. So far it's been easy stuff that they already learned (probably from Dora the Explorer...so thankful we don't have cable now, I couldn't take much more of her! LOL). But then it moves into stuff that I don't know, so we'll see how well it goes. There are some workbooks and things that go with it, but we haven't bothered to use them yet. I've heard good things about Muzzy too...and I so remember those commercials!

    You are doing a great job!!!

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