May brings birthdays!
As I write this, the rain is gently falling down, giving my garden a much-needed drink. I've been watering it myself a bit with the hose, but in our sandy soil I'm sure my usual efforts are not as much as the garden actually needs. It's so relaxing to listen to the rain pitter-patter on the roof. We've gone tv-free most afternoons (and most mornings), which has been truly wonderful!
Our son's time at the public school each week has been rolling along fairly well. He gets a lot from the specials he attends, and he is always excited to spend a little time with his 'school friends' each week.
In other news, our homeschool co-op is working out quite nicely now that we have lessened our number of classes this semester. We arrive on time much easier now that I do not need to pack for an entire day of activities and meals. I simply get everyone dressed and fed, grab a few drinks and my ipad and we all hop into the car and off we go.
While K. is in class, I take S. and D. to the toddler room and let them run around for a while. When K. is done with his class, he joins us in the toddler room to play for a few minutes and then we all grab our jackets and hop into the car. It has become a bit of a tradition to then hit the grocery store, which is a challenge with three kids but one that I am now quite used to. The kids love to ride in the "truck carts", so they take turns with 2 riding in the truck and 1 in the slotted seat, or 1 walking alongside the cart.
We then head home in time for lunch, and so I put on some lunch and the kids play while I'm putting the groceries away. If it is a nice day, which it has been most days lately, the kids go outside to play. When lunch is ready, I bring it out onto the back deck, where they happily nosh down before returning to playing outside. I then may spend time in my garden, or take the time to set up some schooling activities.
My son is really enjoying schooling right now! His writing is improving slowly, but definitely needs more work. He is, however, a super reader and was very able to extrapolate much from the reading when I asked him about it after he had read it aloud to me.
Another interesting lesson for this week has to do with being out of sequence, which is something that I think is particularly awesome about homeschooling. Our son (who would be in kindergarten officially), figured out all on his own about negative numbers. We've been orally going back and forth with questions like "What's 5 minus 6?". I quiz him and then he quizzes me. He was showing that he really did grasp this idea, so I had my husband print off a couple of worksheets to work with this. One has a number line under each question so that the students can manually move from one number the desired amount of "hops" to get to the answer. It took no time at all for our son to grasp the idea of a negative number. Clearly our son has aptitudes and interests that are considered "out of sequence" from those in the public schools.
We are going on our child's skill level and interests, combined with some lessons that I set up for him. It is a balance that is working well for right now, although I have some changes in mind for next year that include looking into the Waldorf Educational system more.
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