Dad.i.Y

We’re back at it with a new schedule. Summer was good, is good, but it was long and hot. The drought in Arkansas kept us in most of the time with the heat being only bearable for short stints. And while the camps and projects were flowing, the kids were engaged, but when we had slow weeks the boredom set in. So we decided to try a new schedule — six weeks on, two weeks off for the next year. We started Monday. Hopefully, this will mitigate some of the burnout inherent in seeing the same faces everyday — ahh, homeshcooling — the classes are small, the space is tight, and sometimes you just need a break from your family. Some of our curriculum is the same: First Language Lessons, Story of the World, Spelling and Cursive. One of them has changed. We began using a new Writing Curriculum, one in which there is a lot of parent interaction and the student writes themed stories, some fiction, some non-fiction, some formal writing. Connor was really excited when we described it to him, but as so often happens with first impressions, his impression of what we would be doing is not the reality of what we are doing. I think he must have formed his opinion immediately after hearing the part about genre writing. Like any eager young reader, the thought of creating your own detective fiction has a shiny appeal. The process, however, well, I don’t think he gave that a lot of thought. And so here we are, Day 3, and we’ve hit an impasse between what the program expects and what he’s willing to do. He doesn’t want an instructor, he wants instructions. We talked about it for awhile, how you need interaction to foster creativity, bouncing your ideas of someone, to help solidify your thoughts. But he doesn’t want that. And I was ready to toss it, unsure of how we would move past this, knowing that all of my children can be incredibly rigid when they’ve set their minds to something. So I’m trying something different — something that might fail miserably, but trying it anyway. After we cooled off, I handed him the teacher text and all of the prepared supplies for the days lesson. I told him I was willing to let him do the lesson himself if he would agree to ask when he had questions and follow all of the instructions. The lesson should last around thirty minutes. As of right now, he’s been working on it for thirty minutes, and he’s about 1/3 of the way through. But he’s working at it, and that’s what’s most important to me right now. We’ll see how it turns out. I’m restless to go in there and speed him up, read him the instructions, prompt the answers… but I’m not doing it. We’ll adjust as we go.