Day Nine

It's REVIEW DAY


Well, it's supposed to be review day.  The day we look at what we've done in the first week.  We made ourselves a list, blindly, on day 1, of things we thought we should review one week in.


We were going to discuss whether "we" liked the every subject every day schedule or if he'd prefer all math and English one day and all science and social studies/history the next.  We would plug the "electives" in around the core stuff.  We were going to discuss his reading schedule, the science we are scrapping and the new units I found for us to attack over the next four weeks.


We have an agenda, it's detailed.  We have a plan.  We have a little bit of experience in what we think we might like to change. 


The only thing missing for review day is the Banker.  It's almost 9:30am and he's still sleeping, snoring, spread out across his queen sized bed, using up all the space, with his overstuffed duvet mostly covering him.  I saw a toe, part of a hand and I think an ear exposed!  He NEVER sleeps this late.  EVER.  Ok, he slept until 11 once at my mother's house but he was 5 and we'd been up until 3am.  


He's either exhausted beyond compare or relaxed in his own skin.  Hmmm


Yesterday he started, bright eyed and bushy tailed, at 6am.  Today, I'm alone in the kitchen.


I'm not complaining, yet, but I think we need to establish at least a window of when we start on school days.  I don't think a rough start time is too far out considering the scheduling of every other moment of this home school thing,  


Although, I have had a second, peaceful, cup of coffee and I actually took/had the time to paint my nails.  I never paint my nails anymore, it's a time waster, always looking at the clock between 'things'.  Today, I have pretty red nails and it makes me happy. 


The Banker did work extra hard and long yesterday with a really early start.  He did try to get ahead a bit.  Ah, I'm going to let him be.  Rest up kiddo, the day is long, you've worked so very hard. 


We have a fun day planned later.  We are going to Happy Hour with friends this afternoon at a not so local watering hole.  After some visiting and catching up, we are going to pick up one of his best buddies to bring back here for a sleepover.  The public schools are off tomorrow (and Monday) so he can have a buddy for a non-weekend hang out.  He needs to have a buddy here so the timing is perfect.


Well, I guess I'll go start vetting those 230 emails I received from the Austin Area Homeschooling Yahoo groups at one address then the 88 I received in reply to a "hi, I'm new, we need to find human homeschooling types to connect with" email I sent out.  So much information but my plan is to go through it today and try to make some sense of it and hopefully, hook us up with something. 


I'll update when our day finally starts :) 


UPDATE


The Banker wandered into the kitchen, jammied, disheveled, and rubbing his eyes at 10:11am.  I didn't mention the time. 


I made him breakfast, toasted tomato sandwiches on rye, 2 of them and we chatted.  We had our meeting, decided on what to change and what to leave the same.  We are going to keep the (version of) every subject every day system, we are going to change me limiting the number of chapters of electives, i.e. Latin, Physics and Typing, that he can do in any given day.  I had been indicating "chapter 2" on his schedule and he was concerned that on some subjects he'd been really interested and had worked "ahead".  I had to remind him there's no "ahead" here, it's all him.  I removed any indication of lesson length on the schedule for next week.


Easy.


We had a couple of computer glitches and we discovered one of the maths is outside his current comfort level.  Two maths is fine for the moment. 


We have decided that the science unit for next week will be ROCKET SCIENCE *cool*.


I redid the schedule for next week to reflect the new freedom for him to flow into the next video lessons of that which interests him.  I changed/eliminated the "to do weekly" list and integrated those lessons into his week.  I added Latin, Grammar, Typing and Journal/Diary, one per day.  I've asked him to keep a weekly Journal, we'll see how that goes.  I have little to no faith it'll be completed, we'll see, I'm going to leave it with him for a couple of week and review it then.


He loves the new online Latin.  He's whipping through grammar and typing.  He blew a couple of online tests ...  he needs to find the speed level here ... he redid them and got 100% so that satisfied him.  


I also don't think he realized I'd be following up/checking his work.  He redid a project on abolitionism for me today, he'd handed in sloppy, cheap work.  I think he was almost glad when he realized I'd read it, marked it and was very dissatisfied with it.  The new version was lovely, well thought out, neat and looked as though it was done by a different child.  I almost feel as though it was a test, by him, to see if I was paying attention, keeping score.  He was notably delighted to be asked to redo it, I feel as though I passed the test. 


I must add, he had another day of singing while he worked on his online classes.  Singing, humming, laughing and generally having himself one hell of a good time.  Joy while learning? Singing loudly and making up words based on what you're learning?  *perfect*


We are about to be done for the day, the week, and singing or not, joy and laughter aside, we are done for this week already. 


OH and no, I didn't get nearly the emails vetted I wanted to *sigh*  Maybe tomorrow when he is playing on the XBox killing zombies and aliens with his friends and I can sit here, in silence.


/Tracy