...drives me CRAZY! He irritates, confuses, challenges, and surprises me to NO END! He is the one that drags himself to the table every day to do school, complains that today is the worst day of his life, he'll be sitting at the table until he is nothing but bones, he is stupid and a twerp, and cries and cries. I wish sometimes he could just unschool. So many of my problems would go away (but I'm sure I'd create new problems for him down the road).
Today was another math break-down day (so was Tuesday). For some reason he just...couldn't...focus... Which is why I bought this shirt at Goodwill:
...although SpongeBob at least knows that something was said after Listen Carefully. S would probably be standing on his chair blowing spit bubbles Mater-style.
Today the questions confused him, but he wanted to do everything all by himself. He wouldn't listen and brushed my hand away from where he needed to write or count something. I've learned that when he acts like this, there is always a non-school issue bothering him. Sometimes he needs a sandwich, and doesn't realize it. Sometimes he need to sit on the toilet and doesn't realize it. Today... I think it was the sun. And the fact that it is Friday. He told me he "was an ant trapped in a spider's web." His brother said that the sun was a powerful magnet and he was just a weak safety pin. I gave him a short break (and some green smoothie), made him sit through a history lesson, and sure enough, he was done with his math and outside in just a few minutes.
Tuesday his crying spell was short, he had the sandwich, and took a 100 problem 5 minute timed test, beat the goal I set for him with flying colors, had a great attitude the whole time, and didn't need me to write for him. Awesome. I let him skip the rest of his assignment as a reward (and I saved the worksheet for a later punishment-haha-I mean Summer Enrichment). So this is what he did with his free time:
This little Twerp (and twerpish he was) made up this "game" where he grabs a handful of color tiles from the container, sorts them into piles by color, and records the number of each color on a chart. I could throttle him. THIS IS MATH!!! Why was he spending his free time from math with math? But I didn't tell him that. I told him that his game was exactly what a scientist does. I showed him that what he did is exactly what his dad does when he samples a lake. He reaches into a lake (or bowl) and catches fish with a net (grabs a handful of tiles). He sorts the by species (colors) and makes a chart to show what he caught. I even had some old charts to show him. If he were older, I would tell him about statistics and if we can make assumptions about the population of fish in the lake by what we caught and run him through some multivariate statistical tests, just like I used to do in grad school with jelly beans. But for once I had the wisdom to stop where I was and let him continue on his merry way.
All I have to say is,
TGIF!
