I thought for sure I would have a terrible time homeschooling Daniel. Everyone knows that he desires to be the master of his own destiny and he has a terrible time taking direction from me. I thought for sure he was a
better late than early kid or even a great candidate for
unschooling/interest led schooling. I also thought he would be a maniacal dictator of a small country when he grew up.
But Daniel surprised me. He thrives on workbooks, schedules, and check boxes. He loves the boundaries.
While we wait for his new Math-U-See curriculum to come in the mail (it's here and he calls it Lego Math!), he is using a kindergarten workbook that has been sitting in my get-rid-of pile for ten years (no, I'm not kidding-
ten years). The front of the book has a few pages dedicated to star stickers. You finish a page, you get a star sticker by that page number. Daniel is so motivated by star stickers. If he finishes ten pages and gets ten stars, he gets a Fun Size piece of chocolate. The same is true for Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I thought for sure this program would be a no-go for Daniel. There is a LOT of repeat-after-me and that is NOT Daniel's style. But he has a chart with the numbers 1-100 representing the lessons. After each successful lesson, he gets to pick his
own sticker for that chart (right now he is using some old ant stickers from a scrapbooking project). After he completes five lessons, he gets a Fun Size chocolate. Star stickers and chocolate. Wow.
He also loves the routine of school. He helps me set up my "preschool" table and all the chairs. He and Fiona bring their boxes downstairs and he always wants to be first to do his writing and math. We end with reading lessons while Fiona works on her math and then he heads off to play. He and Fiona have also started working through my Introduction to World History curriculum that I bought when Ian was in Kindergarten, which is just looking at my Usborne Children's Encyclopedias. Sometimes, however, Daniel is ready to be GONE, so I just browse what needs to be teaching and I tell them what they need to know while they play outside.
Last week's science topic was all about trees. Instead of reading one page per day for four days from my Encyclopedia of Nature, I said, "Look at the trees! What are they doing?" Uhhh, nothing? "NO! They are fighting a great battle!
And you can't even see it!" Attention captured. We went on to talk about what living things needs and how the trees compete for those resources and leaf shape and cones vs flowers and all that tree stuff.
As for the rest of these guys, it looks like no one gets the whole summer off....everyone is behind somewhere. But there is comfort in routine...
