Week 1 of School in January

Wednesday
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Okay. So I didn't have a chance to post anything yesterday. With its being a half day and trying to get the kids to P.E. on time, I thought posting on the blog of lesser priority. After I dropped them off, my day was no less hectic. I go grocery shopping while they're in class and got home just in time to put the groceries away and get on a scheduled phone call with a client. That meeting went a little long, and I had to excuse myself from my meeting so that I could go pick up the kids. Then I listened to the audio lesson that we would be discussing at home group that evening, had dinner with the family, and then headed to home group to discuss Revelation. Then it was back home and work on editing until bedtime.

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Thursday
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It is now 1:27pm, and we just got back from lunch. We were on time all morning, which was amazing, until the last assignment in science. That took awhile (instead of gathering shoes to practice taxonomy, I printed out three pages of shoe images for us to cut and classify), putting us 25 minutes behind schedule. (sigh) I don't think we're meant to end school on time and to complete each subject that day. That's okay. That's what homeschooling is about, right?

My son has Cub Scouts tonight. They are planning their camp-out for this weekend with the Boy Scouts, but rain is forecasted for the weekend. My husband is not excited about going with bad weather, especially since his hip hurts quite a bit in inclement weather. The Engineer, however, wants to go really bad, especially since he couldn't go in December. He also got a lot of new camping gear for Christmas that he wants to try out. I don't blame him. If I didn't have work, I wouldn't mind going with him, but all the other parents will be fathers, and they tend to frown on moms accompanying the boys. I've also been told that I wouldn't find much fellowship there. Whatever. But I do have work to do and my daughter for whom to make time working on her new Sock Bunny gift and her sewing machine, both from Christmas.

Right now the Engineer has gone missing. He is supposed to be working on his exercise in Spelling Wisdom. The Artist is working steadily at her cursive copywork. I didn't push the Engineer to practice his cursive long enough after learning it, and he has forgotten all of it. I've decided to push the Artist to increase her chances of remembering and using it. I may go back to training the boy in cursive again, but maybe not. He has learned to keyboard, but I know he still finger-pecks when I'm not looking. The girl too. (sigh again)

I have to have faith that the kids will pursue subjects as they develop interest in them when they're older. In the meantime, my role is to introduce them and offer them the opportunity to practice those skills and perhaps master them if they are motivated. But I can't push them all the time. They will never learn self-motivation and self-discipline if I make them do everything and remind them to do everything all the time, right? Am I wrong? I have self-discipline, and I admit I was pushed to do things throughout my childhood and never given much leeway to make my own decisions. Perhaps that is why I have self-discipline. But others have tried to push their children and end up having the opposite result. I'm thinking it's a temperament thing. My girl is naturally much more motivated than my boy to pursue school-type subjects. My boy, on the other hand, is much more motivated to goof off and have fun. They will each have their strengths and weaknesses as adults. I don't take the world onto my shoulders, but I do worry that I'm not training them in the way they should go.

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It is 4:47pm, and we finished over an hour ago. But I had to finish copying poetry for their Level 2 poetry memorization program, which I just completed. I'm about to go prepare dinner so that the boy and his father can leave for Cub Scouts on time, but I wanted to check in and finish this post because I'm being so good about posting! :^)

The rest of our studies went pretty well. We mostly caught up on our schedule, and the kids have their friends over now. Because tomorrow is another half day, I don't know that I'll manage to post then, so it may not be until Monday that I can add anything else. We will have AHG Monday afternoon, so I may be too busy preparing for that to writing anything then either. We'll see.