The Frustrations of Starting School

Well, we've started. The girls and I ran around this week gathering up last minute supplies. A world map which needed an extra day to laminate, 4x6 index cards for vocabulary words (I still need to get to the office supply to get a file box for those), and some anatomy information sheets (these were three-hole punched very detailed sheets and were only $.99 each). I figure the $3 I spent on those is much more worth it than the child-size posters for $15 that Big Daddy would be irritated to come home and find hanging on our kitchen wall.

So, we've started. I wanted to start with Madeline, even though the recommended start is The Story of Ping. Why change it up? Because I knew I'd need something good to get the girls interested in giving up their morning play time. And they LOVE Madeline.

The handwriting portion killed us, though. Roni absolutely hates handwriting. She isn't good at it and doesn't want to practice. She only wants to do the academic type stuff that comes more easily to her. It is frustrating to me to have her cry for almost an hour over writing her name, address and phone number. I wasn't forcing the issue, but told her that she could take breaks after each word. In the end, all she really did was play connect the dots over the spotty letters that I drew. But, it is a start. It made me realize we need to start at the beginning again and practice handwriting more than most everything else. She is good at the rest. I will be sitting down tonight to create some practice sheets for her with dotty letters for her to trace and space to write them on her own as well.

Little A isn't crazy about the idea of sitting with us even for reading the story each day, but I think she'll grow to like it more. She did get excited this morning when she was allowed to color with markers, so that's something. :)

Until next time, God Bless you.