Tuesday, September 12, 2006

We've Begun

I had a hard time starting last week. Probably because our school stuff was still in boxes and needed to be unpacked and organized. I think there must be another box in the garage with school things, since I know we're missing a few things from the school cabinet.
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I think I will finish today, putting things into the cabinet (after having my laundry room - for a an entire week - look like a bomb went off in there). I went through everything in the boxes and purged a lot of unnecessary old papers and scads of 3 year old drawings. What's in the cabinet now looks neat and it's organized by subject. I'd like to get a few more plastic boxes that stack to sort some of the smaller things like stickers and other art supplies. I'd also like to attach some clips to the front of the chalkboard so I can clip a big map or other thing without hanging things directly on the wall in the family room over the school table.
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We did start core subjects last week on Wednesday - we did the math lesson and it took an extra quarter hour to get through an hour lesson. When we tried to get started on the language arts lesson, I found that we were missing some supplies needed for the lesson. Argh! So, we didn't start Lang Arts until Thursday. And then I guess Friday we were crazy. I woke up sick, but we also have spanish class and then piano lessons on Friday. In addition, we were taking the girls to Atlanta to see the Broadway production of Beauty & The Beast. So, I only managed to get through math.
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Roni loves school so much, though, that as soon as we returned from Atlanta on Saturday afternoon, she was begging to do her language arts lessons. And so we did one and a half on Saturday and finished lesson 3 on Sunday after church. So, now she's caught up. Until the attitude yesterday dampened the learning spirit. (When I'm not feeling well, I don't have endless patience. Since she was getting frustrated with simple tasks and I was losing my ability to talk gently to her, I sent her to the other room. The intention was we would come back to the lesson after we both had a chance to snap out of the funk. We never did come back to the lesson yesterday, due to my pounding head and desire to be curled up under a blanket.)
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So, we are one day behind this week and it's only Tuesday. Fortunately, Roni seems really excited about doing school lessons on the weekends (she actually said, "It's great that I can do math and language arts seven days a week!"). This is not a habit I want to continue. However, I don't mind doing some work on the weekends with her if it means I can take care of myself when I'm sick.
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So, that's it for now. We're LOVING the K12 stuff. I don't have to plan the lessons, just follow the directions. Every time we sit down for a lesson, we are surprised to finish and realize we've spent an hour or more. And it's great when Roni's reaction is "I was having so much fun I didn't even realize we've been working for more than an hour!"
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And the good news? That's how I feel too.