Awakenings.

Once again, this year has gotten off to a bumpy start; Lars had the H1N1, my book was wrapping up for publication, my parents and sister were in town, Kiersta is well, a baby with Anders well, a three-year old and Ben’s sporadic work hours make things rather difficult.  In spite of all of this, I am gaining more insight into how my boys learn, Larsen especially.

What I have often interpreted as slowness and just not getting simple things is showing itself to be more of the hallmarks of a global-thinker.  He has no patience for simply focusing on one task; his mind is always making connections to broaden the picture and already synthesize information.  I have been trying to train him with the right time to let this loose and the time to reign it in and stick to the task at hand.  One thing I am grateful for that has been a success in this home-education experiment: he possesses a true love for learning, always without question or complaint. 

Another awakening has been found in the need to stick to the basics of the grammar stage.  Redoing the schedule, we are doing language arts and math for the bulk of our time, with the frosting of history and such added when I am confident the cake can hold them up.  Because of this, I am seeing progress.   And that means Latin is on hold for a bit. We are also not moving on until he has showed mastery for each lesson, with the concepts review with each new lesson.  That means we are only on lesson six in his spelling book as I have slowed down to teach him phonic rules for spelling, not relying on sight learning as I have always personally done.  This method seems more his style.

In the last week he is taking off with personal writing, today actually filling up the page in his journal with details from his day yesterday.  I am thrilled!  Of course the boy still cannot remember to capitalize and write b’s and d’s correctly, but that will come.  I hope.

I also tossed aside (hope to sell) the Shurley Grammar curriculum and went back to Jessie Wise’s Language Lessons. whew.  Shurley was tying me up in knots–not my style nor his.  I really did it because I thought any good classical educations hould use it and be able to fly with it. Not! Far to complicated. The actual sentences to diagram had no meaning, which causes Lars to really tune out as he pays attention to content and not busy work.  And math is improving as I am using more hands-on activities and taking my time to be sure he gains mastery. 

It is good.  I am tired.