Fine-Tuning

After about six weeks, it's time to evaluate and make some adjustments. What is working well? What isn't? I admit I've been a little lax with the schedule, especially our starting time. When I don't seem to be hurrying to get ready for school, the girls don't either. The church chimes across the street announce it is 9:00 and the girls are dilly-dallying in their rooms. Also, I need some quick lunch ideas so I don't spend so much time preparing food for our noon break. If lunch goes too long, we all lose interest in getting back to school. What does everyone else do for lunch? My girls hate sandwiches, so that makes it hard.

We are doing more creative writing this year. It's part of Arielle's Abeka language arts, to her dismay. For Liana, this is what she craves, so I have an additional poetry book for her. It is called Writing Poetry with Children. The difference in my two girls is summed up in this conversation.

Liana: "Why can't we work on writing poems today?" Arielle: "I better not have to do any poetry!" Liana learned about couplets and wrote a poem about India (her latest passion). I told her I would post it. Arielle is actually doing some interesting journal entries and I am impressed with her thoughtfulness.

Spelling has been a problem for Liana. How can she learn 20 words in a week? She just can't do repetitive work such as writing them out over and over. It would be absolute torture for her. I want to channel her energy in a more productive work. Using the words in different exercises didn't seem to work so well either. So we make flash cards. I write each word, broken up by syllables on 3X5 cards. She uses a marker to go over the letters and then cuts each card into pieces like a puzzle. (Kinesthetic learner.) For example, "attention" has 3 syllables, so three parts to the card. Each day she puts the puzzles together and reviews the words. We also write them out each day and talk about what's tricky about certain ones or which ones "follow the rules" and are spelled just like they sound. I make up silly sayings like: skaters have to pract-ICE on the ICE. We still do Stair Day for an oral quiz. Overall, she is actually doing quite well.

I am a pretty rigid homeschool mom. I like to follow the books. This worked fine with Arielle, but it does not work with Liana. I am being constantly stretched and challenged, but I am learning how to teach her. After a lot of headache, I bounced this idea off my friend, a relaxed homeschool mom. I told her I was abandoning the Abeka reading program for Liana. (It still scares me to do this.) My friend congratulated me and said simply, "Read good books with her!" My goal is to inspire this child of mine to love reading. How can I do that when she struggles with her reader and hates every minute? My breakthrough came when I checked out from the library an adapted version of The Secret Garden. It was a Level 3 book and Liana could read it. In fact, she asked to read more than I required of her! This was a big event for us. I will search high and low for GOOD stories and forget the curriculum. For now. Not that there is anything wrong with the Abeka reading program. Arielle loves the stories in her readers and each day tells me, "That was a good one. You should read it, Mom."