Three Days Under Our Belt

After three days of teaching two of my sons at home (actually, the first two days I also did some lessons for my oldest son too), I am quite wiped out! Every day has felt like a marathon race! The first day was the craziest. I had mapped out a schedule for the day that included times. Whenever I do something like that I get very frustrated. While it's good to make a plan, I need to remember that it may not necessarily reflect reality. It took me until the morning of the second day to remember that my plan was a starting point, from which changes can be made.

In spite of how tired I feel, everything is going well so far. Samuel seems to like the books I got for him. He is using a reader that is styled like a Dick and Jane book. He has never really cared for them, but he seems interested in this book. He looks very carefully at the illustrations and I make sure to refer to them as we read the story. I am re-typing one of his religion books on "Writing With Symbols". So far what we are reading is a review, but he is very interested in it. I'll elaborate more on other subjects later.

My kindergartner is my most challenging student! Every time I call him for a lesson he protests! This lasts for a minute or so and then I somehow convince him to cooperate and then he's fine after that.

I have been sticking to my plan of approximately 15 minute lessons for each child at a time. The last two days I have been able to do 4 sessions of work with Samuel. In addition to that he is being read to several times per day, both by me and by our in-home helper. While this might not sound like much time, this is a big increase from the amount of time we spent on work over the summer each day, AND HE IS ACCEPTING THE INCREASE AND IS COOPERATING! During each work session we cover two or three subjects. One thing I can do immediately to improve is to be better prepared early in the morning so that I'm not spending my day planning the next session of work. As time goes on I will either increase the number of work sessions we do or will make each session longer. Perhaps I'll do a combination of these two things.

My kindergartner started soccer today. He was not very eager to participate but hopefully his attitude will improve by next week. His oldest brother will play starting next week.