Friday, July 27, 2012

Well, are finally underway!

We finally started school this week! 

I don't know why, maybe because I felt like all my frantic work on calendars just could not go to waste, and because all my husbands vacation plans were finally out of the way, and maybe I felt like if I didn't start I never would; I started while my oldest was away at science camp.  The plans originally were that we would have been underway for two weeks already and she'd be on her first break.  Instead, the two younger ones started without her while she was away.  And it gave me a very false sense of security and satisfaction.  :-/  Ann and John were willing and cooperative every day, except for one melt down over a spelling word.  (?) John only had 2 subjects and Ann only had three, so we were done by lunch each day.  I guess I thought I'd ease into things, get our feet wet, get used to the whole sit at the dining table and listen to mom idea, then bring in all the rest of the subjects?  Oh, and Dad was gone Mon-Wed as well, so he wasn't in the way. 

Well, Aimee sat down to get started today.  She will be the death of me.  I just thought Ann was difficult.  I assumed Aimee could do the preview section on her SOS and she'd figure it out.  It's a computer program, and she is 13.  Wrong.  She is such a perfectionist, she was upset that she wasn't getting the questions correct on the preview.  The section on How to use the Program.  Not even a  grade.  She tried to skip a lot of reading and get done too fast, she refused to search for an answer longer than  minute.  She refused to move on if she got one wrong. Her favorite phrase was "I don't KNOW this!"  Um, no, honey you don't.  But you will.  When you read the text.  Then you will have learned it.   She lost her temper about ten minutes into her official Homeschool career.  Great.  What this says to me is that public school has been way too easy on her, and she thinks she has been "smart" all this time.  She is actually pretty lazy, and doesn't know the first thing about reading comprehensively, or following directions specifically.  Ugh. 

Smart.  I hate that word.  "I'm not smart!"  "She is smarter than me!"  "They call me a smartypants when I try to tell them something."    I am so sick of kids being called smart.  No one is smarter than anyone else.  Some people have studied more, or different things, some people have memorized things, some people have read 3000 books.  You haven't.  YET.  You can go learn all the things you want to know.  You can learn all the things everyone you think is smart, knows.  In no time at all.  Just learn stuff.  Then you'll know stuff.  Smart is so stupid.   I spit that edict out while Aimee was gone, unfortunately, so she missed the full force and effect of it at the table. 

Our History and Math should be here next week.  Then it's buckle down.  We will not be done by lunch everyday, I keep warning them! 

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