A Very Big Pumpkin.
I’ve managed to get back to my personal blog in time for Halloween. It’s a really great time of year for us down here. We’re used to such hot temperatures, that low 70’s weather is just a dream. We even had the heater on for a bit this morning.
The kids are doing great! While my last post was full of upset from what had happened with the idiot therapists, I’m no longer bothered that it happened. They were pushing and pushing for me to medicate my son so he would be more ‘manageable’ – and I still haven’t. It’s been 5 months since that happened, and I’m proud to say that my son has taken HUGE strides in his improvement.
We having some small success with potty training, he’s tried out some new foods (hamburgers aka Crabby Patties! he really likes), he’s now spelling small words using wooden letters (which he never did before), and he’s writing small words (!!!!!) which is a WOW achievement since he has such a hard time holding anything to write with. Of course… there’s a downside to this new spelling ability: He’s learned to search Google for anything he wants – including stuff I don’t allow, like YouTube.
Don’t get me wrong, I like YouTube – for adults. For kids… it’s just not easy enough to filter the content. I’ve tried blocking the site, he unblocks it.Of course, the Google searching comes into play because I wipe his browser history and destroy any links he’s made to YouTube on his browser bar (every single time he goes to bed) but he just gets up, searches Google for what he wants, and then he’s back on it. I’m really reaching the point of just giving up on trying to moderate it.
My daughter is doing FABULOUS! I can’t emphasize that enough. She’s doing so good with homeschooling. To give a comparison, she ended her 2nd grade year with barely having pushed into subtraction and addition, and never having touched grammar or gotten into history etc… and after 3 years of ‘Spanish’ class she could finally recite the alphabet. Wee? Basically, the school was teaching her nothing at her level, and nothing at any level I was happy with.
Contrast that to now, about 5 months after school ended and she started homeschooling:
She has completely mastered adding and subtracting (with carryover). Totally mastered. As in she can do a multi-row math problem as long as I can write it on the paper. She’s also doing darn good at multiplication (which she wouldn’t have even begun until 4th grade at that school) – but we’re not quite done learning it yet. Then we’ll move on to division. She’s got an understanding of decimals, simple fractions, simple conversions between decimals and fractions (.25 = 1/4), and she’s got a basic foundation in geometry (parallel / perpendicular / horizontal lines, lines of symmetry, names of different shapes, etc…).
She’s now learned some of the most fundamental aspects of grammar (nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, etc..). She’s also learning proper letter writing and structure by sending out regular letters to family and friends.
For history, we decided to do a quick overview of a few major aspects of World History, then go back through and heavily go into detail on much more of how things connect in history and more about events. So far we’ve studied the Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Spartans, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Scotland, England, Columbus, American War for Independence, Civil War, and we’re wrapping up as we get closer by getting to the Mexico / Texas conflicts, and then we’ll get to Hitler and a few more things before we turn around and start back at the beginning for more detail.
Her Latin is improving, as is her Spanish, and while we’re still searching for the right extracurricular activities for her (Karate just didn’t work out once she started chopping her brother), I’m so completely sold on homeschooling that it’s definitely going to be something we keep. In fact, it actually caused me a bit of worry that she’s learning so fast.
I was really worried a few weeks ago because I started thinking… gosh, if she keeps going at this rate, or anything even close to it, she’ll have completed high school a couple of years early. That, of course, got me asking myself the question… do I -really- want my daughter to be a 15/16 year old at a college full of legal age people who assume she is also? I decided that if it’s still an issue at that time, there’s always online college for a couple of years until she’s 18. Or an old-fashioned iron chastity belt with a lock and key, and Mommy with a shotgun.
Overall, things are going pretty darn good. Great times ahead!
