Last day of the month, already
It's hard to believe that October is coming to an end. Three weeks of homeschooling already gone. Done. Something like that!
I've found that removing the overwhelming distractions of the normal school environment has helped my son really focus on academics. Already we've achieved more than had been planned for him at school.
The normal ways of learning work. You just need more patience and more of it with some things. And that's more true for topics that may seem unimportant or very boring. So, you add excitement and incentives in other ways. Earn tokens of some sort for correct answers. Naturally you scale things back so it isn't just the token they're working for. The actual doing and learning becomes the reward.
The tokens we're using? Pennies. This is how he can get enough money to buy postcards at his favorite spot: the local forest preserve. I did show him what he could buy if he saved his money instead of spending it all right away. He caught on very quickly and has managed to buy some cool things.
And the extra cool thing is that sometimes after an activity, he doesn't remember that he has earned pennies. He really enjoys overcoming the challenge of new work! But, he does have that lazy side that we all tend to deal with.
He perfected school laziness once he figured out the facial expressions that most people associate with "low intelligence." He mastered the expression and used it to his advantage. He was able to con his teachers, which has its own reward of being smarter than the teachers. Also, he didn't have to work at school. The teachers thought he couldn't do it, so they didn't push it.
Slight problem with that perfected behavior. He tried to move it into the school room at home. He didn't meet with any success. Mom may have been born in the morning, but it wasn't yesterday morning! Mom sees through such things. Mom doesn't accept such behavior. Now the child has to actually work during school. Talk about being a shock to the system! He's having to figure out a new way of doing things so he doesn't keep running into trouble with Mom. If anyone wants to organize a pity party for my son, I'm sure he'd be glad for whatever help he can get.
We're working on rhyming words, short vowel sounds, money math, telling time to the quarter hour, handwriting, maps, family facts in math, Hebrew and whatever other things he wants to learn about.
His geography skills are way ahead of the average college student. That is a big challenge for me to deal with! The child knows where even the smallest island countries are. And their flags too. And he knows the countries and flags from all continents. Naturally Antarctica isn't included since there is no permanent population.
Yeah. I'm in trouble.
posted by Mom Asparagus @ 6:48 PM
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