This week has been a week of mixed emotions with school. Exhaustion..Fed up..Confusion..Pride..Excitement..Elation!!! And, not only has that been this week, but all of those just today, within a span of about 3.5 hours!!! The good thing is that today the "school" day ended with ELATION, PRIDE AND EXCITEMENT!
The day started with us doing a science lesson. We were talking about the metamorphosis stage of frogs. The actual discussion and looking at some photos and stuff took about 25 min. Maybe 30. Today they had a picture of the life cycle of a frog that they numbered and then were asked to write what they could remember about what we had just discussed about the life cycle. This process is called "narration". For a 4th grader she can pretty much take off and do her own thing. I usually have her do a rough draft, even if it is just a paragraph she does a rough draft and we edit together discussing proper sentence structure (this is how we do grammar and writing as well, no "program" this year). Rather than using a handwriting program, I use their narration as handwriting practice. Our 1st grader and I usually sit down together and she tells me what she remembers. I write her response down word for word and she copies it onto handwriting paper for her handwriting practice.
Today, the narration process for Sissy was tedious. She "remembers everything but her mind goes blank when she needs to write it." Now, because she was looking out the dining room windows while we had our lesson I knew she hadn't been listening to begin with. Of course when I asked her to just tell me verbally all about "everything she remembered", she couldn't. So, she was sent to her room with the books and told to look it up herself. It took her 3.5 hours to do science folks!! 3.5 hours!!! Mom is getting FED UP...Mom is CONFUSED...Mom is getting EXHAUSTED as she realizes how much more stuff we should get done today!
But then.....Sissy finishes science FINALLY and I am working on Math with Peanut. Sissy grabs her book and starts reading today's lesson (usually I read through it with her). She proceeds to work her math problems and GETS EVERY ONE RIGHT WITH NO HELP!! This is a huge deal because on Monday specifically we began longer division (like 346 divided by 7) and it was a disaster...tears and chants from the 9 year old that sounded like this, "I can't do this! It is to hard! I'll never understand!" Now, just a few days later...all right...every problem. I love being able to say "I told you so" to my kids! (Is that terrible to admit?)
So...can you imagine what feelings I need to input here? PRIDE! EXCITEMENT! ELATION!! And mom making up a song all about her about how great she is!
1 comment:
This illustrates to me that out of each and every trial and tribulation, no matter how great or how small, good things come. I'm very proud of what you're doing with the girls.
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