Because it would be incredibly inconsiderate of me not to follow up last weeks post about hard days I am writing again, with a post about incredible days. I have had it on my heart to do this all weekend, and we so busy that I had not gotten to it. But this needs to be written as it is even more important than telling mama’s who home school to be aware of the hard days… this one is meant to give you hope on those hard days.
Don't be surprised by the hard days that are coming, or are here, but also know during those hard days that everything is going to be alright.
To emphasize this point I’m going to use my son and I as an example again.
He really is such a bright boy, and really does know how to do all that I have asked him to do for the last week. Our biggest area of struggle was in math, a subject I know all to well that he is fully capable of doing, but he just wasn’t. Why? Disobedience is all I can pinpoint.
One sweet home school mama I know wrote me and asked if it was a curriculum problem and if so suggested we try other options or take a little time off, but it just wasn’t that. It was an obedience problem which I believe is something that must be pressed into, though hard on both mama and son.
So what happened?
Well my boy rose to the challenge, defeated his giant and did more than was expected of him, with a happy heart (which is something we stress in our house… do all that you do as unto the Lord, and with cheerfulness). The crazy thing is that I know that if we don’t start on time we will have problems through the whole day, Thursday and Friday we didn’t start on time. I worried about how this would affect our day, as history would tell me it was going to be another fight to get everything done.
But it wasn’t. My son got his chores done without me asking him, got his own breakfast, and was ready for school with mama when I took the dog out at about 8:20am. I hadn’t eaten or gotten dressed yet at this point but that doesn’t much matter, we took his reading book outside where the challenge is that he read one more line than the day before in order to earn a piece of candy, and he did that, without fuss, or prompting (on too many occasions) making mama very proud!
When we came back inside 20 minutes later the youngest of my children had finished eating his breakfast and my daughter had gotten out of bed so I quickly took care of their needs and we started on our bible lesson.
The rest of the day went smoothly too… He did what he was asked to do, and we made it through the day beautifully, and I was at last feeling a little more rested and relaxed.
Friday was a little different, in an AMAZING kind of way.
Friday is a test day for us, we review and test areas worked on all week. It doesn’t take as long as a regular school day, I feel that is important, since testing is so stressful, and my son feels the need to succeed and get A’s on his reports so that he can bring his report card to the movie store and get a free rental. He is very excited and wants to do well, but after a week like the one we had it is even more important for him to do well to redeem himself for a week of disobedience.
We started with a memory verse test, which he normally does well, and he of course Aced it! Then on to our reading test, which consists of a book about animals that I picked up at Target in the ‘one spot’. It is for reading comprehension. He has to read one page which is usually only one or two paragraphs, about a different animal or location certain animals live in, every Friday and then answer questions regarding what he read. I give him the option to read with me, or to take the book and read in another room alone.
Normally he wants to read with me but this Friday he wanted to try it on his own. There were a few words that he mispronounced and he ended up coming back to read with me so that I could help him to figure them out and we ended the test with him beside me, I then asked him the questions and he nailed them all. I am at this point feeling VERY reassured given the way Thursday had gone and the good reading test we had just completed.
Next up was spelling, I don’t think it is very fair for a child to have to take a spelling test when they have not been required to think about their spelling words in 24 hours, so I gave him a little time to practice them. His sister was at this point playing with her ‘computer’ (a toy that you can play several games with that has the letters of the alphabet on it with buttons that sound out the letters and say them along with other options) I called her into the room and sat them down on the floor. My son was to read a word and then spell it slowly out loud for my daughter who then was required to find the letter on her ‘computer’ and press the button. They had to work together to find all the right letters. They loved it.
After this we had a little break, because I also don’t believe you should take a test right after looking at the words and truly studying them because it only requires short term memory to do this and I want to see if they are lodged in my child’s long term memory. We all got a snack and I folded some laundry and then did our test.
I find that if I am looking over his shoulder I might give a bit too many hints at the spelling of the words, so I sat at the table, spelling list folded in one hand, with his math book laying in front of me and a pen in the other hand, he sat nearby with his spelling test and a pencil, while he wrote his words I corrected days of math I had not corrected yet, and read off the words as he was ready for them. When he was finished I asked him to read each word that he had written and tell me what they were, if he could read the word well then we left it alone (so long as he thought it was spelled correctly), if he couldn’t read the word then I would tell him what it was supposed to be and ask him what he needed to do to make the words on my paper (which he couldn’t see) and the words on his paper match, and then we would move to the next word and continue through the list. I’m trying to teach him to catch his own mistakes and correct them.
He got 8 out of 10 words correct!
Then on to math, that one hour of subtraction we had been struggling with all week. Friday is not a test day for math, the tests come when they come, and it doesn’t follow any particular schedule, so it happened that this lessen was a review, so I got out my white board and marker, and he got a pencil and paper and one by one we knocked out the whole lessen. I keep a timer going so that we don’t ever spend more time than he can handle doing this, and when we finished the lessen I glanced at it and it was only half way through our time allotted… !!! YAY! Obedience was ruling the day, and my son’s heart. We actually knocked out almost two lessens before the timer went off, and we were high fiving and laughing and playing the whole way through the lesson. It was FANTASTIC!!!
After all our hard work, and so much happiness in my heart we ended up going to see some friends at a free event in town, and then totally missed most of our nap time, but it was worth it, and my boy gave me the best present ever, his attention!
I know that is the longest version of a good day there ever was, so I apologize if it wasn’t that climatic, but if you were a fly on my wall you would have seen one incredibly happy mama and a boy who felt proud of himself and loved very much. I was so excited my smile was ear to ear and my heart was bursting with joy.
Persevere. sweet friend. The day comes when they finally get it… they finally understand obedience, or math, or spelling, or whatever it is that your child is struggling with, they get it at last, and the struggle to teach isn’t a struggle at all! It is an amazing gift from God; it is the joy of a home schooling mama!
Thanks for bearing with me, Thanks for sharing my joy, Thanks for reading.
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