School is in Session: Adrienne Patterson

So home school is in full swing and while it has not been a disaster I will say that I have already mentioned to Scott that she, as well as myself, may have a learning disability!  Granted my foul mood this week might have influenced my thinking, but there have been grave concerns

While it is blaringly obvious to me that 25 cannot be the number before 51 and if yesterday was July 5^th how could today possibly July 21^st?  Really testing my patience here!  I have done some cute crafty things like putting 10 beans on a popsicle stick to help count by tens and she thinks I am pretty cool and creative for that but my joy in that is short lived as she is more interested in the design and shape of the beans than using them to actually learn how to count by tens!    Sadly she isn’t the only one struggling.  There was one exercise that asked you to sing “I know all my vowels, a-e-i-o-u” to the tune of London Bridges.  I got hung up on that for at least 10 minutes!  It is amazing how difficult it is to teach someone stuff you just know.  She couldn’t understand ‘before’ and ‘after’ when we were looking at a number chart.  When she asked, “what is before?” I couldn’t even explain it without using the word before!! 

I am learning that you have to be creative and you can’t get hung up on one thing.  The beauty of home school is if she doesn’t grasp something we can move on and come back to it at a better time. (A better time being defined as a time that I don’t have the urge to seriously question her intelligence and say ugly things) or even change things up.  However, I have already had some of my illusions shattered.  For instance, many home school moms talk about doing school on the go.  You know, if you need to grocery shop throw the reading book in the car and she can read aloud while you drive, take your math concepts and make them come to life as you grocery shop (if we all want bananas for a snack but this bunch only has 4 how many more do we need?).  Maybe their kids didn’t have severe ADD but she was dropping her workbook in the car constantly loosing her place, feeling car sick from reading and she was so mad about not being able to cruise the toy section in Wal Mart that she had no interest in my nifty produce word problems.  Other moms talk about home schooling with toddlers at home, YEA RIGHT!!!  Try teaching with a 3 year old in the room who never stops talking and will only yell louder if you ignore her and who loves to take the 100 beans and buttons you bought at math manipulatives and dump them all over the floor.  My 5 year old was actually not so bad but when I was trying to teach Molly Scott her vowels (which she couldn’t recall) it was not so helpful when Gracie breezed through the room and not only rattled off a quick A-E-I-O-U but also added, “and sometimes ‘Y’” Big sis was not impressed with her knowledge and proceeded to tell her to get out….good times for sure!!  Needless to say I am anxious for the younger girls to be in school so we can focus on just Molly Scott.

All in all it has been better than I expected but definitely not as easy as I had hoped.  Pretty par for the course of life I’d say.