The Real Lesson

Homeschooling each child is a unique experience.  They each have their strengths, weaknesses, and styles of learning.

Let me give a little insight into what it's like to teach my eldest.  Let me also write down a reminder of what homeschooling was like for him when he was 3 months past his 11th birthday.

"Addison, come here so I can make sure you understood today's math lesson."  (He is working through/reading/self-teaching in math.  His brother comes to me when he is stuck or needs clarification.  Addison, not so much.)

He comes to the table, where I sit with the book.  He does not bring his work.  I don't ask him to get it.  I am checking for mastery, and to make sure he's reading the instruction thoroughly.

"Ok, what about this problem?
Is exponentiation associative?  That is, if a, b, and c are positive integers, must we have
(aᵇ)ᶜ=a⁽ᵇ^ᶜ)  ?"

He explains.

"What about this one?
Express

5¹⁷ + 5¹⁷ + 5¹⁷ + 5¹⁷ + 5¹⁷ 

as a power of 5"

He throws out

5¹⁸ 

without looking at his sheet. I ask him to walk me through, and he does.

He proceeds to tell me the answers to the other problems.  I have no idea if he is remembering what he wrote, has a photographic memory, or is reworking them in his head on the fly.  But, he is correct.  On one problem, he explained what he put, initially, and that he read through and understood what he did wrong, telling me the way he then came up with the correct answer.  I have always been amazed with this skill.  Often, I will yell from the next room, "Addison!  What did you get for that problem with all the 7's?"  He'll look up from whatever Kindle book he's reading and not only yell back the answer, but can also remind me that it was problem 1.56. 

I then get another problem.  

"Express 11^20,000 as a 10,000^th power by finding the positive integer a such that 11^20,000 equals a^10,000

He tells me that he figured this one out.  Before jumping in, he asks me (in a non-threatening, non-critical, completely nice way) "Do you know how to work through this one already?"

And here lies his biggest achievement of the school day.  It was not understanding the math lesson.  It was not his independent learning.  It was the fact that he paused before spouting off a detailed disquisition to ask if I was ready, or if I was on the 'same page' as him.  Most people would have missed this.  I did not.  I sighed, and smiled.  I told him that I knew how to work it, and thanked him  for asking.

He finished his schoolwork and never recognized this as a big deal.  But, I did.

He's got the academics covered.  It's up to me to teach him the rest.

Joint-Effort Joint Work

A Day

Whew!  It's Saturday.  A day where, before 10am, the boys had done their farm chores, Jeff helped a goat whose head was stuck in a barrel, I dropped off the boys' spend-the-night friend, dropped boys at a Boy Scout merit badge class, AND had Ivey suited up and at hockey evaluations.

Today was a day where Mim had Olive to ballet at 10:30, and Ivey and I met them there to catch the tail end of class.  We then made it to pick up the boys from their class by 12:00... where they successfully earned the Citizenship in the Nation merit badge that they had been working toward for weeks.

It was a day where Jeff and Randy managed to work in the 96 degree heat, in an army tent, to cut the first girt for our house.  

A day where the boys got home, packed up supplies, and made it out the door by 2:30 for a Scout camping & canoeing trip.

A day where Olive and Ivey danced through Lowe's, pretended to be ninjas, and giggled till they almost peed in their pants.

Me: "Olive, are those ninja moves easier without any clothes on?"
Olive: "Yeah, cause I'm kinda invisible."

Olive: "Water is like an invisible ninja drink. It looks just like cups." 

A day where, at 11pm, I was in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies (and eating the dough until I was physically ill) while listening to the sounds of Jeff's saw in the tent and the guineas yelling at Jeff's saw from their perches in the trees.

 Tonight, my boys are sleeping in a tent in the woods, my girls are snuggled in a single bed, my husband is catching hard-earned zzz's on the couch... 

...and I will finally call it a day.

Enjoying Our School Days!

Hands-free Panic

So, this may have happened....

I finally bought bluetooth headphones, so I can both listen to cheeseball shows on my Ipad while putting eggs into cartons in the wee hours of the morning without waking anyone up... and there was a bonus microphone, so I can talk on the phone hands-free.

I successfully connected the headphones to my phone, and when the phone rang, I attempted to answer with the new device. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to answer it, so it rang and rang. As I walked around shouting "Hello? HELLO?" into the air, something picked up. Again, I said "hello", and I heard what sounded like a loud baby crying. "Hello?" There was no voice, but definitely loud crying. Because I was hands-free, I had no caller ID to look at. Assuming I was butt-dialed by a mommy friend, I kept up with the loud "HELLO's". Soon, I realized the crying was serious. It sounded like someone was in pain. WAIT. Was it an animal? I started to panic. Something was very wrong. I asked who was there... I asked if everything was ok... I ran to my phone to see who was wailing on the other end.

There was no number.

Confused, I scrolled around on the phone to see what on Earth was going on. All the while, there was screaming and wailing in my ears. It was loud enough that Jeff, tuning in to my distress, could hear it in the next room.

What was it?

How about an MP3 playing on a LOOP. An MP3 of simulated wounded rabbit calls that I had stored and played to help lure a fox.

Yeah. Cause that's pretty typical.