Monday February 16, 2015

Last week we had school. There were some highlights. I just didn't blog about them. 1 thing I remember is a Pinkalicious marathon on Thursday. We invited some friends over plus had a couple cousins to babysit. It was a success.

Choosing Day: Mom

Game: 10,000. (Some play a similar game called farkle.) It's a dice game I've played forever. I taught the kids some of the basic rules and lowered the score you have to get to win. Amy won in 2 turns. That's crazy and awesome. They did pretty well. Eliza counted the dice instead of scoring it the way the rules say. I'm proud of her for counting.

Lesson: Family History Lesson - looked for a story about my great-grandpa that my dad told about. Didn't find it. Looked at pictures of ancestors in the book.

Reading Time: Little Britches. Discussed "getting even," "standing up for yourself," swearing, people quizzing students to judge teacher. (My girls are fiercely loyal to me as a school teacher. :))

Family Work: Cleaned my room.

Reading and Writing Class: I wrote some thoughts about principles about money and read Teach the Children. Last week we started 1 on 1 classes. Everyone choose one to do with Mom. Today Noel and Eliza chose fairy tale movies, and Amy chose Clue. (The clue obsession is going strong.) I chose to practice my singing as I typically do.

I feel like I change things about school every day. Sometimes it's unsettling. Sometimes I am sad for what we used to do that we don't any more. So often I think of ideas to try to make it better. So often I am frustrated with what's not going well. Right now I am frustrated at how much resistance and talking back I get. (This is not new.) I want to limit the scope of the choices the kids can make when they get to choose so I have more say and structure and also make expectations clear about appropriate behavior. I want to enlist them to help make school better and clarify consequences for inappropriate behavior. Those are my latest thoughts. I am about to start a joy school unit on obedience and decisions so this is perfect.