Wednesday 24th January

A recent thread over at 4Real Learning, made me think. The ladies there were sharing their ‘daily life’ blogs… the ones where you really see what we do as homeschoolers.
Now I don’t think I can really start another blog… but I am will to make a series of posts on here about it 

RECAP: This week has been a BAD one… the past two mornings started off OK… but not well. The last two weeks I have been working on Rebel getting up and dressed first thing. I have let it slip for years, but with the battles about even getting dressed recently, I decided enough was enough. So starting last week, every morning he gets up and dressed first. This has messed up my own preferred schedule in the morning, because I really like to get dressed before school starts. It sets a good example. But in order to be around when he gets up (which usually coincides with my shower), I wait until after he is up and dressed. Since we start schooling at 9:30 and he has a nasty habit of getting up at 9… well you get the idea. But back to why it has been bad.
See… the kids lack sleep. Our fault totally… we kept them up on the weekend, and for some reason we keep having errands to run in the evenings this week. While M’Lady is just going off of her naps, this is BAD news, because she needs to go to bed at a reasonable time. She’ll fall asleep in the car when we go out which can easily make her wake up at bedtime. If she falls asleep during the day, I have to be the mean one who wakes her before she goes over an hour, or she is terrible to get off to sleep.
So you can guess why they were late to bed a few times. Late to bed… normal rise time, means grumpy kids.
Grumpy kids rebel at school… and sure enough, that’s exactly what Rebel did. Monday, he spent all morning doing 2 pages of mathematics.
Tuesday, he got as far as copywork before refusing to copy a Ben Franklin saying. He just didn’t want to write… which I understand, but honestly… two lines is not too much to ask.
This morning was much better.
We started on time (although I was still in my nightie) with our regular 2 pages of math. He pushed it to the limit though, and when I took it away was very upset. That’s good, it means he had planned to go on and do more… good sign.
Next up… Latin. We just got in our new Latina Christiana II… where the first 6 lessons are reviews. So instead of the review lesson at the end of LCI, I jumped into the new one (Rebel hates review lessons LOL). Straight into recitation, then drilling call cards. We timed that, and it helped motivate him.
A quick break later and off to copywork. He was promised a computer game if he did it, so he finished quickly (no, not a bribe, he wanted to know if Jacobite could download the trial game, and he said only if he did his schoolwork today ;)). After copywork, onto Bible studies… the story of Joshua leading his people to Jericho, and Rahab hiding the men was followed by the baptism and temptation of Jesus—some of which Rebel read to me as I cleaned up the spilt water and soil from Jacobite’s new Venus flytrap that M’Lady had dropped. This was a good reading because we were able to make a nice notebook page using Microsoft Publisher… my first trial. I wasn’t so thrilled with the dove coloured to look like the American flag… and I thought that he could have drawn something more interesting than the desert, but I decided to quit while ahead.
It took me so long to customize his page, that it was already lunchtime. I rushed upstairs for my shower, discovering the kids speaking to Jacobite as I got out. Repeated shoutings (while I hurriedly dressed) eventually brought the phone to me, and I spent the next hour talking to him while baking biscuits and making egg salad biscuits (whole-wheat thankyouverymuch).
The kids were occupied with a computer game each… Reader Rabbit on the desktop for M’Lady and Sonic the Hedgehog on the Nintendo DS for Rebel. This would have been quite nice for me, if Rebel hadn’t decided to get jealous of M’Lady’s game, and tried to do it for her. She bit him, he bit her, and there were tears and recriminations. Some salve and a telling off (an apology and hug) later, I was able to get back to my work. After lunch, I decided to allow some TV for some peace and quiet. And here I am, blogging, because I am supposed to be trying to get my email up. I am not having much luck… I haven’t been able to get into the email properly for the last day or so.
I finally manage it, find the missing DVD and remote control and go to blog… only blogger is down.