End of School Year

We have a recital today, I feel so fortunate to have this opportunity, it will be the first recital for us, and we are looking forward to it. Not that we have a lot to show, but to share with fellow homeschoolers, homeschoolers that have the main beliefs of our family, is such a blessing, specially nowadays.

It is also a good time for me to review the homeschooling year, and the children, what they really need? what would be good to refresh during summer or keep working from a different angle?

Maria my oldest is so fast in doing things, in a classroom, she would probably pass unnoticed, have good marks and skip along the grades, but none would notice the huge weakness in her character if they would not ave time for individual teaching. She needs someone that pushes her to work hard, because things are easy for her, she does not do any effort, and tires soon of any assignment. That is one reason  for which we need to keep our music lessons, violin, she resists them but are tecahing her the value of persistence and work. On the other hand math is also a challenge with her, so we will be doing a lot of movement these coming months with math problems and arithmetic: jumping rope with the times tables, hopscotch with time tables, and mental math for mazes and games.

For my middle one, Rebecca, we will need to work on reading. She is somehow behind because I left her be in that dreamy child stage, that is so good for many things. Also because I focused on the first child and carried the second along, I see that some things were never taught directly to her. I am also confused about methods of teaching: the first semester we were doing a very living approach to learning and I was involved in designing the material, the second part of the semester was more of a guided curriculum set of assignments, and I found that even though the children do the lessons, there is a withdrawal from the actual learning, just as I did withdraw from the actual designing of the class. I am now wondering if I should pick up first grade this summer with this child, in the more living way.

For my boy, I do not think too much, just to keep working in boundaries and feeding him well, because with a little sugar or too much carbohydrates he skyrockets to tantrum and misbehavior land!!!!!

For me, I am thinking also to buy a big blackboard, and start drawing and printing the lessons in it, just as in the one room school they had the lessons written every day for each grade, I would do so, before going to sleep for the next day. This will bring an added discipline effort to my life, which needs it so much.