Josh

Oh, my second child, how I love you so.

Joshy would much rather play by himself. It's not that he's anti-social- I mean, he has 3 siblings, lots of cousins, friends at school...but this kid is an engineer in the making. He would rather have a box of Legos with some diagrams of different things to build than go play football with CJ. This child hears everything also, because he will shadow me (us), and just quietly be in the room, not bothering anyone, but absorbing everything being said. He's mature beyond his years. One of the things that he has always done, as long as I can remember is this: when I am beginning to get that stressed out sound in my voice (as I remind them frequently, I don't START OUT yelly, but I will get that way if I have to repeat the same thing over and over and over), he will often just slide up next to me, and wrap his arms around me. He's magic!

Anyway, this morning my darling son was crying about going to school. WHAT?! My 7 year old, crying about GOING TO SCHOOL? It started when I looked over his homework, which is triple digit subtracting with renaming and regrouping. He likes to do it all in his head. Yes, I said that. He does not like to write it down and do the work. He likes to figure it out in his head. He also is a whiz at suduko. Anyway, there was one problem that he couldn't get right. I mentioned to him that it's very okay to figure it out by writing it down and actually doing the work. "I don't like homework and i don't want to go to school!" and tears! I asked him what was going on. "I don't like having to be somewhere in the mornings, and having to get ready, and I don't like having to do homework after being in school all day long."

But homework is important- it keeps parents involved. I agree about having to go somewhere every day, but they will have to do that when they are working also, right? So why shouldn't they have to do it from 5 years old on? Might as well know what real life is like.

hehe.

Part of me completely agrees with him, I think it sucks. I hate the morning routine of getting ready for school. It blows. I esp hate when it's cold out. I'm going to have to ask Delphin (my new friend) if he will pick Julia up when he gets Chuckie soon. When it's too cold to walk, I'm going to have to enlist help with getting the boys home from school. There are some things that would be easier if they were just here.

However- looking at one of CJ's tests on prepositions...holy cow. He's never had an issue with them before that I have noticed, but this test, YIKES! That scares me. I can see that he needs some more direction with it- and one on one would definitely help him. I'm going to print out some pages and hopefully I will be able to help him out without him disintegrating into tears.

I keep telling them that IF I ever home educate, there will still be LOTS of work to be done. They won't be escaping work. There are things that will be very different than the traditional school setting, but work will be done and they WILL have to take SOME direction from me. I want to raise independent learners, but in the beginning and when new concepts arise, they will need direction.

SIGH. We'll see what happens.

Sweet Josh.