What We've Been Doing Lately

I am so thankful I am home schooling at a time when a wealth of information is online. This is a grace. Thank God for that blessing! Also, I discovered that a lot of parents in my generation actually prefer to home school their child/ children. How cool is that! I am sooo not alone. I am one of thousands! It has also been very educational. I was telling my husband the other day, “I can’t believe home schooling can be so educational.”

Ozzy’s progress is nothing less than satisfying. It’s like breastfeeding, I suppose. (Sadly, I wasn’t able to breast feed him) With home schooling, you nourish your own child as his teacher regarding everything about life. I can not be happier. I found out that there is so much joy in being my son’s religion teacher. I am sharing what I know about God and how to love others and in return, he checks on his mother as reference for right and wrong. That alone is just precious.

Ozzy just tried wall climbing over the week end (unfortunately, bad me, I have no pictures). He had expressed he wanted to try it, so husband and I obliged. Ozzy, completely strapped, got so scared at the beginning that the moderator had to have the other kids go first. After a lot of encouragement, and seeing how the children had fun doing it, he eventually agreed to climb. He successfully did! We were so proud! After getting down, he made the sign of the cross, and said his Glory Be. His father and I were laughing. He knew exactly what to do after a scary situation.

Language Arts are so much fun too. I was so worried about this, to tell you the truth. I really wasn’t confident about teaching a child how to read. As I said I was grateful for the wealth of information on the Internet. There are many theories, programs, and styles. At some point, it could get very confusing. But this is what I got from my previous boss and my Language teacher: Listen, Speak, and Write. And I remember that when I plan my lessons. I’ve also been brushing up on my phonics skills as I’ve recently discovered that how you say it, helps them learn how to read it.

Listening/ Speaking/Writing. For Ozzy, it seems that Listening is the hardest because this requires a lot of attention. And because keeping the attention of a hyper active boy is as easy as trying to catch a fly, we had to overcome a lot of routines. It gets easier when he begins to anticipate what is about to happen and the action required after it. We had a difficult time at the beginning of Teach Your Child How to Read with 100 Easy lessons, but we kept on it because I knew that listening is a skill we need to develop. He has improved so far and now waits for my turn, and his turn, and listens to most of the instructions. It’s not yet a perfect dance, but we’re getting there.

Communicative Approach. We still use our BrainQuest cards, this time for Kindergarten. We started with Max the Monkey as soon as we were trying to develop his speech. With these cards, he learns to understand questions. This is a very important skill we’ve been working on. I’m still waiting for my mountain to move on this one.

Sight Words. Ozzy learns his sight words through flash cards and have shown a lot of progress with them. He’s very visual. I think he finds it easy to remember what the words look like.  I haven’t tried testing for comprehension though. I’ll let him take his time.

It may seem like he's doing tons, but these are all just short lessons done daily, along with Math. Science is just once a week. It’s been good so far. If you ask me, I’d say I’d do this again.