School’s In!

The older ones are back to the cinderblock, but Little Man and I are doing it at home. I think I pushed too much at him on day 1; but after breaking up the workbook time into leetle pieces separated by healthy doses of LEGO breaks and general runabout, and it’s going much better. I’m also seeing certain things that fit with the LM Viewed As Trouble Because He’s Caught Up A Little Too Much With Semantics: We were doing “Follow the directions” section in a workbook and the instruction was, “Draw a box around this object.” Little Man gives me a concerned look and says, “That’s gonna be hard.” Further probing reveals that he thinks he’s being told to draw a 3-D representation of a box.

I suddenly see quickly disintegrating progression of events beginning with a simple misunderstanding between LM and his classroom teacher, who has repeatedly said that she “Just doesn’t have time to give him the individual attention he seems to require.” Which I find ironic, given that we put him in a private school for exactly their advertised “personalized attention”.

Pookus came home from school after Day 1 and asked him, “How was your first day of homeschool?”

LM paused to consider, then answered, “Not good.”

Pookus was surprised. “Why not?”

“Because we didn’t go anywhere.”

Apparently Little Man expected us to be taking a  lot more field trips, and immediately. I think the next step is for him to help plan field trips. Heck, he’s already planning family meals. He’s taken up cooking with me. Actually, he’s always been interested; it’s just that we’re finally in a position where I have the time to let him participate. This past week, he organized two family dinners (sloppy joes, baked potatoes) and one breakfast (bagel/apple/cheese sandwiches). I can see myself writing in the following week’s agenda: dinosaurs, egg cracking.