Happy New Year!
Wholeheartedly, I intended to have Jonah do school work during the Christmas break. That's the beauty of homeschooling, right? Doing "school" whenever we can fit it into the schedule. Because I feel we launched slowly this fall, and because I did not want to begin my experience as a homeschooler by pushing my child to frustration, maxing him out daily with my grandiose plans of academic achievement (frankly that is not my thing), we really took our academics lightly this fall. Truly. My desire was to focus on the basics - math, writing, and reading. I figured, if we worked in those areas each day, we were doing well, right? Or are we? I guess I don't know... and many days I wonder, I worry, I fret.... am I teaching him enough? Are we LEARNING? Those thoughts made me quite certain that we would "catch up" over the break. While all his school classmates would be completely on break, he'd be foraging ahead, working through math problems, writing essays, reading complicated literature.....yeah, right!
Again, my thoughts meet up with reality. Brother and sister are home from school, and they don't have any work, so why should he?
Perhaps two days out of the two week vacation, we squeezed in a few math problems. I also asked each child to memorize a Christmas poem. Beyond that, NOTHING. Or, better yet, something - something meaningful, something important, something wonderful: time to just be a kid. Sledding in the yard with kids from the neighborhood. Baking and decorating cookies. Making a gingerbread house (from a box, I love that). Lots of playtime in the basement with the 6 year old brother who adores him. Board games - the favorites were Sequence, Set, Life, and Frog Juice. Shopping for gifts for cousins and brother and sister. Video games (yes, I detest them, but they adore them, so much, we limit it). Helping with gift wrapping. Shoveling the driveway after the massive snowfalls. Reading, sleeping in late, staying up with Dad watching sports, spending time with cousins, aunts and uncles, and Grandpa and Grandma. That's all much better than academics, isn't it?
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