New Beginnings

Today was my first official day of homeschooling my 4th grade daughter. It was so much fun. I am sure it wasn't anything extraordinary in the world of homeschool, but it was extraordinary to me as a new homeschool mama.

It began with her geography/geology reading while I washed dishes and eggs and the conversation became really interesting when she told me about Neptune's orbit compared to ours. We talked about what that would mean and compared it to other planets in the solar system. We then calculated her age, my age, dad's age and grandma's age on some of these different planets to see how old or young we'd be. We talked about why some orbits take longer than others and did some comparisons running around a chair, the house, the neighborhood so she could understand these differences. It was fun to take a small little concept like an orbit and blow it out so many different ways.

She then did her math on the computer which was a whole other issue. My daughter is a major perfectionist and was freaking out because she got one problem wrong and wasn't offered more than two bonuses. Her score for her day's work was 105% and she was crying. We had to have a talk. I am seriously considering grading her on a "Great Job" vs "You can do better" scale.

I then gave her a challenging book to read. It was on a topic that interested her, but over the summer I discovered that she has developed a distaste for reading. She outright refused to read anything all summer long. I am not entirely sure if it could be the 4th grade reading slump related to a difficulty processing what she reads or whether its more of a result of school making reading not fun. I wanted to take the pressure off either way, so I told her I wanted her to read every day, that I wanted her to read for about 20 minutes, but that if she started and felt like she just was unable to concentrate that she could take a break and come back to it. I also encouraged her to read for fun, at bedtime, for as long as she wants as often as she wants. She was so pleased and I think relieved, that she gave me a big hug, a big smile and said thank you and that she loves this. She then told me how reading at school went and it sounded like a chore, not fun and not interesting at all. So, all in all, day one went well. It was very interesting and inspiring and we will have to wait and see how the rest of the week goes.