Yes M, the yardstick is a numberline

    ChristineM over at the Thinking Mother recently wrote that there don’t seem to be many blogs by homeschooling mothers of tweens who write helpful blogs about the hard stuff of homeschooling, and that she’d like the mentoring.  Since I know personally 4 moms who have homeschooled through high school, I imagine that there are mentor moms out there, but they might not be blogging because: they aren’t fond of technology; or they are in competition with those teens or tween for computer time; or most likely they don’t want to embarrass the kids because their own parenting stories are become the teens stories too.
   So here is my semi-real post (with out the details to embarrass my boy who will be 11 tomorrow): I personally blew it Monday, yelled at him for not complying with my standards.  In retrospect what I took to be his impertinent face was his overloaded face.  It was our first time going over his outline for his speech on Friday at my research class at co-op.  He had been procrastinating, maybe, or else on a first time through a process, he wasn’t too organized and didn’t realize how important (to me) it was to keep up.  After I talked to him about possible ways to organize his thoughts, he re-wrote a very good outline indeed.  I was afraid that all that time he’d been given off from regular work had been spent staring out the window, but he really had been reading and thinking, I just couldn’t have told that from his first outline.
    I’ve got to teach this kid to type.  His handwriting is as bad as mine.  The hand writing makes it hard to tell if he has a handwriting problem, or an organizational problem.  His main way of becoming organized is to discuss things.  I get so tired of discussing things, I just want him to write them all down.  As a very visual learner, it is more efficient for me to see things.  As a very aural/oral learner, discussing things is very important to  him.  We clash a lot, even though I know that he needs to talk things through.  Sometimes my mom will talk to him after his Latin lesson, and even go so far as to take dictation and e-mail it to me.  When a Lego Brickmaster essay/photo model competition is on the line, he is really motivated.  My Mom is much more patient than I am.  How embarrassing.
     When I went to bed that night I was full of tension in my neck, I was sure that God was annoyed with me for discouraging B, being impatient with M and K, and possibly also for getting lost on the way to the music store and not getting the flute fixed before the store closed.  Ever feel like God only loves recent converts, but is impatient with us long term Christians?  We don’t even have the good conversion story testimonies.
    After DH kindly rubbed my neck into mobility, I was brushing my teeth and asked God if he loved me.  I immediately remembered the verse, "I have loved you with an everlasting love."  And then I remembered M’s math lesson, and that the whole day had not been wasted.  And that B had forgiven me.
    We were playing with the number tiles in his Now I know My 1, 2, 3’s
magnets.  We are giving Miquon a break until M knows his numerals better, and can write them small enough to enjoy the work sheets.  Page 17 had him count the 17 bird, 17 sticks making their nest, and the 17 bricks in the chimbney near the nest.  Then to put the numeral 17 tile in the middle nest with the tile that came before and after in the other two.  M was inspired.  He organized the tiles in order.  He turned them upsidedown, picked random ones and then put the ones that came before and after in the other nest.  I was picking up the cuisneart rod track to show him a number line he will play with a great deal in the near future, when he grabbed the yard stick and called, "Look, here is another number line!" then he started comparing various lengths of crayons to the yard stick.  All this spontaneous math made me feel creative, so I gave him a puzzle: how can you measure around something?  He tried to roll the yard stick around his own neck, then got frustrated.  When I pulled out my measuring tape from my sewing stash, M grabbed it like a magic thing, then ran through the house wrapping it around things.  When it was time to walk to the park, he insisted that we bring it with us.
    All that spontaneous math inspired B too.  He had asked me to explain how Roman numerals worked, in the car.  I had felt like I couldn’t do it without writing them down.  For once I remembered that he likes to talk things through, not see them.  So I explained them to him, and we played a "tell me how to express this number." game.  He had  already figured out one million from his Latin lessons.   By the time we reached the park, he could do any number up to 499, I forgot what the letter for 500 was, so neither of us knew that one.
    Probably, the outline review would have gone better if I hadn’t decided to skip my afternoon read the Bible and put my feet up time to spend with him.  If I hadn’t had a sleepy headache to start with, I would have had a headache after that. On Tuesday I made M wait to do his numbers until B and I worked on his outline during K’s morning nap.  I was much fresher for the work, so was B.  In future, I’d better help on writing assignments in the morning.  Even if I outsource his writing instruction to the cottage school in town, I’m going to have to discuss his projects with him to help him get organized.  Either that or send him to my Mom’s house more often!