Today’s Homeschool

Yesterday we came home from Sunday School early, because M didn’t feel at all well, he was voluntarily sitting still too, so he wasn’t faking.

Today he’s still off, and we are butting heads, I’m trying to remember why he’s wound up in the first place.  It started rough; as I was dressing, K knocked down M’s wedgits tower, and he yelled at her.   Then M got upset when I was more concerned about how he’d reacted to her than the injustice of her knocking down the tower in the first place.  I also wanted to know why he’d come inside from playing in the side yard when I’d  sent  him outside to run off wiggles.

M- it was cold.

Me- why didn’t you put on a jacket or hat, or socks?
M- I didn’t think of that.

I sent M to his room to calm down (loud frustrated sounds echoed from there) and finished dressing.

Today was the day we were starting up on the Unit 1 cycle 1 of Living Math I’d collected the resources, but I was nervous about starting on a new sort of lesson.  M had himself in hand when we started.  I went fairly quickly through prayer, singing this month’s hymn, reading a poem from the Ambleside Online collection, then asked, what is math?

I figured that with all the extra books I’d read them over the years, this would not take too long.  B said, “The science of patterns.” and that took care of the first few exercises. M was able to enjoy the activities after that too.

We left B in the living room to  practice his flute while M, K and I went to the kitchen table for the dreaded handwriting practice time, recorder lesson, and memory verse practice.  K demanded a snack.  I told her to wait.  We began cursive v ( that’s a tricky one) K declared, “I poopy.” That trumps all.

I returned to M’s lesson, v was driving him crazy.  K resumed asking for snack, I told her to wait, she began screaming (she is also coming down with something.)  I put her in her crib for a few minutes while I calmed down.

M began to practice “merrily we roll along,” then yelled about which fingers to use.  I sliced some carrots.  M managed to play the first two measures nicely, put his recorder down with a smile, and cleaned it.  I called for K (she can get out by herself now) and gave them saucers of ranch dressing (they all double dip).  I brought B some dip and carrots to be sure he’d get some, and thought: alls well that ends well.

Until a few minutes ago when it was time to go to the park and M still had no socks on…