One thing that I read early on in my homeschooling research was that February is the hardest month to homeschool--and that you should not make any decisions regarding homeshooling in February. I distinctly remember last February thinking that there was no way on earth I could possible handle it! This year, I have been hearing on homeschooling websites and email groups just how hard the winter months of January and February are--how dark and dreary it is outside, how stir crazy and hyper the kids are from being penned up inside, how burnt out moms get. A few weeks ago I was priding myself and breathing a sigh of relief that in our little house, things were going great! I was enjoying getting back to a good routine after several months of new-baby craziness. I was even cooking real dinners instead of frozen lasagnas and Hamburger Helper! Well, I guess I spoke two soon, because in the past two weeks I've had plenty of days for the winter blahs and the homeschooling blues to set in! Luckily, I know what it is and can just ride it out instead of letting it derail all my future homeschooling ambitions!
Anyway, the past few weeks have been challenging. But we've had some really good moments too. Luckily the really miserable days have not been every day (not even most days, thank goodness).
Dallin's produced some really good form drawings:
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| This is a "running form", so called because it keeps on going. Dallin likes to stop them too early, so I told him to keep it going as long as possible. Well, he did. He did this page, the next page, kept it running through the last six pages in his book, across the back cover, and then was preparing to have it keep running on the front cover when I said "enough!" |
For an activity that was completely foreign to both of us when we began last fall, I must say form drawing has become something that he's quite good and--and seems to enjoy. I've also noticed that Dallin has a real talent for memory work, whether it's reciting poetry, practicing the piano, or learning his times tables.
The main focus for this month has been addition and subtraction with carrying and borrowing. This has been the month where I feel like I'm finally figuring out what I'm doing with math. I feel like we're on a good, productive track that's right for Dallin, not too easy and not too hard. He's been breezing through 2-digit numbers, so we start 3-digit ones as well.
We've also been playing "war" with cards. I'll have to find the website to post where I got the idea--I can't remember it off the top of my head, but basically it's the number cards out of a deck (one deck per player). Each person draws so many cards, and whoever has the largest sum wins. So he gets good addition practice. You can do it with subtraction, multiplication, etc. There are tons of ways to adapt it. We also played with our beans in the same way. (Beans with numbers written on them; each player chooses two and multiplies them, whoever has the highest--or lowest--product takes all the beans.)
I know we've had other games too, I just can't remember them at the moment.
For what it's worth, I know at this point that we'll surely be homeschooling next year! In spite of a few bleary, cold days, not to mention all the craziness our first year has involved, I really love homeschooling and can't imagine what I was so scared about! I am already planning for Dallin's next year and Sariah's kindergarten (!), and I am SO excited! I love Waldorf education and am so happy with how it's turning out for our family!
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