expectations

Continuing in the same vein as yesterday....

When I started h/s'ing Niles, I had a general idea of what it would be like. I was both right & wrong. It is easier & harder than you'd think. As is true of most things. I've learned that right now, I need to be more organized or we lose focus. Niles would just as soon make lego Halo guns all day then do work. While using legos is an actual learning experience, it isn't helping him with division.

I found out I'm very anemic currently so that's why I'm so exhausted. Without having things written down, in terms of where we are & where we are going, I think I'd be lost. Setting concrete goals is important. I sor of muddled through a bit at first. Figuring we'd get to everything w/o a notion of how that would work. Which might have been ok w/a more motivated student. But I don't have that so I work w/what I got.

A constant adventure

There's so many things I want to put up on here, that I compose in my head while driving about to this or that errand. Then I get home and completely get side tracked on something else. I think that I'll make the time to do this or to do that, but then I get busy preparing for lessons, correcting things he's worked on, or just with various life in general type stuff. I suppose if I don't get started, I won't ever get anything done, just endlessly spin my wheels. So here goes...

One thing I keep getting asked is 'why do I do this' especially when I say I'm adding Luca next month when preschool is out. Sometimes, I don't know the answer. And I think it's because I'm crazy. Next year, all 4 kids will be in school, 3 of them for most of the day. I might get something done. But then I remember that they would have been in school for most of the day [if at Brooks still the school is from 9:15-3:45, which means we weren't home before 4] with fighting over homework lasting anywhere from an hour to two, depending. Add in tkd & religious school 4 days a week....when do they get to unwind? play? is it just me or is i ridiculous that a 3rd grader, let alone a kindergartener has that much homework....But that's because schools have to meet standards set up by No Child Left Behind aka The Holy Grail.

Education becomes an assembly line of facts, figures and busy work. Teachers have to accomplish x goals by certain times so the maximum number of kids can pass the eog's and make sure that their school/grades are doing ok. Now I'm all for accountability and making sure that kids are learning and teachers are doing a good job. What no one seems able to prove is that this is the way to do that.

So, that's part of why I keep doing this. There's no love for learning fostered in my kids. They aren't the ones who want to acheive on their own, read ahead, look for stuff outside of class. They don't care about the grade [it's hard to care about a 3 when you don't know what it means anyhow] or pleasing the teacher. They want to know their motivation. ha! Maybe I have actors, or late blooming geniuses in the house.

I know there's more I want to say about this, but Elie is running around, I need to wake up Luca so I can take him to preschool for the Art Museum field trip and I have to drink 32 oz of water for an ultrasound to determine if I have fibroids this morning. Sometimes I wonder if I have my own attention issues. Maybe I take too much on because I don't know how to be bored.

The garden contains:

two tomato plants
one cucumber plant
merrigolds
leeks
chives
one banana pepper plant
one jalapeno pepper plant
2 corn [seeds wish us luck]
one cantalope plant
and some mexican hat flower seeds [again w/the luck]

Our Square Foot Garden

Watercolors