Seeing the Accomplishments

Sometimes we forget to really look at all we and our kids are accomplishing in our homeschool days. Take yesterday, for example. Rabbit really struggled through her hour of math. She was really frustrated by the end of it. She said, "Mom, I feel like my brain has melted." But, last night, I was thinking about how much math she did in that hour, and it was amazing! She had two problems to finish from lesson 86. Then she did the practice test for lesson 87, which was 12 problems. We worked through the two example problems in lesson 87, did the 8 practice problems, and 10 of the problem set problems. That was 34 math problems! My dyslexic Rabbit did 34 math problems in an hour, plus learning the new concept in lesson 87.

I could look at it as we have 2 weeks of school left, and we're only on lesson 87 out of 120. But, even at our current pace of 2 to 2.5 days to complete a lesson, we'll have finished 75% of the book in a school year. Not bad! And we'll continue through the summer. 

I look at Rabbit and see a young lady who is a hard worker, tries hard, has a good attitude (most of the time), and is growing spiritually. What more could I ask for? Those are the important things, not whether we finish a math book in a school year.

So, in spite of days where things look bleak, really try to see what you have accomplished for the year, not what you haven't finished. 

1850MOD: Week 28

Here we are on week 28... We have about 4 weeks left to get our official school days count in. I really need to blog more often.

Let's start with Bible. We loved Tales from Persia. On AWANA missionary night, the missionary who spoke was someone who reaches out to Muslims in America. The missionary was asking the kids if they knew what Muslims believed, and because of that book they were able to answer the questions. It was a big surprise to the missionary that any of the kids knew anything about Muslims, but it also confirmed that the book is accurate in their beliefs. Then, my husband took the book to work and gave it to a coworker who is interested in Christianity who comes from a Muslim background. Although the stories are written to appeal to children, I thought the gentle way it presented the concepts of Christianity from a Muslin perspective might help.

Now we're doing the T.H.U.M.B. prayer section and continuing on in A Young Person's Guide to Knowing God. We have good discussions on the topics.

History is interesting. Just Rabbit and I are doing Story of the World. They added the writing from an outline component, which has been challenging, but Rabbit is getting the idea more. I don't always agree with the organization of the outline, though, and that really challenges us sometimes. The boys enjoy the US Facts and Fun book. Most of their history comes from book basket. Tigger has even read one of the American Girl books and enjoyed it.

The boys LOVED the Fun with Magnets kit for the 2nd/3rd grade supplement, and the experiments don't take too long. The World of Science book is sometimes over their heads, but they do like looking at at the pictures while I'm reading it (and some of the computer stuff is a little outdated). The Apologia General Science hasn't been too bad for Rabbit. I have been using the alternate tests from the Yahoo group. We're on module 13, which has lots of terms and things to memorize about the digestive tract, so Rabbit has asked for a couple of extra study days before taking the test.

Math has been Rabbit's nemesis. Here test scores started going down, and after researching it, I realized she needed to be doing all the problems. Since we started doing that, her test scores have gone up. However, it takes 2 to 2 and a half days to do one lesson. We still have quite a few lessons to go. We'll continue over summer. My thought is to try to do an hour in the morning and then an hour in the afternoon to get caught up.

The boys have been doing pretty well with Singapore. Occasionally they struggle with a concept, but they have really gotten it. I wonder if Pooh will ever learn his math facts. I have tried several different methods, and now he is using math Wrap-Ups. Tigger really works hard at it and seems to get them much quicker. It will be a focus this summer.

I am pretty pleased with everyone's progress so far. We'll see how the rest of the year goes.