Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Nothing On My Mind Until Now

Nothing much has been on my mind lately. I just looked and I haven't really blogged a lot. I guess I've been in deep thought, trying to get my house even more organized, trying to get through school, life....ignoring the calls from family members asking me when I am going to put Thomas in real school. Ahem.

I guess one thing that has been on my mind a lot is math. My son is very good at math concepts. He's very good at fractions. Some things click, some don't. Bottom line is that he hates math. Math is our biggest stumbling block in our day. Now it is my opinion that math will be done every.single.day. Period. When your child takes two hours to get his math done, that really screws up your day.

Okay, part of our problem is that we don't start school with the early birds. We get up, do our chores, eat breakfast, do spelling and grammar, then Thomas does reading for an hour while I watch the view. By then it's 11 and we start math. At 12 DH comes home for lunch and from the second he walks in the door, Thomas is pumped up and bouncing.

Thomas and I had yet another long talk about school and how much we are missing out on, how many fun things we could do. Such as: This week we have played Perfection every day, we have worked on a couple exercises from Audiblox, and we have played the Memory game. All very fun things, but good for helping develop short-term memory and speed. If anyone reading has good ideas for games of these types that don't take too much time, please share.

At any rate, Thomas decided he'd start an 8:30 bedtime. It has been 10. Which means his night-owl mother will have to get her butt to bed earlier. It also means we'll be getting up at 6:30, what I call an ungodly hour, and we'll have to see the bear until he leaves. Oh wait, the bear is my husband. He likes his solitude in the morning. So this will be an adjustment. Thomas wanted to start school at 7, but I talked him into 7:30.

Our plan is to do everything BUT math until we're done, and then we'll all sit a the kitchen table with math. I hope this works. He'll be tired and focus will be an issue, but he'll also have two adults to work with not just one.

I wish the math fairy would come to our home and sprinkle her math dust on us. Wouldn't that be the easy way out?

Hmmmmm...

I think I'll tuck myself back under my nice, comfy-cozy rock and do some more deep thinking now.

6 comments:

Mz.Elle said...

*Groan* those calls stopped for me when I cut off ties with my family;p
The peace is bliss,lol

This is where I love HS. If things aren't working out the way you want them to,you have the freedom to tweak your day to make it so:)

Appletini said...

Hey, if that math fairy shows up, could you send it on over here next?

Anonymous said...

Have you thought about doing 2 very short math sessions each day, say around 10 minutes each time? You could start the day w/ 10 minutes of math (stop no matter how far you did or did not get), do all your other stuff, then do 10 more minutes at the end of the day. Do math like that every day of the week.

Maybe you've already tried something like that, but I figured I would toss the idea out there....

the GA peach

Elisheva Hannah Levin said...

I have been having the same problem. We use Saxon Math and the lessons were going two hours! So now we do the facts quiz, mental math, and the lesson practice on one day and then the Mixed Practice on the next. We are not going as fast but we have much more peace in the house!

mull-berry said...

Red rover, red rover, can Frankie come over? We are playing a game and want you to play to. : )

P.S. Bring your camera!

mull-berry said...

P.P.S. It's on "Jelly Donut" blog.