School

"Happy is a man who finds wisdom and who acquires understanding..." (Proverbs 3:13)

For the second week in a row, Lila refused to do her school work for most of the day on Tuesday. She spent the time in her room instead, had all privileges revoked, and had to make up the work (along with doing Thursday's new work) on Thursday and Friday.

Is she ever going to learn that the fastest way to be rid of a task you don't like, is to just DO IT?!?

Her two big stumbling blocks are handwriting and math facts.

She has the skill to write neatly (in manuscript), but she doesn't like the effort it takes to do so. She was so excited when they started learning to write in cursive. I think she had it in mind that cursive would be easier than manuscript, so she wouldn't have to work as hard.

When she discovered that she was not instantly good at cursive, she decided it was awful too. Now I have to listen to whining and complaining every time she works on handwriting. "It's too hard!" "I don't like cursive." "I'm not good at it." "I wish cursive would just go away!" Etcetera. Ad nauseum.

(Which reminds me - she loves Latin!)

I lovingly remind my children, on a regular basis, that if their school work were easy, then we wouldn't be doing it. The point of doing school work is to learn. If the work is easy, then you aren't learning anything. The work is supposed to be difficult, at least in the beginning.

And as for math facts... [sigh] Again, she has the skill. She knows all of her addition facts and she's pretty close to knowing all her subtraction facts, as well. The problem is speed. Lila doesn't do ANYTHING quickly.

She operates at Lila Speed, at all times. She eats slowly. She gets dressed slowly. She walks slowly (and rarely in a straight line). And she does math facts slowly. They want her to be able to do 40 math facts in 2 minutes, but she's only at about 25 for addition facts and 15 for subtraction facts.

She actually SLOWS DOWN when she knows she's being timed. Just this week, I realized that part of the problem is that she's thinking too hard. When she sees a math problem, she starts trying to figure it out instead of letting her brain provide the stored information.

On the other hand, her favorite subjects are science and history. She's extremely well-behaved and respectful at school. She's on par with her classmates, academically. Her oral reading skills are a strength and she's got some wicked memorization skills.

Her participation in class discussions is also considered a strength. She's really thriving at school and she does work hard. We are just getting to a tough point in the year. She's tired of doing the things she doesn't like and, now that the weather is so beautiful, she'd rather be playing outside than sitting at a table with homework.

I'm getting a little tired of sitting at that table myself.

10 more classroom days and 10 more homeschool days until summer break...