Days 1 - 4

Just a short blurb about days 1 - 4.

Since I really don't know exactly where M is in most of the subjects taught at school, I decided to start at the beginning with Social Studies. Apparently, in public school they do either Science or Social Studies for a number of weeks at a time, but not both.

The beginning of this year's Social Studies is Early Peoples (basically from how North America was peopled to pre-Columbian natives). M and I did the majority of it last week and were supposed to finish it up today. Well, we did finish it up today, but much to my annoyance it did not go as I had planned in my head. I sat for an hour or so last night writing down bits of information about the Maya, Aztec and Inca thinking we would talk about that to close the lesson because I thought M was really into these civilizations and wanted to learn more about them. And I honestly think he did want to know more, but it turns out that the traditional year kids were out of school today because it was a teacher workday. One of them knocked on the door to see if M could play and that was the beginning of the end of our lessons for today. He'd already been having trouble focusing and was "bored" at times (I fell into the trap of reading from the workbook for a bit of the lesson today)...he seemed a bit off today. He had 2 unit-end tests I wanted him to do, plus some writing worksheets and a bit of math before we would be done for the day.

Argh...the tests were somewhat of a disaster. The first one was fill in the blank. He started out trying to do that test and the other (matching) test at the same time. I took the fill in the blank test from him and scribed for him to help him along. Some of the questions he absolutely couldn't answer, which kind of irked me, since I'm the one teaching him and I felt like he should be able to answer these things. I ended up letting him use the book for a couple of the answers. The other test was ridiculous, and no fault of his that it was so. I have no idea how the publishers thought a 5th grader could do this test...I had problems seeing the relationships between some of the things and I have a degree in history! :O So instead of marking all his answers wrong, I made my own test based on their test. He ended up with 90% correct on it; and would have gotten 100 had he not confused 2 of the answers. But hey - 90 is great!

So I learned a couple of things this first unit:
-he needs LOTS of hands on learning opportunities
-he needs time to review the unit before taking a test

-I need to chill out a little and not take things personally; there are ways to handle things with M and there are ways not to handle things. I think I didn't handle things correctly today, but tomorrow is a new day. I will put what I learned from this week into effect tomorrow and hopefully things will go more smoothly.

As for writing this past week, we've done some very short writing prompts and a few fill in the blank type worksheets. Nothing heavy or part of a unit as I wasn't sure exactly where to start. I think tomorrow we will start on the Daily 6 Trait Writing for Grade 3 (yes, 3) and see how quickly we can get through that book. I want to start on the easy side with him as writing tends to be a big issue, and I need to figure out how to handle it.

For Math on days 1-3, he did lots of Khan Academy, which he LOVES. Both the kids enjoy it, actually. I highly recommend it.

We haven't started any Science lessons. I think I will hold off on those for a while. I want to introduce the writing and see how he does with that, then we'll begin work on some other skills I'd like him to learn (stuff like organizing, time management, social skills, etc). Baby steps...that's my motto for now. Until both he and I are used to each other and homeschooling, I really don't see a reason to rush things.

I'm looking forward to the next unit - Native Americans in the US: Desert Southwest, Pacific Coast, Plains, and Eastern Woodlands. I've already got 2 parts ready; the Iroquois (Eastern Woodlands) and the Desert Southwest (Pueblo) Indians. Each has about 4 hands on assignments to do, plus our discussions. Oh! And we're doing a tiny lesson on the Day of the Dead since it's tomorrow!