Back To It

After a week of travel and vacation we jumped right back into our schedule this morning.  It's amazing to me how quickly our day goes when our minds are all occupied with learning (and teaching!).  We started right after breakfast and worked clear through the noon whistle without hardly even glancing up.  

Amazing given the age of my little scholars but they do love their school!  School is especially fun when you are learning the songs Pharaoh, Pharaoh in Bible and Father Abraham in History!

In Science we are talking about the five senses.  We went over what each one was ("what helps us hear?  our ears. etc.") and when I got to eyes I asked, "what helps us see?"  Xavier (age 4) proudly proclaimed, "our glasses!"  Touche, little man.  Touche.

In math this week Natalee (Math-U-See Alpha) has been tasked with learning to write from 0 to 100.  This is something she's quite capable of but that needs polished and practiced so that she can understand the patterns that repeat in each set of ten.  She had two practice pages to accomplish today and the first one drug on forever.  Not because she couldn't, but because to look at all 100 of those little lines just completely overwhelmed her.  I verbally tried chunking it up for her so she could accomplish a piece at a time but nothing worked and she begrudgingly finished the page after much time passed. (Much time.  With much wiggling desperation.)  I gave her a break so we could both regroup and then brought her back later to finish the second practice page.  Sometimes God whispers little somethings in my ear on a whim - nothing I've researched or googled  - just an old trick in my tool bag that He tells me to get out.  At the end of each row I set a white chocolate chip and told Natalee the rule was she could eat the chip when she completed the row.  She loves rules.  Five minutes.  Five.  She is my daughter, after all.  We.are.driven.by.chocolate.

I'm not ashamed one bit that I helped her through her studies using food.  It could have been healthier, sure, but the white chocolate was a nice treat, it was clean, and it got the job done.  100 chocolate chips?  Now that would have been obsessive (wink). 

After lunch we had children's musical co-op class.  We missed last week so this was our first time attending.  What fun!  The children are set to perform later this fall and the songs are adorable.  A perfect way to get back into the swing of things!