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This summer flew by! Grandmom came the second to last week of summer vacation. After that there was no putting it off…I had to plan for school. Last year I was really excited about starting school, but this year I really really wasn’t. I think the biggest problem for me was trepidation about teaching Jack. He’s such a big unknown because of DS, but another large part is that because he went to public school last year I really don’t know what all he actually knows. I wanted to plan our days like 15 minutes of math, then a play break for him, then 15 minutes of writing…I had such great plans. I knew, however, that we probably wouldn’t be able to stick to any schedule I made before actually seeing where he was. Not to mention the fact that Tj’s schedule constantly changes, and even when it doesn’t change it’s rarely the same from day to day. I knew I needed to play Jack by ear.
Max was pretty easy. I sat down last Monday and counted all the days of math, history and science we had. It seems like Saxon always has 140 lessons, so that’s how many days of school we have. Max has 5 days of math each week and 4 days of science. Since we’re going through 2 history books this year he also has 3 days of history. Oh, and he’s starting out doing 2 math lessons a day. We’ll see how long it takes us until he reaches the point where he’s being challenged in math. Tj also got me an Abeka English book which we’ll start Monday. I’m somewhat intimidated by the sheer volume of their year of work, but I just need to sit down and cut some of it out. I still haven’t done a spelling lesson with him since he’s such a great speller. And I’m not sure how much of the literature we’ll do since he’s such a voracious reader.
So we started school Monday, but since we leave at 8:30 for swim lessons and don’t come back till lunch we’ve skipped a few subjects. Max did math at the pool while Jack was swimming, and Jack did some math, writing and geography there.
This week went extremely well, but teaching Jack really is going to be a chore. He’s 7, but has an extremely short attention span. I’m hoping to increase it as the year goes on. I just about lost my mind today trying to get him to start drawing his letters on a point I put down for him. Just like in every other area it’s hard to discern when he’s being hard-headed and when he just honestly has no idea what I’m talking about.
I’m definitely glad he’s home with Max and me. I know we’ll have some fun times this year.