Tragic Kingdom

Along with my Get Schoolwork Started Before Noon rule, I think I also need to implement a Blog Before Dinner rule. Once dinner is over, all I can think about is the craziness that was dinner and bedtime. Phew! Is it jut me or does everyone's household just dissolve in CRAZY as soon as it is about 7:00? I told the kids tonight that they belonged in a zoo and they had the audacity to be offended. ;)

So anyway, let me try to time travel back to more peaceful hours of the day... back through gymnastics (not peaceful yet, lol)... back through laundry duty (slightly more peaceful)... finally arriving to our morning of school. That did not start out peaceful, but it did end up going pretty smoothly.

We started with a whine. Few days start without whining (does that make us whine-oes?) but thankfully it didn't last. Cameron did Spelling first. The plan was for him to do half the lesson today and half on Wednesday, but after suffering through the reading on the first page he whizzed through the entire lesson. I even told him to stop at the halfway point and he insisted on continuing. I was considering seeing if he would also whiz through his Spelling Time stuff this week and then trying to get another lesson in, but I think not. It's one thing to move ahead in Math when you're whizzing through but quite another in Spelling. I think having a few Spelling-free days will be a nice reward for doing his work quickly and efficiently.

Next was Phonics, again met with a whine but we whizzed through that pretty quickly too.

Math followed and I finally decided to go ahead and have him do the Practice Exercises that were in the book. To relieve some of the stress of them, I had written them all out on separate paper for him a few days ago. His biggest problem in math, in everything really, is rushing so I didn't want his rushing to write the problems and doing a sloppy job of it to interfere with the addition and subtraction practice. He complained a lot about it being hard, but I just kept encouraging him that with practice they would be easier. By the end, he wasn't making any mistakes at all.

Grammar was next and consisted of standing in the dining room naming everything we could see, lol. "Thing" nouns, in case you couldn't guess. ;) Cameron and Cassia kept going long after I stopped. I came up with a smooth transition into History though by naming "coloring pages" as a thing noun, lol. They both got excited over that one.

History was another Mesopotamian king (whose name has escaped me and I don't feel like looking up) and the an introduction to Gilgamesh. I have a weak spot for Gilgamesh. When I first read The Well-Trained Mind, back when Cameron was a baby, I had decided that since my own public school education was so lacking that I would go ahead an re-educate myself first before it was time to school the children. I had five or six years, right? My plan was to go through and read all the recommended reading for high schoolers in WTM. LOL, yeah, right... in my spare time. I got halfway through Gilgamesh and that was about it! But, I still have a soft spot for the guy. He is my icon. My tragic hero. My symbol of reaching for something, failing, and yet still moving ahead with my plans. Someday I'll finish the book - I even still have the Spark Notes that I downloaded for it! But for now I think I'm going to have to be satisfied with the picture book versions that we picked up at the library today. Those I will finish. ;)