Wednesday, June 21, 2006

First Day of Home School 2005

I was looking over some old e-mails that I had saved as journal entries. This is an account of Princess' first day of home school. She is in a university model school where she is actually in class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I home school (with their lesson plans) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We love it! It has been so rewarding to be an active part of her learning process. And I love the flexibility to be able to practice spelling words in sidewalk chalk at the park if we want to. Anyway, read on for her first day at home.

Okay, by about 9:30 a.m. Princess had 1) gotten two time outs, 2) run screaming down the street, "You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!" and 3) flung poop on the wall. But it got better! I'll elaborate.

1) We had a slightly rough (and I mean that in the literal sense, not the sarcastic sense) transition from mommy/daughter to teacher/student. She was treating everything like a game that she could control (my daughter? Bossy? NO! - that was sarcastic) and was not taking the lesson seriously. We were outside in the driveway doing the Clock Game (I drew a clock face in chalk on the driveway and she was supposed to follow my directions in going from one number to another - learning about making letters clockwise or counter clockwise) and she was jumping on any number that she felt like jumping on. Time-out number one.

2) The Gingerbread Man thing is directly related to #1. After the first time-out we had a good few minutes and then she took off. Time-out number two and lecture. Now, you know my blood can run a little hot sometimes. God was SO in control here! I was calm, collected and serious, but very much in control of myself. My inner me was screaming "We've made a mistake! I can't do this! She will never 'let' me teacher her!" While God was soothing me and saying, "I led you here. I am in control. I will work it out." So I heard myself very calmly explaining to her that this was school. This was a lesson and she had to treat it as such. I asked her if she would run screaming down the hall during Mrs. S's class and she laughed and said that she wouldn't. I told her to treat me like a teacher because that is what I am during lessons. I told her that if she wanted to, or needed to, she could call me Mrs.Mommy. She laughed at that, too, but she immediately changed and got into the game and then the rest of the morning went very smoothly. Well . . . except for . . .

3) She went back inside to potty and was gone a very long time. I came back in to check on her and she said that when she wiped she had gotten poop on her hand. She was freaking out a little! So she had shaken her hand to get it off and it had gotten on the wall. Easily taken care of! Not really all that serious! But in the context of first day of homeschool, quite funny.

First of all, all praise is to God. He was all over this day. And praise to Him that he prompted me to get out of bed early and have some prayer time before I got the kids up. I cannot believe how God has blessed us with this school! I am overwhelmed and so excited! And I also realized how much Buddy is going to get out of our time in the home classroom, too. I'm just so fired up! I know that we will have not so great days, but we started this venture with poop on our walls! And ended the day glowing! How cool!

Back to present day. It's interesting to go back and read how we started the school year. Princess has matured SO much since that first day. I'm excited to see what next year brings.

No comments: