New Interest?

One of our home-school groups has a team that just competed in a local robotics competition against area high schools (and a few middle school teams). Our team ended up in 3rd place overall out of 22 teams!! And most of our kids are in 5th grade, from what I hear, so more kuddos to their teachers (parents) and of course, to the kids themselves.

Hunter had signed up to be on the Jr. team for this competition, which would have just "watched" and "supported", but learned more along the way. But he ended up being the only junior to attend an initial meeting, so the decision was made not to have a Jr. team. However, the parent leaders kept Hunter in the loop of the progress and offered him to be included in the process if he so wished. Timing kept us from going to some of the beginning meetings - and I don't think Hunter's interest would have been kept for long in the design phase, but when the robot was up and running and the team was practicing driving for the competition, Hunter went over to watch and was invited to "drive" the robot.

He was in Heaven! That's all he could talk about all day long. Then this Saturday we went to the competition event and he saw the other school's robots. He thought his team's robot was better and kids were better drivers. And yeah, from what I saw, pretty much.

Anyway, he is all into robotics now and can't wait for the next junior opportunity to get involved somehow. Cool. He's never been into sports - except for NASCAR - so this may give him something to "do". Yea!!

Pushing

Hunter and I have head to head combat occasionally. Oh, not in any violent way, but in a Mother/Teacher to Son/Pupil type of way. There are those times when he will decide on his own that something is just too hard to do and all of a sudden, he "can't do it." I really don't like those words and usually won't let them fly too far out of his mouth before "yes, you can," leaves mine.

The math curriculum we have this year is Singapore Math, which moves very quickly and is more advanced on grade level than what we would be doing in public school this year. I'm trying to make up ground from what he forgot/didn't get last year in school. So to really drill in addition math facts, I found a worksheet that has 100 boxes on it with all the math fact equations (you know, 0+1 through 9+9). The worksheet goes on top of a blank paper and the student then fills in the answers in the boxes.

When we started this worksheet on September 11th, I decided to time Hunter to see how long it would take him to do this sheet. I clocked him at 26:49. This time was atrocious! So, I set a goal for him. If he could get the time down to 8 minutes, I'd take him to Bono's Race Shop so he could pick out a new NASCAR car. We did the worksheet 3-4 times a week and charted and graphed his progress. Each time we did the sheet, his time would get better, then go back up, then progress down, on and on. Finally, on this past Monday, Hunter hit 8:30. The goal was 8 minutes so we were super close. Tuesday morning we sat down with the worksheet and talked over some problem problems and discussed how we "skip" answers we don't know immediately then come back to them later. I started the stop watch and watched my little boy blitz through these addition math facts. He hit the end and went back to the top to skim for skipped questions, answered all of them, and I hit "stop". The time on the watch was amazing to us... 6 minutes and 45 seconds!!!

We sang and danced all over the kitchen. So, yes, we went to Bono's on Wednesday and Hunter got to combine his two loves: Jeff Gordon and Speed Racer with a new 1/64th diecast car.

What a fantastic accomplishment for him (and for me). I told him that I knew he could do it and that I will continue to push him when I know he needs it, so just get used to it. I love seeing him happy with himself.

Yea!!

Luann - Home school comic

YES!!! I love it! This was forwarded to me from one of our very "social" home-school groups.

School Daze

Home schooling is going pretty well for us so far. Hunter has told me on more than one occasion how much he is liking home school. He should. So far, we've gotten done with school work by 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning with an 8am starting time. Next week we'll add in a few more subjects, so it should take us until Noon to complete the work. Of course, that's not counting any outings we make.

On Monday we had a "Not Back to School" party with one of the home school groups and Hunter met another boy named Hunter, who is also 7 years old, and is also in 2nd grade. Both boys thought that was the coolest thing ever! Then yesterday we met up at our neighborhood park with another group and Hunter got to meet even more boys to play with.

I heard a moms yesterday talking about the "socialization" issue many have with home schoolers. The point was made that at "school" you meet and play with kids from your same age group and for the most part, the same socio-economic status (with district boundaries and all). In home school groups, you meet and play with kids of different ages and different socio-economic backgrounds. More likely what you'll meet and work with in the real world. I had not thought about it that way, but yeah, Hunter likes to play with older and younger kids as well as kids his age (and with the same name!).

Hadyn is just blending in with all of this so well. I realized today that she is actually going to be picking up on so much more than I would have been doing with her if Hunter were away at school all day. This morning I gave her a coloring book and her crayons at the table while we were doing school work. I had her repeat the color names back to me and then we would say them in Spanish. It was then I realized, I wouldn't be this detailed with her right now otherwise. And she seems to like having bubby around all the time, too.

Well, I'm being told it's lunchtime. And Backyardigans is almost over.