A Special Part of Me

Well it's the end of the year and I start to doubt myself as to whether or not I covered enough, did enough or am good enough to be teaching these beautiful children. But then, we had an AMAZING day! I have a child who struggles with certain aspects of learning. We have not had her tested yet, but we believe it is some sort of dyslexia. She has been struggling with multiplication and memorizing her facts. We have tried pretty much everything and I finally just gave her the table and had her look it up and we moved on to double digits. This child is so intelligent that she can't just learn something, she has to understand every aspect of it. She has to take it to such a level that sometimes I wonder who is really teaching whom? The other day was not a good day and as her frustration level grew, so did mine. Pretty soon I realized that we were not going to accomplish anything, so I closed the book, took her hands in mine and looked her in the eyes and we made a pact.
We have decided that when she reaches her frustration level (even if it's just while I give directions), then we will come back to that lesson at another time. Well...it worked!!! The next day we tried again, with patience, and it worked. It took awhile, but she understood. I love our math curriculum because it is very manipulative and hands on. She was able to understand how when you multiply double digits, you can automatically start counting hundreds. It was wonderful. She felt good about herself and I realized that no other teacher would care for her the way I do because she is a part of me, a very special part of me.

coming to an end and beginning anew

We are finishing up with formal lessons for the year and ordering curriculum for next year. It is an exciting time around here. Faith has finished several subjects and is now doubling up on what she has left so that she will finish within the next few weeks. Hope and Charity have also been trying to wrap up some formal subjects, but will continue some of them through the summer. We don't want to have to reinvent the wheel next fall, so we'll continue with math facts and our wonderful reading book. Writing Road to Reading. http://spalding.org/store/instructional.php

I am really looking forward to our new method of learning next year. After spending six months researching a new approach, I find that it is so very similar to what I learned in college. Why did I not think of this sooner? Who knows? All in His time...(I keep telling myself that). We will be changing our way of doing things and following a kind of Charlotte Mason/mom invented kind of approach. We will tweak it all to make it work for our family, so that we will learn as we live. I am a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of gal and so I will have to be diligent about sticking to a guide so that we cover everything, but that is what I like so much about this approach. There is always plenty of time for exploring in the afternoons. As long as we get Love on our time table, everything should work out just fine. HAH! He is ready to start learning right along with us and loves to color all that he can. Including his body!

I can't wait for the boxes to start arriving. It's one of my favorite things and makes me feel like Christmas morning. The girls and I tear into everything and devour it all right then and there. I love to see their faces and hear what they have to say about what the new school year will bring and what they would like to study.

This next year for history, we will be studying American History for all three girls. Faith will deepen what she learned in 5th grade and Hope and Charity will work on their own levels as well. We will use this for our vocab and spelling throughout the year. We are also switching our language to use Primary Language Lessons for Charity, Intermediate Language Lessons for Hope and Lingua Mater: Language Lessons from Literature for Faith. These books bring all of Charlotte Mason's methods together for daily language in a beautiful way. Through picture studies, narrations, dictations they are all pulled together in these books for each level. We are also beginning our own art studies and music appreciation. After researching prints from different artists, I decided calendars fit our budget best, so I hit calendars.com today and bought enough for free shipping! We will be studying Mary Cassatt, van Gogh, Monet, Renoir and da Vinci. We will also be studying nine different composers and learning about their lives as well. For science we will pick different subjects to work on together and separate. We will study life science, biology and some physical science as well. We will also throw in whatever unit studies we want to as we go along. For math we are sticking with Math U See as we really love the way he teaches the concept, not just the shortcut for learning the tricks.

Through all of this the most important message that we want to teach our children is our faith. The beauty of the Catholic Church and Jesus' gifts of the sacraments are such a blessing to all of us. A year from now, our Charity will celebrate her first communion and so this second grade year will be one filled with exploring and learning so many things as she prepares to receive her Lord and Savior for the first time. We are blessed to have the gift that Jesus left us the night he instituted the Eucharist. The love that He felt for us needs to be spread around to all that we meet. "All are to be welcomed as Christ" St. Benedict. So above all as we journey down this new year and new path, may we treat all as Jesus treats us, with Faith, Hope, Charity and Love!