It was a tough day

Confucius says, “He who goes to bed late for three days straight, will wake up tired!” (Ok, Confucius didn’t say that, I did.) I had a hard time getting JD up this morning. When I finally did he was tired and mouthy. That only perpetuated throughout the entire day. The devotion went good. The 30 minute reading was pushed into the homework stack. We attempted to do multiplication next. I bought some sidewalk chalk so we could do math on the garage floor instead of on paper. I thought this would make it fun. It was until JD got mouthy with me. I reached over very quickly, but somewhat gentle, and popped his mouth. (Easy grandparents…he never even said ouch. Instead he wiped the chalk from his lips.) But my point was made! We left the garage floor and moved back to graph paper. Jeff told me how to teach JD an easier method to multiplication. So I taught that to JD. He only had five problems to solve and he found every distraction he could before tackling only two in ½ hour. This too turned into homework.

Next, we did additional research on the major deserts of the world. This took a long time to accomplish. The first instruction on the worksheet was to “draw a dark line around the Arabian Peninsula.” The question I had to myself and out loud was, “Is a peninsula a border or a perimeter?” (I’m a home school mom, with so-so grades in High School, not a genius.) After about 45 minutes of research we finally found the answer we were looking for. (No thanks to Google!) I read the second instruction on the page and it said, “Label each of the following countries of the Arabian Peninsula” and it listed all of them. (Frustrating!) But now he can tell you about all the major deserts of the world.

Next, we did some more solar system research and trivia. Apparently, Jupiter has 66 moons (not 16), Saturn has 61 moons (not 18), Uranus has 27 moons (not 15), Neptune has 13 moons (not 8), and Pluto has 3 moons (not just one.) That’s what happens with the internet. You may or may not get accurate information. After thorough research the number of moons has been confirmed. Additionally, today we wrote down all five dwarf planets. What we found interesting was one of them is named “MakeMake.” (I can’t make this stuff up.) We also wrote down the number of days, months, or years all the planets took to revolve around the sun.

I had to make another run to the Pope AFB pharmacy for Jeff. Our day was already EXTREMELY long but we ran our errand and got back in time to accomplish the English lesson. During our errand JD read for thirty minutes. Now I’ve learned to pick my battles with JD and I certainly did not want to suffer through a writing assignment before football practice. So today we did a study on “Intro to Literature.” Tomorrow we will make a poster of a tree and label each branch with the different kinds on Genre as well as what type of literature might fit into that category.

Football practice went well this evening. JD still seems timid to hit or be hit but he is trying and still remains focused. Funny thing (not really but) happened at practice. I was using my calculator to grade JD’s math homework he did in the car on the way. Turns out Jeff’s method of teaching multiplication was wrong. I dreaded telling JD I messed up. He wasn’t too mad. He just said, “I’m so confused.” (Oh drat!)

P.S. Please continue to pray for Faith Christian Academy and all of it’s endeavors.