But it’s Saturday!

Yes, I know it’s not fair! (What a mean teacher I am.) I had my student do math and language arts on a Saturday. I asked the school, in the letter I wrote to the principal, to give me concrete topics and subtopics JD was taught in both math and language arts from Aug - Dec 2009. But unfortunately I have not heard from them yet. I was just given a website to go to in order to figure our what they are required to teach with no timeline to follow. Ex: If Harnett county taught multiplication in Aug and we moved to Cumberland county they might teach him multiplication again in Sept because there is not a specified time line to teach each topic. (Um, thanks…for nothing!) It would be different if I had any communication with his public school principal or former teacher so we wouldn’t duplicate lessons (like I said!) in the letter to the principal. So JD and I have to start at the beginning of math and language arts to make sure he knows it all before his test in May-June. So really, we are crunching one full school year into only five months.

We started with language arts since he begged for it three times this past week. (He was not happy about “word herd” today. Gee I wonder why?) He was somewhat attentive today but quickly became uncooperative when he missed one question of eight. This affected his self esteem and made him forecast that he’ll do poorly in math too. He now knows what “homophones” are. (Ex: hoarse/horse and whale/wail.) He did two lessons on homophones today. Sadly, he rushed through them so quickly his quiz scores reflected that. (Hey another teaching moment.) Take your time.

In math today we did a review lesson on exponents and then worked on dividing two numbers into three numbers. He was not happy about missing one question on one of the two tests, but happy to have the rest of his day to himself.

I am trying to keep with the public school schedule of days on vs. days off. Unfortunately, even though Monday is Martin Luther King day and the public school kids are out of school we will still be in school because we took January 4th as a vacation day. Christmas and New Years break ended January 4th for public school kids. Friday is a half day for public school students so we will only do devotion, reading, math, and language arts.

Tonight we all went to the church for the annual “Chili cook off.” Jeff won last year so the stakes were pretty high this year to remain the “Champion.” And the winner was…JEFF! There were eight chili’s to judge and I honestly liked his the best. (So did 16 other people.) Way to go babe! (It cost $5.00 to judge and all of the funds were in support of the Lottie Moon foundation.)