Kindergarten Tiny Talk

Tiny Talk Tuesday celebrates our children and their view of the world. They continually make us laugh and by recording their Tiny Talk we can focus on one of the many JOYS of parenting! If your kiddos made you laugh this week (don't they always), then feel free to share the humor! Check out more Tiny Talks with Mary.

Today was day 5 of kindergarten for That Other Kid and it started off rather shaky, but ended on a much better note. I love homeschooling for the flexibility it allows and the opportunity for me to watch my kids "get it"!! It is not for the wimpy, though! It is challenging and it does take time, but so does parenting...so you just have to decide what is best for you and your family.

As I said today started off shaky -- That Other Kid didn't want to do handwriting, but I have learned do the things that are most difficult first thing or it won't get done. He has learned to write all of his capital letters almost to perfection, just because he wanted to, but lower case is a real struggle for him so that is what we are working on. I handed him a handwriting paper and told him to copy the letters by following the dots and tracings offered. He looked at the paper (keep in mind it was the first assignment of the day) and promptly informed me that "I'm just too tired to do school today!" I knew this was his way of telling me "I don't want to do this", so I told him "Ok, I guess if you are too tired to do school today then you should go take a nap, instead of playing with your toys or doing school".

Amazingly he was energized enough to complete the assignment!! After doing his handwriting assignment we moved on to phonics worksheet. No problems there, when he paid attention! Next we moved onto math! Math is his favorite subject and he is really good at it (probably related, huh?). Kindergarten math was not going to be challenging enough for him so I bought 1st grade ABeka -- So I'm telling him how to do the assignment and he looks at it and says, "Oh, that's EASY PEASY!! Why is this (simple addition) so easy??" (In case you don't know "easy peasy" comes from Dragon Tales on PBS.) It cracked me up!

Next we moved onto Geography (he loves maps and identifying everything to where it is in relation to Texas). We got the US map out and the World Globe and I explained and named all the continents and oceans, then gave a little pop quiz! He is so intrigued by maps it's amazing! Everything relates back to traveling from Texas to "wherever" whether in car or by plane, so it was a fun exercise in distances!

Homeschooling at it's finest!! Gotta love learning!!