OK, I’m not retiring

After further consideration, a small compliment isn’t the pinnacle of my teaching career; it’s a major step but not the pinnacle. We’ll call the pinnacle when my girls are multiple grades ahead of their classmates in math and American history. So, Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s back to math we go.

Lessons are becoming easier; less fussing from Sara before and during. Also noticed that she isn’t writing “NO MATH” in her journal anymore (we celebrate small victories!). We are still doing 2 lessons per day 7 days per week. I know that we will never do all of them but if we miss a few lessons for some reason I’m not too concerned because 10 lessons a week is plenty. I’m also noticing that Sara is able to engage with lessons much longer than she used to. Lessons used to be 10 minutes before she was done, now we are up to around 20 minutes and we can hit 6-7 exercises in that time.

I’m finding the recipe that works for Sara is a couple warm up lessons (flash cards, 10 square, worksheet) that we do repetitively so they are easy for her. We then review the prior lesson activities and introduce a new lesson. I may switch the lesson to be second so she doesn’t tire out learning something new.

My business partners wife (who is a homeschooler) gave me the book Logic Links (the picture for this post). You order colored circles to answer a logic question. For example, the green circle only touches the white circle and is directly to the right of the blue circle. She thinks it’s so much fun that I actually bribed her with it yesterday. I told her that if she did her lessons, we could do the Logic Links book, she dropped what she was doing and sat down at the lesson table.

The million-board (aka mil-board) is working fabulously for naming large numbers, number placement and addition of large numbers. We just learned how to carry numbers in addition…easy!

I’m working on a new geometry board and fractions board, may be my best creations yet. I’ll share when I’m done.

My relevant quote for today is Proverbs 10:4 “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.”