I Think I Grew Today

It was a Friday.

I was scheduled to spend the night away at a conference that evening. I planned on dropping my girls off at 4PM. My plan for the day was to get in a days worth of school while I tidied up some and packed for my night away.

I had planned on doing some preparing the night before but fell asleep on the couch so I wasn’t ahead of the game.  I decided to go back to sleep after baby Grace woke up for her 5AM meal. She went back to sleep around 7:30AM. I missed my opportunity to get ahead again.  I chose to sleep.

School went well.  Jazmine was prepared to learn. I chose an easy subject to begin our day with. Health. Well, that was not as easy as I thought it would have been. During the lesson, she got one of the comprehension questions incorrect.  I told her to go back through what she read to find where they talked about the question so she could find the correct answer.  That was a HUGE deal. She did well. It took her some time but she got it. I didn’t realize at the time that that was a comprehension lesson within the actual school lesson.

The health lesson was about respecting others and this section spoke specifically about respecting the United States Flag. Somehow, we got on the topic of culture and that led to talking about the Pilgrims, and that lead to talking about Native Americans. We had a mini history lesson within health!  It was great learning but that simple subject, which I projected to take all of 20 minutes and that was being generous, took an entire hour!

Next was math. Again, she did well.  To help keep Jaz focused and not day dream, I used a timer and gave her 15 minutes to do the front side and 15 minutes to do the back side of her math sheet.  She already understood the concept so it was just a matter of her staying focused to do it. She finished and I went to check it. By that time, I was tired. I already didn’t want to have school that day because I was already tired but since this weeks school was sporadic, I didn’t think we could afford a “parent-teacher conference”.  So, I pressed on. Between the combination health, history, comprehension lesson, attending to baby Grace, washing clothes, packing the girls up, and tidying up, I was worn out! I still hadn’t packed for myself yet! I went to check her math and just totally bombed.  I misread a math problem on the paper and tried to tell her it was incorrect when it actually was correct.  To make the matter worse, even though I misread the problem, she verbally answered the problem correctly as I was saying it out loud. That is when I called it quits.

I said, “That’s it Jazmine. That is all Mommy can do for the day.  I will leave this out and ask Daddy to check it when he gets home tonight.” If I had tried to “push ahead”, no more real learning would have occurred.  The only meaningful thing remembered from that day would have been Mommy’s frustration and my off spring thinking she had done wrong.

It was hard for my linear thinking mind to not complete a plan or task that I began and expected to complete in the time frame I set for it but I am OH SO VERY GLAD I stopped.

I only wish all the significant learning that happened today could be quantified for our homeschool review…