It seems like our school days are just now starting. Because of fatigue, morning sickness, being incredibly disorganized, forgetful, tired, unmotivated, headaches, and other things, our official school year is just now rolling! It is the end of October. It is not that we have not been doing school. Just not regularly, or consistent, or anything else of that sort. We might have one official day of school per week. We have tried to do history and science in a more consistent fashion. But if I was to rate my teaching on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be around a 2. Far less than satisfactory. I had high ambitions, big dreams, lots of ideas, and even some very good plans when we started in September. There is so much I wanted to cover this year. Intensive ancient history with a strong Biblical foundation, lots of scripture memorization, more Bible study in teh mornings, science, more arts and crafts, geography through unit studies, lots of good read aloud books, artist and composer studies like we did last year, Latin, as well as a thorough covering of the basics. You know, the "3 R's" which these days is at least 4-5 subjects, including spelling, handwriting, grammar, math, creative writing, phonics, etc. As plans failed to happen, as my fatigue only worsened over time, and things didn't work out, I yielded. I told the Lord that I would just try to at least teach the basics, maybe a
little history and science.
Then Bethany had major episodes with her math and I gave up teaching her math for a while. I told her when she wanted to learn, I would teach her. Shortly after THAT the Lord called to my attention her problem with reading, and that I needed to invest more time with her in that. She reads, but cannot/will not sound anything out. She will guess the word as to what it "looks" like, or skip it altogether. So her reading and spelling are both on a first/second grade level. I have concluded over time that she does have a form of dyslexia. Not surprising, since her father has it too. She has had a lot of phonics instruction, but she needs an intensive approach that I did/do not have the time or energy or know how to give her. Between her math and her reading/phonetic/spelling problems, she is going to be needing a lot of extra attention. Right now I am praying about what to do. Since I learned to read quite easily, and language, spelling, writing, etc all were natural for me, I have difficulty identifying with HER difficulty and knowing how to help her. There are programs available, but either cost too much or require too much time of me the teacher. I know the Lord has the answers. For now, Bethany is pretty much just doing reading, phonics, spelling, and handwriting as well as math.
Our day does not start until at least 10:00, and often the girls have lots of free time in the afternoon as well. So they have been left to their imaginations much of the time. They "sew" clothes for their Calico Critters, play with their Calico Critters, build things with legos and pattern blocks, get in fights, listen to stories on CDs, draw, color, and sometimes play with their cousins outside.
Life rarely goes as planned for me, so I have almost given up planning anything. However, that doesn't help either. As the saying goes "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail". I do think we get even less done if I plan nothing at all. All that benefits from that approach is my conscience. I don't feel bad for not getting things done if I never planned to do anything in the first place!
So, I will leave it at that for now. We are starting to get into the swing of things again, and finding a pace and method that we can actually carry out. I'm hoping that once my thyroid imbalance is corrected, my sleeping habits will improve, energy will pick up, and headaches will diminish. And school will happen consistently again!
