Learning Time

They say that teaching is the best way to learn something. Well, I am definitely learning that teaching Lucas is the best way to learn about Lucas. You might think that spending day after day with someone would give you all the information you could possibly need about him/her. Perhaps it is the change in setting that is helping me learn more about my son.

The number one thing I have learned about Lucas: he is excellent at compartmentalizing! Did I learn this from actually teaching him? No. I learned this because I allow him to call me Ms Rummi during 'school hours' as long as he calls me mommy the rest of the day. Mommy woke up with Lucas, played with him, helped him get ready for school and walked him to the door. Then, Ms Rummi walked him into the school, showed him around the classroom and taught him the lessons. Of course, it was mommy who picked him up at the end of the day. However, it wasn't remembering to call me Ms Rummi or mommy at the right times that impressed me. It was his accuracy in referring to his mommy as mommy when speaking to Ms Rummi and vice versa.

"Hey, mommy said the same thing to me this morning!"
"Ms Rummi, I can't believe mommy forgot to pack me a snack!"
"Of course your hair looks brown in the picture, if it was black people would think you were my mom!"

With that said, the first two days of school were fantastic! The two days could not have been more different. Lucas and I are learning what it means for school to revolve around life.

Monday's schedule was very broken up by things outside of the house. Lucas had swim in the morning so we had to shorten our morning routine and head out. We had enough time to come home for cooking class, aka lunch, before heading out to pick up Lucas' bajema (my mom) from work. Believe it, or not, while there, he actually asked to try out a lesson on  time4learning.com. Even better, he enjoyed it and learned from it! He was able to explain to his dad and Sano Mama (my youngest brother) how boulders get washed with waves and turn into sand. Lucas wanted to continue with school but after T-Ball practice, we were done for the day.

I was disappointed that we only had "rug time" and a little science, but happy to see that Lucas thoroughly enjoyed his first day of school. Rug time includes reading a book aloud to him, singing a song, and the calendar chart. Even though the day wasn't perfect, I was less nervous about the thought of homeschooling. Lucas was clearly ready to step into his role of student and accept me as his teacher. Oddly enough, he was even better behaved for Ms Rummi than mommy! How does that work??

Day two was more what I would expect of school. We started with rug time, as I plan to do each day. Lucas learned about estimating jelly beans for math. We even had snack time! We combined gym and social studies by walking to our local school to vote. Our cooking class involved making egg bagel sandwiches. Then, I did a horrible deed by choosing to watch Sid the Science Kid for science. Don't worry, we followed up by experimenting with 'germs' and finding out how we can defeat the bad ones. Did I mention that the theme of the day was 'superheroes'? He even pretended to be Phoenix during karate :-)

Lucas chose Language Arts for the Time4Learning lesson. He LOVED it. His comment during the lesson, "I guess it wasn't a lesson, just a game." For this reason alone, I might continue with the program, past the two week trial period. It has been difficult getting the website to work, using Chrome, on his netbook. This is when I am thankful for my Software Engineer Genius husband :-) Anyway, the Language Arts program was simple but fabulous. The lessons were separated into chapters, which were broken into sections: phonemes, phonics, high frequency and story. Lucas believes that they were broken into games, games, games and reading :-) For the moment, I'm happy.

I'm mostly happy with Time4Learning and homeschooling, in general. Things aren't perfect but being the teacher and the mom, I get to adjust things as I see fit. He doesn't have to sit through a lesson on what the letter "L" looks like because "that's what we do in Kindergarten." We get to spend the appropriate time learning how to do the hand movements for "Itsy Bitsy Spider" even if no one else sees it as a lesson to be learned. We even get quick reviews of what Lucas has learned when he tells his dad about his day. Yes, his answer to "what did you do today?" is still "I don't remember." Yes, it is still frustrating but, at least, I know the answer!