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Monday, May 19, 2008

Day One Blueberries for Sal

Great book, not so great day. I found this great Lapbook project pak from In The Hands Of A Child. It uses Blueberries for Sal as it's core while studying blueberries, Maine, and bears. Today, we started off reading the book on the couch. Jadon became stubborn and completely undone at the idea of reading outside the classroom. He wouldn't cooperate a lick, and then the stubborn parent child show down began! I think I won. At least, that's my story and I am sticking to it! He might tell you otherwise.
Anyhow, I sent him to his room when he said he didn't like school anymore and was done. Instead, I allowed Julia to take his place, who by the way loved the book and seemed to be more ready for school than I might have thought. Jonah and Julia, after reading the book, got to make blueberry smoothies all by themselves. Jadon was appalled that I wouldn't let him join. I explained to him that he didn't get to pick and choose what he wanted to participate in, and that it was all or nothing. He was very sad. He promises to cooperate better tomorrow. We'll see.
I did let him start back up after we were done with our smoothies, and things went much better from then on out. Of course, the rest of school was done in the classroom where he wanted to be in the first place. We made a cycle of blueberries wheel that shows the seed and then the various stages leading to a full bush of blueberries. Then we made a library card for the book and talked about what Titles, Authors, Illustrators, and Copyright Dates were. I think he gets it. I will quiz him later. At the end, he did two steps toward building a tractor using an IKEA erector set type thing Grandma and Grandpa Mair got him for his birthday. He builds the stuff using pictures to guide him. He did remarkably well.
Informal schooling, we tended to the garden, and I thinned out some corn and sunflowers and showed him the plant and roots growing out of the corn. We picked and ate a couple of strawberries, remembering how they were just flowers a few days ago. We ate a very premature carrot. We also ate some parsley, dill, and basil.
I bought the kids a pretend kitchen from Once Upon A Child. I do hope the kitchen was never once upon a child. :-o Anyhow, it has a fake shopping list painted on the fridge door. I told Jadon if he could read all the stuff on the list on his own, I would give him a really good treat of some sort. He has read one word on his own so far, milk.
Hopefully he will muster up the motivation to read the rest. I know he can, but he doesn't want to. In his own good time, that's his motto!
I will post pictures of what we've done so far in his Blueberries for Sal Lapbook at the end of this week.
What I learned today:
This too shall pass. In the heat of the moment things can be very frustrating, but we got through it, and ultimately I think I made the right decision in sending him off to his room, but at first, I was very discouraged and thought for a minute, "I can't homeschool this kid, he's impossible". That's when God stepped in and said "Yes you can and here's how, allow Me." Thank You Lord as I couldn't do this without You.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bleuets are my favorite food. Grandma & I have a large wooden sign over the door to our kitchen 'BLUEBERRIES'. Jennifer, sounds like you are having fun & making progress, all at the same time. Sorry I missed the smoothie, especially with all the twins love blended in...

Love, Grandpa