The Teacher Becomes The Student

School lessons learned this week:

1. A single lesson in Saxon Math 1 takes about AN HOUR AND HALF to complete if you do EVERYTHING in the lesson... fill in the calendar, the weather graph, the number line. Count the coins. Write today's date - twice. Complete the number pattern. Do side one of the worksheet. Do the fact-drill sheet. Do the lesson with the pattern blocks and the master pattern-block sheet. Write your name on all those sheets (as if your teacher won't be able to tell which one is yours). HELLO! And we didn't even do Side 2 of the worksheet! Sheesh!

(Just fyi, I never do all the stuff in Saxon. It's just that on Thursday I found a little extra time to spend with dd, and I thought, let's just do the whole dang math lesson and see how far it'll go. Boy, was I shocked! It only confirms my decision to pick and choose, pick and choose. You can't let the lesson book be your master - YOU must master the LESSON BOOK. Can you imagine spending an hour and a half on every child every day? When would you get to any other subject?)

2. If you have a ds who labors to write, and if you relent after the first month of school and finally let him start dictating some of his writing assignments for you to type instead of agonizing over writing them out in his difficult cursive, you will be AMAZED at the results. Happy child, who composes almost effortlessly in complete sentences with extraordinary vocabulary. Happy mom, who is able to be finished with the school day before dinner time!

3. Mummies are a lot more interesting to a first-grader if you use a book with pictures.

4. Sometimes your children have hidden talents. It is a good thing to be surprised by them.

This week DH looked at me in shock and said, "What grade is (oldest ds) in?" I replied, "Seventh." He said, "Wow. I guess it's time."

I knew what he meant. For years, DH has said that when his kids get to seventh grade he is going to start them taking the SAT. Not because we have little budding Einsteins over here... no, just normal, grade-level kids in our house. DH just wants them to get very, very comfortable and very, very experienced in taking important tests. And it just dawned on DH that this is the year.

So we started talking, to each other and to ds, about what the test will require. We all know that there is much he has not learned and will not yet be prepared to answer. But when we started thinking through the big holes, the biggest one we saw was that he has had no geometry whatsoever. So DH decided to start working with ds on geometry. Nothing too formal. Just some basic principles. (DH is a math kind of guy, so he finds this fun. Why has he not been teaching math all this time, I want to know! Think of the needless tears and premature graying of hair!)

So ds has been learning a little geometry... and guess what. He likes it! He understands it! Who knew? I was encouraged... there's hope for all of us, yet. Not that ds has ever been "bad" at math. Just that for years it's been a struggle for me to teach and communicate with the (not-so) little guy on the subject. I don't think of him as a math whiz. But maybe I was underestimating him... maybe it was the teacher, not the student, who wasn't the whiz.

Happy schooling, y'all!