Schoolin'

 School has had less bumps and bruises but still has a few. This year has had significantly less pressure but I still catch myself putting expectations for our progress in my way. I am slowly learning, both by hard knocks and prayer, that I need to stop that.

I have noticed that the more relaxed I am, the better a day she has. But we always have to have that time when we begin that she gets frustrated and I find myself gritting my teeth some. I can tell that God is working on me though because I grit my teeth less now.

I also think that, in the last month, it has finally hit her that the more cooperative she is, the faster she is done for the day. We have enjoyed multiple days recently when we are done shortly after her lunch (which is usually around 11:30) giving her several hours of freedom to do whatever she wishes as opposed to my getting up from doing school with her so I can begin dinner.

We both enjoy those days.

She began spelling this semester. She has discovered and enjoys Find-A-Word worksheets. That works for me because I can leave her working on it when I need to leave for work (don't worry, her brother and sister are here with her).

One of her favorite things lately has been Math. She has been using Base 10 blocks and can work out just about any problem that gets thrown at her.

She has gotten very good at 'story problems' (word problems) and can do almost any of them without any guidance or help from me. In fact, I had a revelation the other day and realized that she has been learning basic (very basic) algebra.

She reads the story, translates it into a 'math sentence' and solves it -- often by changing it so that the numbers are both on the same side of the equal sign. The curriculum teaches her to use a question mark rather than 'a' or 'x' and, of course, she is only doing addition and subtraction. Nonetheless, she is currently quite the whiz at it and I am pretty impressed.

One of her fun handwriting assignments recently was something I found from Disney. I am curious to know if it will work. They gave an address for your child to send a letter to his/her favorite Disney character. Supposedly, they will receive a 'signed' photograph back from the character.

It was no surprise that she chose to write Anna from Frozen. We get to view that movie almost every Saturday without fail. She has the songs on her leappad and can sing along in parts to many of them.

I have to admit that the curriculum is pretty cool in that it provides a lot of these kind of activities. In this one she had to cut out houses, then arrange them in a way that would impact the forest and lake less.

She often gets to do paper dolls or other cut and play kinds of things.

And there you have it. Some of our school days are better than others. But they are good in the end.