Hellacious Weeks 5 and 6 of Home "School"

Something broke last week.  We lost our groove.  T is punching his brother.  PJ is asking to go to school.  T is getting anxiety over thinking about a family trip mid-October.  Just shoot me.

We started off the week last week with optimism and some drive.  They each took a turn on Dreambox for math.  T was struggling with sorting 10s and 1s and the all the possible combinations of that.  I reached for the base 10 blocks and showed him how they could group.  He resisted even looking at the blocks, and then conceded that it made sense.  Whenever he hits something that he doesn't know, the boy freezes up!  Ugh.

PJ asks to play math games on the tablet and the next thing I know he's playing Angry Birds.  Busted.  He's grounded from screens for the day.

By mid-week we were bustling around getting ready for PJ's 6th birthday party.  He just wanted to have his few friends over for a "messy party" that consisted of a dinosaur dig (sand+plaster of paris), silly string fight, shaving cream play, cornstarch and water and flour and water stations, and a slime center.  It was messy.  His cake was a custom Mommy Creation - Minecraft.  He loved it.

I also had to use up those beautiful apples we got up in the mountains the week before.  While I peeled and sliced, PJ searched for recipes on the tablet and read me the ingredients.  He learned cup, tsp, tbsp.  I was quite impressed he had the patience to review it with me.

The T Man was assigned a fact-finding mission.  I asked him to choose a country and find five interesting facts about it on Google.  First he chose Asia - and I explained to him that Asia is not a country and we walked over to the World Map on the classroom wall for a quick review.  I think he was embarassed, but isn't this what "school" is for?   In the end he chose Brazil, specifically Rio.  Here are his findings: 



 

We did this video, because T really hates writing anything down.  This is apparently pretty typical for gifted boys.  Even so, during the last few weeks, I have been able to coerce some writing out of him.  He tries to get my requirement from 5 sentences down to three.  This week's writing wasn't from one of the prompts in his book.  He just wrote some lines down on the back of the book and wrote:

"One day i was attacked by a ... taco.  It tried to eat me. {wait shouldn't it be the other way round?}  lucky me I had a knife. {I don't know why}  Then I sliced him (or "it") in half.  I had defeated him.  

the end 

Note: The braces were conversation bubbles on the opposite page.  

I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified.

PJ produced this little beauty today.  He flipped through his First Grade workbook after studying sentence formation, "naming words" and periods, did a little math and decided that counting the dots and decoding the colors was an awesome idea.  Ohhhhkay, I'll go with that.  T would have cried if I asked him to color anything at age 6!!

    

This week PJ and I moved onto double digit addition.  There weren't any tears because we quit 12 problems into the lesson, after seeing the horrified expression that came over PJ's face at the problem:  23 + 37.  We'll see those again in a day or two.  Ha ha

 

PJ has asked several times to go back to school but I refuse to put him into the local LAUSD school just out of sheer fear of what could happen.  (In case you are wondering why, you can check out the earlier blog on our experience with the school system here).  I was feeling so down about our effort to homeschool, I did actually try to place him in his best friend's school this week, as much as I didn't think it was a great idea for the whole family.  But I was turned down for financial aid and I don't think it's SUCH a great idea to turn our lives upside down trying to pull the money together for it each month.  These are the days I shake my head and wish we actually had a CHOICE of where we put our tax money.  And I question - if we aren't using this money for my kid's spot in school, where does it go?  And then I move on.

 

It hasn't been easy to motivate these two lately and I am wishing they were more self-motivated to do anything other than play video games. There are days I want to just want to look at job ads. But maybe tomorrow will be better?   I am ever hopeful.  I am not afraid to change my strategy.  And I also happen to really like my boys, so that helps. A lot.  

 

Maybe I Am a Little Bit Nuts

LAUSD's start date is August 14th, just a few days away.  We were supposed to be going to the local Gifted Magnet today for Orientation, but instead, I am cleaning house and doing laundry while the boys systematically destroy all my efforts at my heels.

The definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over

and expecting a different result.

T and P's work of Art

That is what being home with two little boys is all about.  "Sure honey, try out the new paints and all the cool tools!"  15 minutes later there is paint all over the classroom tables, each of the 15 tools is covered and the boys are grinning ear to ear, holding up their hands, "Look mom, it's like I have gloves on!"  Sigh.  I thought we were over this about 3 years ago.  Apparently not.

So while all the new families are welcomed to the school, I continue to pursue my own private insanity.  And the question you may be asking is why are you doing this to yourself?

The answer, while not simple, is easy for me.  I refuse to put my children into the care of people who do not understand them, who have rigid rules (such as lining up with their hands behind their backs, or not being allowed to talk to each other during their 20 minute lunch) and who have little patience for the kids that just don't fit in their "box."  They expect small children to sit for long periods of time, quietly listening, reading or writing in their journals.  Their box has straight edges and each child must fit in neatly or they become a problem.

There is nothing neat about my children, nothing "straight" about them.  They are not quiet and complacent.  They do not accept everything an elder tells them, and in fact, will tell an elder a thing or two.  They often do not accept NO as an answer without a highly dramatic response.  My kids are messy.

At 5 1/2 my eldest began Kindergarten a month late in our local LAUSD school.  We had just relocated to Cali after 12 years in Seattle.  It was, shall we say, quite an adjustment going from a white-bread to a melting pot community.  "T" didn't know that the little boy on the playground was speaking Spanish; that he did not know how to speak English.  But the classroom was nice, the kids sweet and the teacher, a buxom blond with bright blue eyes, seemed like a good fit.  That is, until I was able to volunteer in the class.

I witnessed the teacher yelling at the kids across the room.  She also had moments where she made fun of them.  She was a drill sargent with a stick (literally!) running them through their reading lessons.  One day, when reading a story to the kids about weather, I sat at the back of the rainbow rug and listened.  The pretty picture book explained how water evaporated into the sky and came down in the form of rain or snow.  When my little guy raised his hand and said "Did you know, that the water we drink today is actually dinosaur spit?"  She rolled her eyes, took a deep breath and told my 5-year-old that he had better "check his facts" and moved on.  That was heartbreaking for me - the lady who was doing science experiments with him months before and read that little factoid to him. (pardon my angry sarcasm here, but how DARE he make such a connection and interrupt her curriculum??)

My little son, a boy who has loved books, puzzles, and logging onto NickJr.com at age 3, was not happy.  Soon, he was pressing his pencils into his shirts and cutting them with sissors.  He refused to do coloring and would scribble black crayon across the sheet.  He became the Rebel.  It wasn't long before I had a conference where I was told he was very bright, but that he would "be a hoodlum one day" if I didn't do something now.  Later, I was told that I needed the 'Super Nanny.'  (No, I'm not kidding!!)

So for the 1st grade, we tried the local Math/Science & Technology Magnet.  Fail.  He was so bored, he "compulsively" drew on his desk (which I discovered was the entire town of Spongebob's Bikini Bottom) and the teacher was convinced he had ADHD.  Sigh.  By February of that year, I had him at Neurologists offices, trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with him.  He became angry and, now I realized, depressed.  He was basically anti-social, kicking rocks on the playground, going to the nurse every morning, and he had no friends at all.  It was the saddest thing I ever saw.

And I asked the school to test him:  Oh! Congratulations! Your child is "Highly Gifted!"  (What does THAT mean exactly?)

School #3, a brand new hybrid homeschool/2-day-a-week Charter.  Fail.  My genius IQ child was bored, didn't fit in, and developed a case of anxiety that had him puking his guts out into a trashcan in the office by the time the winter holiday rolled around.

We are done with school.  Our last straw was the Gifted Magnet's Principal telling me that he would not fit in, that the children who attend this school are "Academic Achievers" and enjoy the stress of a rigorous curriculum.  There is not a lot of accomodation for children with "issues" and they have one boy similar to my T, and he is a handful.  Translation:  There is only one other child in the 3rd grade that is actually "gifted" in the way that my child is.  Grrreat.

So today we have painted, camped out in the closet with our stuffed animals, flashlights and snacks, we created an air-conditioned shirt by placing a wet t-shirt into the freezer, and we started a mold experiment with a slice of bread placed in a baggie in a warm location.  (None of these were my idea, by the way).  And it is only the noon hour on a Summer day. "School" will not start for us until at least September 15th, but I'm pretty sure there is some amazing learning going on any way.