School!

We have been homeschooling for about 6 weeks now, and I have neglected to post at all about how things are going.

They are going fine.

It is just kindergarten, and I haven't been super aggressive yet because it has still been nice out etc. Well, nice out until this week.

All I can say is this: Deacon is an interesting child.

He loves the first Boxcar children book we read.

He also loves The Cricket in Times Square that we are reading now.

He likes working on his printing. I frequently have to try to convince him that attaching his capital letters to each other in a "bubble letter" format does not mean that he is writing cursive.

He enjoys his math, but it is maybe somewhat difficult for him. I can see his little brain getting tired and encourage him to stop for the day, but he likes to keep going.

His favorite subjects are literature and history/geography.

He is fascinated by the story "Issun Boshi: One-Inch Boy" which is a Japanese folktale. He also likes the "Dry Bones" song and I have to sing it over and over. We read the account in Ezekiel and he was quite interested.

We have been reading different biographies of people from early American history. Clara Barton is his favorite, although he does have an appreciation for George Washington Carver's invention of Peanut Butter.

Today we read about the Code of Hammurabi. He was a ruler of Babylon and instituted laws. We talked about laws and whether or not they are important. (I agreed with Hammurabi and said that they were, in case you were wondering). The section of the book talks about how he recognized the need for justice, but that some of his laws were harsh or unfair. For example: he had a law that if a doctor operated on a patient and the patient died, then the Doctor's hand should be chopped off.

A couple of hours later we were eating lunch. Deacon said (out of the blue), "So the ruler we learned about today said that if a Doctor xrays a patient and they die his hand should be cut off. That is a bad law. Stopping at stop signs is a good law. Right, Mom?"

I got a little worried that I would have one of those kids who doesn't know basic, practical skills but does know the intricacies of the Code of Hammurabi.

So when Noah got home I gave Deke a shoe tying lesson, slapped some knee pads on him to match Noah's and sent him out into the cold to be his dad's deck assistant.

This accomplished 2 things:
1. Practical life skills for Deacon
2. Me getting to stay inside

All in all, it was a successful day in Kindergarten.