Free-for-all Friday

We’re having a free Friday after having the Thursday from Sheol, which made me think I’d rather be there than here. They are playing with Legos, creating. No tv. No computer. We will bake cookies later, play in the yard and clean up the garden. Maybe do an easy science experiment. Finish up some reading from yesterday but whatever we do it’s going to be SLOW and laid back!!

I’m not even really uptight with them, like I was last year. We do phonics and math usually daily, and Prima Latina once a week or whenever we feel like it plus we go over CC once a day, usually at meals. If Henry gets his phonics down pat on the first little worksheet that goes with the lesson, I don’t make him do the 2nd as busywork. I HATED that in school. He gets enough repetition from the lessons themselves. The math is way easy, we skip parts and I combine books to make things a little more challenging. He enjoys that. We play “spelling bee” with his spelling words; he stands behind a “podium” (bar stool) and has a microphone (a round wooden block) and we use the real spelling bee rules. He pretends to be different contestants. He loves it and likes to use silly accents. I mean, come on, what kind of a homeschool am I running without a SPELLING BEE?!  That Indian kid always wins.

One thing I’m struggling with, and I would like any and ALL advice from Classical Convo parents here, is how to better incorporate CC material into our day.  I feel like I’m doing well just to get phonics and math done with Henry and it’s a giant bonus if I get Rhys’ five minute phonics lesson done too.  We are lucky if I get them to go over the CC material without wanting to taser someone to get them to stay in the same room, let alone sit/stand relatively still and pay attention.  Last week I only got our CC material covered TWICE!!  HORRIBLE!  I started feeling like “Why am I spending our family’s hard-earned money on a program we aren’t being serious about?”  I am thinking (hoping?) that once Henry’s more independent – and he’s getting there – and we are done with building blocks like phonics, his writing assignments can focus on CC-specific material, right?  But that’s a few years off.  We tried a writing exercise yesterday.  Egad.  Need to work on this a bit too as we have time.

I know right now phonics, language/reading and math are the most pressing subjects and latin and CC should come at the bottom of the pile (Prima Latina being at the very bottom).  I’d just LOOOVE to mesh CC with these subject…somehow.  I guess that’s why we’re in the grammar phase and not the dialectic or rhetorical.  It will come in time, yes?  Advice?

Oh and I never, ever show pictures of myself except for the occasional video entry, but I got a haircut and a new moustache.  Here ’tis.