Legal Torture

Ok- so we all know it was bound to happen sooner or later. Well, apparently it was sooner than later. All of you fellow homeschooling moms know what I'm about to say. I became the "mean" mom today. Here is just a taste of some of the things Connor told me this morning:

"I can't do this!"
"We never did anything this hard in school!"
"I don't want to do this!"

So what did I do? I told him to put on his big boy panties and get going. And then I took out the camera and tried to record his complaints :)

So after this "happy" meltdown, (it was only about 5 minutes, but it allowed me to throw in a load of laundry) we got back to what we needed to do. Here was the finished project:

Yeah, that's right. I asked him to color a picture and then label the colors in Spanish. (The answer key for all of the colors was on the BACKSIDE of the paper!) How could I ever be so mean?

So it was this morning that I realized another of the many benefits of homeschooling. Literally it is one of the only legal forms of torture for parents. Think about it: the state REQUIRES that my kids get an education. I get to decide what form it takes ;)

But alas, we had a great day, albeit, it was a LONG day.

In math, Connor worked on parts and wholes some more. This time he had to split wholes into three parts. It was a pretty tough concept but he ended up getting it and doing it all by HIMSELF. One of the other awesome things about homeschooling is you will always know when your kid actually understands a concept. There isn't any cheating or waiting for some other kid in class to give the answer.  YOU'RE IT BABY!

Amelia didn't have a great day this morning. She tried finding squares around the room. Here's how far she got:

And then she gave up and moved on to something else :)

We got scripture study in just before heading out to story time at the library. Here's a little taste of Amelia "getting jiggy with it:"

We spent the afternoon putting together this United States map puzzle:

I'm going to use it for the next few weeks as we study the United States and learn about maps and direction. Here's the finished product (all 60 pieces put together by my little man):

The BEST part about this lesson: we got to talk about parts and wholes again! I love it when an unplanned lesson just falls into your lap! Connor got to see that many times, the concepts we study are cross-curricular.

The kids expressed interest in writing a story today. So we did a little planning using yesterday's lesson focus:

Connor dictated it to me (while Amelia protested the course of events and characters). I'll have to post the finished product tomorrow because I forgot to bring it with me so I could copy it. But here was the final board outline:

As you can see, quite a bit got changed from the original concept. But I explained to Connor that that is OK. Writers have to edit and change things when needed or wanted. He told me they learned about reading everything twice in school.

We finished the day off with soccer practice. Connor LOVES it so much! His first game is on Saturday. Can't wait!

 (That's him in red playing goalie)

So as Ms. Scarlet would say, "Tomorrow is another day!"