Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Going to School

Today I helped out in Romania's class for a couple hours. Of course I'm not sure how much help I actually was. Egypt was with me. She did okay the first hour coloring at a table and reading. I mainly helped with crowd control and getting the kids quieted between transitions. Then the teacher gave me some blacklines to copy for an upcoming penguin unit and also lamenating some charts. Everything takes longer with a 3 year-old, but I was able to do some of the copying and all of the lamenating. Romania's teacher is so laid back, so it was no problem having Egypt with me. I just know I would have been more help without her there. Tomorrow they are having a little Valentine party and Romania will get to hand out his handmade cards (I replaced all the "I love Joy" ones).

In the time I was there, the did a warm up word search, calendar time, a math game using a clock, read a story and did some inferring and had 20 minutes of quiet reading. That took two hours! He's there 6 1/2 hours! I feel like all the work I was doing at home is just getting wasted because he has to wait for the other kids to catch up. When I did school with the boys, on average it took 2 1/2 hours (if everything went smoothly) and we got reading, writing, handwriting, history, math, Bible verse, Bible story, science and maybe an art project completed. I know he's having a good time and making friends, and really I couldn't homeschool right now because of all of Holland's doctor appointments. But part of me is thinking about all the time spent on transitions and getting quiet and getting your paper and pencil ready and stop talking again and listen to the directions for the 3rd time. I feel the need to have some one-on-one time with him on the weekend so he doesn't lose all he's learned at home.

No comments: