Rain, Anyone?

Now I understand why, way back when I was in school, teachers would make you put your heads on your desks and turn out the lights on rainy days. Somehow, the reaction of children to rainy days turns them into raging lunatics.

We had barely controlled chaos in the Darbonne Christian Academy today(DCA for short). Mind you, it has been raining pretty much non-stop for three days now, as we are in the crosshairs of Tropical Storm Tammy. She has unloaded around eight inches of rain so far, with another eight or nine expected.

The day began with the mama trying to help our black Lab, Jazzie, find a somewhat dry place to do her business — only to land us both in water up over our feet. We came back in, played the ordeal of “ripping the towel out of the hand of the one who is trying to dry you” game and settled everyone in their rightful places for breakfast.

We decided later, after chasing our poor dog all over the neighborhood that she would remain on our front porch during school where it was dry. This became a bit of a comedy as each child attempted to “keep Jazzie company” instead of doing their school work.

Bible class got abbreviated due to lack of attention and preoccupation with the dog and the ceaseless rain.

My oldest child, Libbyline, has decided she is going to find the lowest common denominator of learning and shoot for that. She is going through a bit of a slump with her curriculum and would be much happier just reading for hours at a time. I’m thinkin’ that might just be ok, if we can find some cool and interesting ways to make math fun and squeeze it in when she won’t notice it.

Sweetcheeks, on the other hand, would skip reading if she could, hates penmanship, tolerates spelling and English and would spend all of her time doing math if I wasn’t steering her day otherwise.

If we had it to do over in choosing our curriculum for this year, I think I would have gone with one company for everyone. This would be much easier to monitor for the teacher. As a new homeschooler, there are so many different choices that it gets mind boggling at times. In addition, I was so incredibly terrified at the idea of homeschooling before I started that I would have appreciated anybody who would have shoved a complete curriculum into my hands and said, “Do this.”

I gave Sweetcheeks a writing assignment today, and as she is in second grade this year we are learning how to use some basic tools to make writing and reading easier. I set her up with our brand new, handy dandy children’s dictionary–complete with illustrations. She comes to me and asks how to spell “bored”, which made me wonder what she was writing, but I just replied, “Begin looking in the “B’s” and you’ll find it. The next thing I know raucous laughter is erupting in the school room and she is sharing pictures of the human body with her siblings. They are in hysterics over the photos, but even more laughable to them is the fact that the word “booty” is on the same page as the word “bored.”

Interestingly enough, after this exercise–no one was bored anymore.

Ah, the unexpected funnies of the homeschooling experience. I am learning more every day about relaxing and letting go.