Seeing the fruits

This is our second year homeschooling K.Z. I have wanted and planned and dreamed about homeschooling since before I was married and now it is my reality. Last year I thought the men in white coats just might come and cart me off or at the very least Social Services would box up my kids, take back my mothering certificate and declare that if I continued to be their teacher they just might turn out, "dumb as rocks".

Well neither happened although I do have a straight jacket ready in the closet just in case. In Kindergarten we just had "those days" sometimes. Granted we had fantastic days too, but sometimes the hard ones stand in the forefront of your mind. The ones that send you off crying into a pillow.

Today I was blessed to see some of the fruits of my labor (and K.Z.'s). The days plans were foiled by a MOMS Club meeting I had to attend and I did not get home until lunch time. Both C'sa and Xena were sick so I needed to tend to them as well (thank the Lord for Mr. Clean's home office and that he happened to be in it today!). By the time lunch was done it was 1 pm and by then we are usually done with school for the day. I had not done my lesson plan for the week yet so I was clueless. Yet we were still blessed.

I started K.Z. on his math (kind of obvious where you left off when it is a workbook!) and went about trying to get the week's lessons mapped out while answering his questions. In the midst of this the girls were deposited into different rooms for rest time since they were not feeling well. I had run across a great spelling website thanks to another homeschooler on a message board. K.Z. wound up playing on it and loving it for 45 minutes allowing me some regroup time and allowing him to practice spelling words. He pounded out his Spelling Workout lesson afterward in no time and we were on to History.

Normally during history he listens and loves looking at the pictures in our Usborne book but today we were reading from A Child's History of the World. It's a fantastic book but pictures are rare and since I am raising a very boyish boy, the more pictures of war and the like the better. Yet today he sat quietly and listened and even perked up when the chapter was on King David (we had been talking about Homer and I do believe I actually saw his eyes literally glaze over for that).

After we did our language lesson he was to recite a poem we had been working on and he excitedly said it verbatim. This was after only practicing it for thee days previously and they were last week some time! Then he called his grandmother and recited it to her with full confidence!

While he sat chatting on the phone I watched him in amazement. He is getting it. The knowledge I am trying to give him he is absorbing and even seems to enjoy it. Being that he is a first born and quite a perfectionist, he is not one who likes to get things wrong or "mess up". Frustration for him can come easily if a new concept is just outside his grasps. But it is obvious that he is starting to understand the learning process (no son, you are not born knowing all that you need to) and the rewards for me could not be sweeter.