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success!

By Tara Zandra | June 9, 2008

Daisy had a play date today and it went very well. She didn’t ask to leave, didn’t call the child rude, and was happy to follow her around. The little girl is 10 months older than Daisy and I think that makes a difference as she has the maturity level to lead in play dates. I also loved talking with the mom as we haven’t previously sat down and had a good talk. As usual, I probably talked too much, but I swear she got lots of talking in too! LOL So hopefully we can do this again soon.

Once home I started feeling really rotten though. I thought lunch would help and was really wrong and had to go lie down for an hour. It wasn’t very restful since Daisy stayed with me and made a lot of noise, but it was better than nothing. We went to Tabi’s ballet as usual and then came back home to Chris. I made an easy dinner as that’s my norm in the warmer months and then did lessons with Tabitha. We just did math, spelling and ancient history. She was supposed to practice violin, but we both forgot until too late so that’s another day missed as she missed yesterday too. While she and I were doing lessons, Daisy sat and read one of her books to Chris and did rather well. She’s almost ready for the next set of Bob books but not quite. She still sounds out just about every word as opposed to retaining the fact that it’s the same word she just read on the previous page. I think perhaps we just need to be more diligent to make sure she reads each and every single day. But at times she’s resistent depending on her mood and I will not do anything to hamper her future reading. If she doesn’t want to read yet, then I will not force it, no good will come of that. Though I have no qualms teaching a 3 year old to read, I recognize the very real need to keep it as easy-breezy as possible. It absolutely has to be an enjoyable experience. So if she resists, I don’t push. But let me tell you, when she wants to she gets such joy out of reading her books. She is so proud of herself which in turn makes me proud :) It was especially nice that she read for Chris as usually I’m the one who gets to experience that joy with her.

I’m currently trying to find maps to go along with our ancient history program. We have a lovely wall map of the world, but it’s current which is beneficial in it’s own way, of course, but political maps to match what we’re reading about would also be helpful. I fell in love with a set designed for classrooms and was thinking they would set me back a couple hundred dollars- nope, try almost nine hundred dollars! I quickly tossed out that idea and here I am on my quest. I’ve narrowed it down to three different books/cd-roms, but I wish I could see them first to decide. I’m considering just buying all three, but that seems very wasteful.

I’m trying to wrap up Ancient Egypt so we can finally move on but we’ll be in it for another week or two. Then we do a couple chapters on various ancient civilizations before we enter Ancient Greece. I fully expect to stay there until after the conclusion of the Olympics so it should all tie in nicely. I must say, homeschooling has been wonderful for my appreciation of history. I have never enjoyed history as a subject in school- ever. It is so interesting to me now as a person who can choose to learn about it instead of being forced. And that’s really our overall goal of homeschooling- for out girls to feel that learning is interesting and wanting to seek out knowledge and having the tools to seek it out.

Topics: Life, Homeschooling |

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