Magic and Mayhem

The other day I joked with Victoria “What, I have to give you life AND feed you?”. That’s not all I have to do, it turns out! I have to school these people too.

Real school. No more of that relaxed, fun, child-led business. Oh no. They want school, and lots of it.

Starting at 8 a.m.

With homework.

And pop quizzes.

Oy.

Today we did our first full day of an honest-to-goodness math curriculum. I had a complete, like-new set of A Beka 5th grade, which just happens to be Victoria’s grade. I asked her last night if she’d like to use it and she surprised me by saying heck yes.

We are really not A Beka kinda people. I am the kind of homeschool mom who does math by tossing chocolate chips into my children’s mouths when they get the right answer, the kind to write out story problems involving six-legged cats who wear hats, the kind who give the kids a giant tub of change and let them play store and develop a banking system with it.

So of course my kids have to show their independece by wanting to do a full-on, conventional math curriculum.

Shrug.

I got the thing for basically free from the used bookstore where I traded a bajillion books a week. It’s kind of fun to use this foreign, scripted, teacher kinda thing. It’s like playing dress-up! Maybe I’ll call roll tomorrow or buy a name plate…

Anyway, today Victoria did lesson 2 of A Beka, the first half of a Krampf science experiment (drat, no rubbing alcohol) and PE (thanks Mr. President for that fitness challenge thing). Meanwhile, Anna did 3 pages in her generic math workbook, wrote a paragraph about fairies and then corrected her spelling and grammar errors, did PE, practiced cursive, slipped me a sweet letter in cursive about what a great teacher I am, and greatly annoyed her sister. Jack and Alex went off with Daddy to gather supplies for Daddy’s Big Important Conference tomorrow.

Oh yeah, Daryl has been asked to help teach people about the atlatl at the “Who Were the First Humans?” Nobel Conference.

Did you catch the Nobel part???! Isn’t that cool?!

We’re going to explore St. Peter and fawn over Daddy for a couple of days.

I wonder if the kids are going to throw a fit about missing school.