School, Schedules, and Reading Aloud

According to the weather channel, it's 104 outside right now. (It's 108, according to the bank display.) But what's the humidity? Nobody is willing to say. Is it because they think we'll all become despondent and burrow into the earth until Halloween? (Because we have been thinking about it, already.)

We're back in full-on school mode now. It's good to be back. It's good to have routine. The children didn't forget *all* of their lessons. James needs a bit of review with math, and John needs a bit of review with phonics. Otherwise, though, they're pretty well on board.

I did panic on two books, because we aren't quite finished with them yet and I know we've been diligent about our studies up until the last month... and you know the monologue that follows:

what are we doing wrong? How did this happen? How can we be so far from done when it's time for the next year?!?! Am I just not teaching the material? Are they simply not mastering it and so we are not moving on?

Then I remembered: we didn't start those two books until November of last year. So, that would put us, oh, right about where we are. Ah. Yes. Time for more coffee.

This year looks a lot like last year, with the exception of the next level books.

Monday - Thursday, regular school.
Fridays - science and history project days.

Daily Work:
Latin
Math
Reading (Includes History, Science, Literature and Free Reading)
Writing (James is going to hate this part, but hopefully he'll survive.)
Narration

Mon, Wed:
History

Tues, Thurs:
Science

James and John will both have spelling 1x a week. They don't seem to need much more of that just now, although we plan to stay alert and flexible. We're still working our way through the Ayers Extended Word list from Writing Road to Reading. Memory work will come from a variety of sources. This year we would like to host an Open House, although I'm still not sure how to put that on. If you've done them, please share your ideas, tips, stunning successes, and would-rather-die-than-repeat-them failures. Pretty please?

The older two are thoroughly enjoying Stories of Beowulf. That little one, though, he's the reason mothers don't read aloud. Not if they can help it.

Whosis Bee-oh-wuff? Why? Whys him dooos dat? Whosis Rotgar? Whys hes not fighting? Whats a sea-people? Whosis they? Whatsis theys names?

This is particularly challenging, as this book was written in 1908. It has a cadence and flow that take me a while to slip into comfortably. I've broken it into a formula.

No flow = no comfort.
No comfort = verbal bloopers.
Verbal bloopers = utter, riotous chaos.

By the time I've got the big ones to quit sniggering at my bloopers (although some of them are funny), the Small One has thought of more questions.

And heaven help me if it's a book with illustrations. It seems this small one has visual sensors in his fingers. And they're slow to process information. Every illustration means an additional ten minutes of waiting, waiting, explaining, waiting. It took me an HOUR to read a chapter of The Railway Children last night. An HOUR. This is not Dante we're reading, here.

But *inhale, exhale, try not to hyperventilate* to him it is. His "whosis" and "whatsis" and "whyses" are just as important and necessary to him as the questions Zorak and I ask on the porch at night about raising young men and DangerGirl into adulthood. Just as important as finding the mouse in Goodnight Moon. Just as necessary as learning to talk, to read, to Be. And if I can suck it up now and not scar his memories of these stories, he will eventually learn that the story makes much more sense when told in some sort of connected fluid momentum.

And at least he doesn't hang from my forehead and scream anymore. So there is progress.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy