It’s 5:30 and Our School Day Just Ended!

This post is part of a series showing the realness of homeschooling---the ugly, frustrating, and wonderfulness of it all. 

It’s Monday, our short day! 

I was determined we would get into the swing of things and work through our new schedule.    Things were going reasonably well until right after lunch. Our schedule dictated thirty minutes to go over last weeks writing and suggest improvements before revising and editing happened.   Discovering that my girls had not worked on their writing project for the prescribed 1 1/2 hours on Friday, I had to try really hard not to blow a gasket!

I-E had taken 3 notes on a five page article. She explained she had been annoyed she had to do the assignment, so that when she read the article it hadn’t made any sense to her.   I sent her to the table to work while I checked in with E-R. 

 

E-R claimed she didn’t realize the assignment was to write a one page overview of the  battles fought in the Revolutionary War.   Instead she had drawn a map, and thrown together a really bad paragraph about Billy Howe. 

Remember the gasket I was trying not to blow!   

So we read over the paragraph, discussed what the topic sentence should have been, and took some notes so she could write a good paragraph about Billy Howe.  

I-E checked in with her 7 total notes from that five page article.  

Gasket blowing!   Still holding it inside! 

So we read and took notes together from the first section of the article.   We then determined how she wanted   to introduce the article and what the topic sentence of the first paragraph should be.   Then I helped her write the first paragraph sentence by sentence.   The whole time I wanted to scream---YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THIS!!!!!

 

And then she told me, " I can do the rest—I didn’t know this is what you wanted me to do!"

When will I learn that teenage brains need clear, concise written instructions!