Tag: homeschool mom

A Delightful Problem

Grace by any other name1 Comment

“Thank you for these poems, Mommy! They’re so amazing!” Said my little joy, Naynay aged six since the 16th of this month.❤️ “Thank you for doing school! I luuuurve school! It’s my favourite thing!”

My girl is proving to be a challenge. She’s perfectly at grade level for Maths for America, advanced for South Africa as we’ve always known and as our educational psychologist noted. She runs through every Maths situation and understands the first time I explain it then races through before I’ve given the next instruction! She has a wonderful memory. Glorious memory that even made her ten year old sister exclaim yesterday.

I have added some Cambridge subjects to her school life because she has such a thrust for knowledge. As I showed Ammy what she’d do next (I put them at the same grade level for Geography), and what her textbook looks like, Naynay exclaimed, “I’ll show you the two friends! There are two friends to teach you!”

I had no idea what she was talking about. But she sure did! We had only done two lessons in one day last week or the week before, and she recalled that there were two children in the textbook who teach! Her sister had leafed through the book and SHE hadn’t noted them!

So what’s the delightful problem?

She’s too ahead with her reading and spelling! I’ve moved onto a new grade for those even though she’s at the lower kindergarten level for Maths. But she smashed the first story in record time! So much for it hopefully being challenging!

But as you saw in the video, a child who can read the word “ awesome” is NOT going to struggle with these words below. Nor with the activity! She did this type perfectly twice before so I don’t plan on making her do it again today!

She noticed the box with her next grade level had arrived and she was excited!! So excited! “Look! Look! Our name! It’s our name on the box! The Good and the Beautiful!” (No, I can’t tell you why it’s “our” name.) She quickly grabbed her grade 1 reader. And didn’t even struggle except for typical ADHD stuff.

It’s glorious having THIS kind of problem! I’ve bought lots of books at different levels that will be stimulating and challenging. As she said about her list of words in her current curriculum, as she said about Maths, “This is so easy! It’s boring.” And so, on we move!

What did YOU do on Sabbath?

Grace by any other name1 Comment

Well, I decided to take the children to Tygerberg Nature Reserve. The flowers, birds, a turtle…

Our usual crier was remarkably happy! This is someone who once got to a park and immediately screamed and screamed because we didn’t want to stay next to some tree she liked. So she played around it with her dad. Now with dad not being there, we weren’t sure who would be doing what she wanted. Nor did we know what she would want.

Besides wanting to enter the men’s loo when her brother went in, she was FINE!❤️🥰

But her twin! That girl can talk the monkeys off the trees! And she is such a typical Miss Independent. There were times I knew the path was ok so I let her go, there were times she AND her twin wanted to hold my hand when I really would have been ok on my own😉and times she decided she knew better than me and ran, fell into a hole and her bunny flew into the air and onto a bush!

It was good. We had never used that path or trail before so turned back when we felt we’d walked long enough. Next time I’ll go without little ones and see how long it is and if they’d have made it all the way round.

Oh, the other thing of note was Twin A nagging as we walked back that she needed an EYE doctor for her sore finger. One of the bushes she didn’t want to stay away from stings! I tried to mollify her by telling her I’d put cream on it when we got home, she didn’t buy it, she wanted the EYE doctor. I told her I’d give her pain meds. Nope, “eye doctor!” But lo and behold, when we got into the car and I handed her some Vaseline, the placebo worked immediately! She was suddenly and very quickly, “Better!”😉

And yes, as Flydah and my husband predicted-which they always do when they know I’ve had an active day, I paid dearly for it with even more pain later. I read a thread on Reddit where 5000 steps a day was the max some people could do and know they’d be fine the next day, no suffering from the after effects of too much. But man, that doesn’t leave me with much time to do chores etc if I have to do so few steps. I’ll keep hoping that we get to the other side of the surgery, that we find a biologic that will reduce my symptoms and slow down the disease.

My first daughter and I

Oh. One thing I added which nobody commented on was how I kept sleeping when we’d stop at a red light. I’m the driver… I don’t know if AS fatigue is increasing (I’ve read others’ accounts of them falling asleep in a parking lot or dropping their children off at school..), I don’t know if I’d taken way too many pain pills (Some make you drowsy) or if it was lack of sleep catching up on me. But either way, I realised I’m really not well!

But here we are, home safe. Nobody had to hoot to wake me up and the children didn’t even notice. It was a good Sabbath.