mfw 1st grade: Week 9 (PART2)

Have you ever had one of THOSE day (or weeks)... the kind where you just want to flag down the nearest school bus, kick them all out in their pajamas, and say "see you in 8 hours?" The kind that make you question what in the world you were thinking when you chose to homeschool? The kind of week where nothing goes right and your child's brain has turned to mush? You wonder if they're even hearing a word you're trying desperately to teach them? A lesson that turns from struggle, to frustration, to fighting, to everyone in tears, and you wonder am I really cut out for this?  Well that was our week in 1st grade or a least most of it. The start of the week was the worst of it. Boo had to learn a new sound (the 2nd half of week 9) because I split week 9 into two trying to avoid too much info at once. Her sound was /er/ and we learned that "ir, ur, and er," all make this sound. I knew it was going to confuse her with so many new letters after just having learned /ar/ and /or/ last week. I didn't realize though that Boo couldn't physically make the /er/ sound. Boo still has a very (cute) but babyish speech and pronounces a lot of sounds wrong. One of those is the /er/ sound, which ends up with a "w' in there...like I "hoo-wut" (hurt) my knee...She tried so hard to make the sound and just couldn't..she cried, I cried..it was just not fun. After the first couple days it got a little better, and she was able to read her workbook page with a little help. I however have really been struggling with what to do. I don't want to move her forward until she's ready. Adding new stuff will only confuse her more. I've prayed about it and for now I think we will take a third week to just review and see where she's at. I'm going to take it one week at a time and not move forward again until she feels more confident.


We're still learning about anger for our Bible time. We read about angry rams who fight each other by ramming their heads together. We talked about fighting, hitting, etc. We learned that we should talk about our problems rather than physically showing our anger. Our Proverb is "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control."

In math Boo is taking a break from addition and is practicing writing her numbers 0-100. She has been able to count to 100 for a long time, but she's never had to write them all. She still struggles with not making our 3's and 5's backwards, so this has been good practice.

Finally a break from all the frustration and hard work...art time! Boo loves to draw. This week we tried to draw a lizard. Boo drew her's on a plant. We also did story time each day. This week we read Berenstain Bear books.

After this hard week we've had I'm really looking forward to Christmas break, which will be here sooner than I can believe! I also can't believe it's almost time for us to order next years curriculum already bc we order ours every February! Time to start planning and looking at all the choices.