BeBa

1. She is a very visual learner.

2. She hates to write with a pencil and paper. She has beautiful handwriting and loves to draw, so she’s fooled me for a long time with this one. In fact, even though she’s enjoying her drawing unit, drawing is something she may prefer to do on the computer. She explained today that one reason she hates math worksheets is because of all the writing.

(Note: I’m considering Aleks, an online math instruction subscription service. They offer a free, one month trial and I suspect Bailey would respond very well to it. It is well reviewed, especially for visual learners.)

3. She is VERY task oriented. I give her a significant to do list each day and she plows through it with considerable focus. She really looks forward to getting this list in email each morning. The structure seems to be very important to her.

She derives enormous pleasure from accomplishing a task and crossing it off the list. (I can relate to that!) We have a basic “school day” that starts at 9 am and ends at 3 pm. Each day she is very concerned about finishing her work “too soon” and then not having anything to do. So far, this has not been an issue. Bailey can do *anything* she wants once her tasks are completed, except video games. Eventually, I intend to schedule some lighter days for her so that she DOES get done early and has to figure out how to make some non-video game fun for herself.

Six hours is a pretty long homeschooling day, especially when you consider that Bailey is completely learning-focused for the majority of this time. She takes a mid-morning break (but is still usually reading her book during that time) and then a break for lunch. Once the homeschooling group starts up, I’m anticipating that she will do 3-4 long days per week, with 1-2 days outside the house, activity-oriented (field trips, group events, etc.).

The local, secular homeschooling group I found starts up in September. I’ll be attending the annual planning meeting August 30. Looking forward to being involved with other homeschooling families in our area!

Here’s what Bailey did yesterday:

Wednesday, August 20

[ ] Math facts (multiplication) for at least 15 minutes:
http://mathusee.com/drill.html

[ ] Watch Lesson 2 on the Math-U-See DVD, then complete Lesson Practice 2A, 2B and 2C in the Student Text. (Use the back of the previous pages for extra space.)

[ ] Typing for at least 30 minutes

[ ] Read Chapter 5 in You’re Amazing and complete the exercise on p. 50. You can send me that in an email instead of putting it on your blog if you want to, since it’s more private. Also take the quiz on p. 53 and then read the answers. Did any of those answers surprise you? Let’s talk about it.

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Latin, Lesson 2

[ ] Read chapter 2 in your Classic Mythology workbook and complete all the exercises in the chapter.

[ ] Read pages 7-8 in ARTistic Pursuits and complete the drawing challenge on p. 8

[ ] Couch to 5K podcast: Week 1, Day 2 (if she continues to enjoy this program, she may run a 5K with me in October)