So....homeschooling

I really wasn't prepared for this!

I looked up all sorts of websites, homeschoolers, Government Education standards and tried to work out what on earth I needed for this.

I decided on some approved workbooks - writing, basic maths, addition and subtraction. I bought plasticine, different coloured pencils and some posters so I can illustrate things in different ways. Cyclone is very hands on, and we have no problems with that side but he hates, hates, HATES writing.

If his letters or numbers are not perfect he throws himself to the floor. I push him to stay at the table, I high five him when he writes a row of C's, a row of 5's but it takes half an hour of him avoiding the task, fidgeting and fighting to get there.

I keep pushing him though it so he can achieve. When he achieves a tiny bit of anxiety falls away. We go backwards and forwards this way for days and days, then I have a breakthrough and I'm kicking myself for forgetting to HAVE FUN.

One morning, after another 20 minutes of screaming and threats after tracing over a's and hating it I pulled a face...OH NO, I say. What? Says Cyclone. What are we going to be about the poor ht? The tp? Oh and look at the poor bby!
Huh? says Cyclone.

Without the a, it's just a ht! Cyclone dissolves into giggles. I'm sure this bby wasn't born to be a bby, poor thing! Does this look like a got? I point to a goat. Cyclone jumps back onto his chair and looks at all the pictures I'm pointing to and asks why I'm calling it a ht, instead hat. Because there is no a - we have to save the bab and the ht honey, quickly give them the letters they need to saaaaave them!

He rips the pencil out of my hands, changes ht to HAT, bab to BABY and got to GOAT - all with near perfect a's, whilst laughing his head off. YAAAAYYY! Plenty of high fives. Tracing over the letters in the books causes him stress. Doing it on his own is much much better.

We continue in this way for a few days, then I find he has taken off with my shopping list and copied most of the words easily. He is not reading the words of course but since we started laughing about writing he doesn't mind doing it anymore.

We also bought special greylead pencils and an eraser last week. You can't erase the coloured ones and Cyclone likes things to be perfect as they can be. Except his bedroom unfortunately

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