Schoolin'

We started school yesterday. You know the first day is always the best, and then it quickly declines from there. Yesterday both girls were excited to dive in and learn to read and finish up some books. But alas today the reality of how much work it was going to take sunk in and my girlies wilted. I mean like melt down. Baby has a photographic memory which is great unless you are trying to teach her to read phonetically. So she will look at a word and spend about 15 minutes trying to see if she has had it before, guessing and finally she will sound it out. At that point she is done with that word and I have to get some new ones.

The part that really drives me to distraction is the guessing part. For example the word "live". We discuss the l sound and the short i and the v. Now we try to put them all together. We get like, love, and every other l word in the school room. Then she finally really looks at the word and tries to sound it out. Of course it does not help to have your teenage sister glaring at you across the room, just because you are getting on her nerves!

So now I am wondering how in the heck did I teach 6 other kids to read? I do have to admit some were easier than others, but we did it and I'm sure we can do it one more time. She does have a deadline to learn to read in English before school starts in Feb. I told her if she does not know how to read she can't go to school until she learns how. Don't know if I will last that long.

Then of course is the teenager wanting to just leave and go for a run, eat lunch, anything but stay there and get that darn math book done! O.k. mom just breath and know that they are not going anywhere and there is no hurry for them to learn these thing.

On a fun note I did my first swim today and got in a good 800 before I felt like my arms were going to fall off. It felt great and I think sure enough the time was about the same as when I quit swimming eight years ago, how sad ha?