Day 19
29 October 2021
Parenting, It’s Not For Everyone
Today was a hard home school day.
Hard. Hard. Hard.
I feel terrible writing about it. No one wants to hear about a difficult day with ‘spirited’ children and storm outs, but for anyone thinking about home schooling.
These days happen!
It’s like getting to know your children all over again.
Lincoln just didn’t want to do anything today. Urgh.
Not anything!
Like, not even fun stuff.
We started off by doing chores. (Yawn, I know. That’s how they felt too😔).
They did them fine enough though, a little drama but not too much.
Divide & Conquer
We decided to do our old faithful, ‘divide & conquer’.
This worked fine on and off.
Lincoln rolled all over the floor complaining he was bored and didn’t want do to anything, wah wah wah!
Finally, he started looking at computers. We decided we really need to bite the bullet and get them a device.
It’s been 10 years.
We’ve had a good run.
So, he was happy doing that for a while, then he was bored again.
I told him he could learn about ANYTHING!!
“What do you want to learn Linc?” I asked him.
He looked up, “What’s the most famous pizza?” 🙄
Ok, Iet’s go with that.
It’s margarita, by the way.
He found a famous pizza place called Tony’s in New York and this got us talking about how I lived there and that I’d been to Tony’s!
I suggested we take a virtual tour of NYC and sure enough, we found a helicoper fly over video! (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/NYC)
We’re thinking of checking out other cities too.
From a learning prospective, he learnt what quattro formaggi means. 😬 (It’s a stretch, I know, but it did come in handy later that night).
Meanwhile
Mila went to take Pepe for a walk, and run some errands.
She knows what this means. Errands with Dad means ending up at the coffee shop which means, cookie, chai latte, Portuguese tart, or whatever. Some kind of treat.
Life on Venus
Linc was being a blob, half on the sofa and half on the floor.
He didn’t want to do anything.
In the end he made popcorn and wanted to watch TV.
We compromised with an In A Nutshell Video on terraforming Venus! Here’s the video (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Terraform%20Venus) we watched.
He LOVED this video. He was so engaged in it, but put up such a fight when I suggested it. Grrrr.
Picasso
After lunch, I suggested we create some art, but Lincoln didn’t want to do art.
I suggested Picasso because Picasso was a rebel when it came to art. He didn’t follow classical principles and just kind of went mental with it.
He wouldn’t do it. (He has done it before at school, but he was not doing anything today!)
It was Mila’s first time working with cubism. She really enjoyed it. Here’s the video (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/c2hr) we watched.
Dinner with friends
Friends invited us for dinner and so I made a big mixed berry pie to cheer myself up from my How Not To Die Cook Book. (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/How%20Not%20To%20Die)
It was delicious, only Liam bought me frozen berries!! (Why? 😮😫)
Home Made Pizza
We had such a nice time with our friends.
Homemade pizza dough.
Cooked in the BBQ pizza oven.
Super crispy deliciousness, white wine, and pie.
Great friends.
And is well once more. 😀
KISS Principle
Liam and I talked about the day.
There isn’t much difference between ‘making’ them do their core work and ‘unschooling’ and letting them be free.
Both cause drama if you ask me.
We haven’t found nirvana yet!
All Lincoln wants to do is go to the skatepark and skateboard.
I said to Liam, “Are we trying to make this too hard? Let’s just get up and take him to the skatepark every day!”
Right?
Mila is happy anywhere. She loves to roller-skate, she loves to play on her scooter & she loves hanging out in the off-leash area having cuddles with the dogs.
So, we pivot again.
We are going to take him every, single day.
For a year.
😂
See if that makes a difference.
Is there any other way to add cheese to a pizza (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Linc%20making%20pizza)?!
