Educational Moments - Week 1

Though Will does have to sit (or stand) through all the lessons, the younger kids only join us when they choose to do so. All of the kids have loved drawing and science. All of the kids have done our music lessons with us. Maddie often sits and copies, in her best handwriting, our scriptures or vocabulary words, while Will works on math. We did our first drawing lesson on Monday afternoon, and it was a hit! In fact, Will was really disappointed that I didn't have it on the agenda for Tuesday. He worked his tail off and didn't goof off at all because he wanted to finish all his lessons with time to spare -- WOOHOO!! I think I have found a motivator for him (for this week, anyway.)

One of the favorite activities this week was when we dissected the cow eyeball. Cow eyeball?! Dissection?! In the first week?! Yessiree -- with five and eight year olds who learned more about eyes from that slightly slimy lesson than they did from a couple of days of looking at labelled pictures of eyeballs. I chose to do the lesson on Saturday because I wanted to have Allen there -- partly for moral support, but mostly because I was afraid I might need another adult pair of hands to help with the kids if I was a mess. I was SO glad to have his help for the picture-taking and for the hand-washing. The kids watched me dissect the eye, but then they got to hold all the parts as we talked about them. Ben and Jon were the most interested -- especially when I let them play with the vitreous humor and try to put the whole eye back together. I thought the lens was the neatest part since we could use it as a magnifying glass. Maddie enjoyed checking everything off the diagram as we found it, but she enjoyed reassembling the eye, too. Will and Allen thought the tapetum was really neat.

Will had an appointment with his counsellor today. When he enthusiastically explained what we did with the eyeball, her eyes got really big. She looked at me and asked why I would do that in the first week with young kids, explaining that most people don't dissect eyes until high school or college. I told her it was part of the curriculum we were using, and I thought the kids would remember more if we did an activity. I told her we believed that what was "normal" in school wasn't ideal for Will, so we didn't plan on doing it the "normal" way. Unless we try home schooling 100%, we won't know if it is a good option for us or not.