The Day I Threw Away Nyah's Language Arts...

I guess it pretty important to be transparent when it comes to both the good days and the bad days of schooling at home.

Every September, there are three hard weeks of getting the kids into gear to get them moving on their school work.   If I'm really diligent (read militant), after those three weeks the ball is rolling, and the kids actually seem to become much more efficient in their approach to their work.

Three weeks into school this year marked the point at which we left for a month-long trip to Northern Ireland.  No argument - an awesome gift to be able to travel as a family - but it did mean that we're now two weeks into the second "first three weeks" of our school year.

This week I took a much closer look at Nyah's language arts work.  She was just finishing off her program from last year...

My unfortunate discovery was that my lag in marking her work meant that she's diligently been learning the following:  

1.  It's okay to finish your work quickly, without really worrying about whether things are right or not.

2.  Do not worry about spelling.  Such things will definitely slow down the process of finishing your work quickly.  

3.  If you don't understand something, or if it seems difficult, or if you're wearing blue, feel free to skip random sections of assigned work.  Really for any reason.  Did I mention finishing quickly is paramount?

Okay - it may not have been quite so bad... but it wasn't good.

So in an act carefully considered, rational response to this problem I... threw her book in the recycling bag.  That's right.  Tossed it from across the kitchen - perfect basket... right into the blue bag.

I explained that if she hated this program (which she's mentioned numerous times) she was welcome to come up with a different plan for an alternative.  There's a huge library of stuff in our "junk" room (band room, play room, school library storage room, spare room... see why it's now called a junk room?) and she was welcome to come do some research.

Today I realized that the recycling went out nice and efficiently the next morning.  Guess that cements it, hey?  In retrospect, I probably wouldn't have actually thrown the book out... but it's a little late for that now, hey?  Oops.

But to be honest, I'm excited about it.  Maybe it's just the change we both need.  After all, I used to enjoy doing my own things with my students for language arts!

Now to start remembering what it was I loved about it...