Well, I feel that I need to keep things very real, because hopefully that will end up being the most helpful to everyone.
Our first day was awesome! I already posted about that. Days two and three however where very challenging. On day two, my boys did not want to dress up. I really felt that for this day, we needed to, so eventually we got around to getting them all dressed up. We were having our Guild Hall meeting, and it went alright. My boys picked to create their guild emblem for a craftsman guild. They needed to work together to do this. It was like pulling teeth. I kept reminding them of the Lifeskills, and they ended up basically working solo. I helped them put their two designs together. While they were working on their emblem, I was working on creating my own mother emblem for fun, and to try and help them stay focused on what they needed to do. As I was hanging their guild emblem up, my oldest got a hold of mine and tore it in half!! I was so hurt by this, I immediately sent him to his room.
We took a break, mostly so I could calm down, and next thing I know my second son was telling me he was not going to wear his costume, and he was not going to come to any Town Hall meeting! He has a way of putting things, where I know that it is best to let it alone for awhile, at least when I am upset about it. So, we let the rest of the day go...
We ended up getting our sheep brains that day, so we could go ahead with our plans to dissect them the next day with some other local homeschoolers. This meant I had to stay up a little later than I would have liked to complete my brain poster (which my husband was going to do, oh well).
On brain day, I was just tired, so this may have been why I did not think it went as well as I would have liked. It did not go bad, but maybe my perfectionist ideals got a hold of me, and I ended up disappointed. No one really sat with rapt attention, and I didn't think a whole lot of learning took place. My kids told me it was "kind of boring, and kind of gross." But they did like the play time afterwards!! Anyway, the rest of the day, I was so upset inside. I felt like giving up, I felt like if even this fails why am I homeschooling? I'm sure some of you know these types of feelings I was having.
My husband got home late from work, and by time I finally got to talk with him and process all of the emotions I was having, it came down to prayer. We prayed about what we should do. My husband pointed out that Satan doesn't want us to succeed, so he is going to try to get us down any way he can. After praying about it, I just knew that I was not supposed to give up. I was also not supposed to force, because as we learn in brain compatible learning, this does not work!
My job is to continually give experiences to my kids, always seeking to inspire them. Their job is to choose to take these experiences and use them, or to not. I just keep trying to get them to want to choose them!
So today, I started with a choice. Did they want to do brain stuff, or did they want to work on guild stuff? I was surprised to hear they wanted to do brain stuff. We listened to Brite Music's CD You Are Someone Special (which is 100% perfect for brain week), and we did our brain worksheets. They got excited when they realized they could put them in their Leonardo notebooks. We had a discussion about some of the quotes from brain week. My second son grasped why we were studying the brain ("because when we know how the brain works, we can use what we know about it to make it easier for us to learn"). They actually wanted to do some of the inquiries, and are working on them as I type. Whoa, what happened?
1. I didn't give up (sadly 2-7 days has been about my limit for trying new things when there is a struggle).
2. This does work.
3. Freedom and choice are so important.
4. Prayer works too...
Rebecca
