Baileys Irish Cream

Update on the Mag-ster, today (Friday) was the first day of his old routine (public school) he woke up and was happy to log in some fun time on the computer. 8:10 am and it was time to go to "work". he groaned, he moaned, he whined, he whimpered, he was reluctant to change gears.

He wanted to do science, but we have already surpassed more science this week than I would like (unit 9) and we need to attend to other areas.

We changed locations, we printed out the spelling worksheets, he went to the kitchen table reluctantly, but was prompted, prodded and threatened with consequences (No Friday Night Live activity) he complied but with a horrible attitude.

We skipped the 2nd lesson for this week, and started on the 3rd lesson of spelling (Wednesday's lesson), it was the wrong print out, I gave him a white board to practice lesson one on. He really shut down while I was printing out the correct one and eventually just threw a fit and went to his room to cool off. after 10 minutes called him back to task and with some silliness and reluctance, he was able to painfully completed the fill in the spelling word in the sentences, but was very unhappy with me that I INSISTED that the words be copied correctly from the spelling list to the handout sheet.

As we started to work on the 4th lesson (Thursday's) of the spelling unit he shut down. so I offered him his choice of health or free reading, he opted for health saying that he only wanted to do the free reading at night in bed. fine. his choice.

He was to read pages 14-15. We talked about them. He seemed to need a little more information, we got the DK Eyewitness book and reviewed what we already covered last week, skeletal structure and inside bones, respiratory system and the diaphragm and he completely shut down, and said that he was going to throw up and went and laid down and went to sleep.

So here we are, 3 hours into the school day, and he is already overloaded and wiped out. I am trying to decide of the visuals in the DK book were too much for his delicate nature. If he just hates language arts and this is the trailer of the movie for the year. but Seriously, it took one and one half hours to fill in 20 fill in the blank questions. and after 30 minutes of health he is sick and nauseated.

It will pain me to have to follow through and not let him go to Friday night live, but it doesn't appear that he will be able to meet the requirements at this time. Is the requirements too hard? not if he would just do them instead of making each and every task a huge dramatic production.

He came back down, and we worked on the money lesson for math and he did work on at least a list of days of the week, and months of the year and a sentence to practice his handwriting. As a reward we dipped old oxidized pennies, turning them black. And then we sprinkled baking soda on them, and squirted 9% acidity vinegar and made all shiny and new looking. Science reward for trying.

FINALLY, in a exhausted but state of determination, I printed out the last three assignments, including photocopying the poem in the book, the crossword puzzle in a different book and the assessment from online. I printed out the day's plan, color coded items that were done in green and items that were still undone in yellow from yesterday and today and laid them out on the table.

This showed that he had counted on completing three assignments today, that he didn't complete today. In addition there were three undone from today. I gave him two assignments from yesterday and one from today to be completed in 120 minutes or there absolutely would not be any chance whatsoever going to Friday Nite Live activity at church if it was not done, done correctly and done without drama. he made it through two of the three assignments. the crossword puzzle/ vocabulary words (2 pages), the vocabulary assessment (5 pages) and then he needed skittles to get through the poem for Literature. He got sidetracked and so I calmly told him that it was okay, he was not going anywhere. he cried, we found the skittles, he read the poem, worked through the worksheet I did 90% of the writing, he contributed about 80% of the narratives. and we completed the homework in 105 minutes.

I AM WIPED OUT AGAIN. going to Specks for Baileys Irish cream for my coffee next week.