Feb 10, 2012

Weekly Update - Midpoint of Winter

We are halfway through our winter session and for the most part things are going smoothly for KM. She is really enjoying the choices that she has made in her lessons. Her skype poetry class is finishing up next week and although she is really anxious about her critical analysis essay, she is fully enjoying the class. She is working hard to complete her French by the end of the session, as she would like to move on to Japanese, but wants to finish this book first. She has also started researching cosmetology schools and what it will take to become a cosmetologist. We have started in on the "animal" section in biology and have started our ant observations - check out the page where we are chronicling our discoveries! She is also practicing for the World Education Games and can't wait until the Science practice opens next week.

DN on the other hand - not quite so smooth. He is fully and completely compliant, but I am having a very difficult time getting him to truly understand that learning is part of life. Not something that you just "get done." That is what school is about right - but that is NOT what education is. I am trying to be patient and keep things in perspective as I know that it has only been a few months, but it gets really difficult when I am bending and twisting and feeling like there is no appreciation of the lengths that I am going to. I have to remind myself that hindsight is most effective and the fruits of my labor might just take a bit longer to ripen than I would like.

For a sneak peek of our first day with the ants check out our montage ---



Oh and KM's room makeover is complete ---- 


The green looks a bit more yellow in the pics, but you get the gist of it and KM LOVES IT!!! She was so over all the pink! 

3 comments:

Fairyluver said...

How fun your own personal ant hill!! Very cool video!!

Unknown said...

How much of a say does DN have in his curriculum? What is he interested in? What would he like to learn more about? Any way to translate his interests into learning opportunities will help his feelings about learning. If you'd like, I can help you take an interest and convert it into an integrated curriculum plan.

Unknown said...

thanks for the offer Morah, but the thing is that there is nothing that he truly has enough interests in that he wants to learn more about it. I have a good deal of experience integrating and planning, would be happy to fly as far outside the box as possible, but just don't have a clue how to get someone interested in something when their is no effort or ambition.
Many may think I am exaggerating the situation, but if you read previous posts on the topic you can see that I have tried and taken advantage of remarks and comments to no avail.
He just sees any sort of learning as something that "has to be done", not something that anyone could possibly ever want to do for any real reason.