I thought I had progressed past 2nd grade, that is, until this week when I tried to review 2nd grade material with the Lil’ Dude. Imagine my surprise when needing to explain a pronoun, an adverb and other parts of speech that I could not come up with an exact definition for these. Sometimes it seems like I haven’t been in 2nd grade since the days of parchment but, it really hasn’t been quite that long. Still, I had to cheat and look at the definitions provided in the “brain box” at the bottom of the workbook pages.
In preparation for homeschooling next year, I am trying to spend a little time each day working with the Lil’ Dude so that we can both get in the habit of doing schoolwork and develop a student/teacher relationship. I’m sure there will be many hurdles involved in homeschooling and I would like to work through as many of those as possible before it really counts.
The Big Dude, now in 5th grade, has been in Montessori School since he was three years old. The Montessori philosophy cultivates independent work habits which he has done very well with. I’m not too worried about his ability to handle homeschooling but, the Lil’ Dude is only in kindergarten and hasn’t developed those skills yet. So, his education will require a lot more one on one.
We started with the BrainQuest Kindergarten workbook 6 months ago. I chose the BrainQuest workbooks because they are well organized, the pages are welcoming instead of overwhelming and the activities are fun. They also cover the complete curriculum introduced in each grade instead of just math or language. Neither one of us had much of a challenge with kindergarten. We also quickly progressed through 1st grade. However, we are both starting to be a little challenged with 2nd grade.
This is not surprising since I only remember two things from 2nd grade; one, was a bloody spectacle on the playground when I lost one of my bottom teeth. It was not due to a traumatic incident like being punched out by the class bully or even a botched attempt at an Olympic stunt on the monkey bars. It was just a plain ole’ you’re seven and you loose teeth. It was, however, more bloody than usual which ended up involving the teacher on playground duty and some clothing requiring a little extra scrubbing when I got home. The other prominent memory happened while I was patiently waiting in front of my teacher’s desk to ask her a question. The little boy behind me was not being as patient as I was and when I turned to see what he was so fidgety about, he threw up all over me. This required a trip to the office where they dug out some clothes from the lost and found for me to wear for the remainder of the day. As you can see, adverbs and pronouns can get lost in a seven year old head when pitted against other 2nd grade memories.
Of course, the only way to find out what you don’t know is to teach. Then, every lost memory or previously misunderstood concept suddenly shows up bolded and underlined in Swahili; something you thought you knew but is now quite obvious that you didn’t. It’s then that the teacher unfortunately reverts back to the student. The only thing that makes it more humiliating is that your 6 six year old is staring at you wide eyed waiting to be enlightened while you frantically search your synaptic wasteland for a simple definition.
Although I was taken aback by my inability to recall actually learning these terms in 2nd grade, I have not lost my enthusiasm for homeschooling and can’t wait for us to move on to see what I am going to learn in 3rd grade……again.
“I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.” Roald Dahl