This week started out poorly. The boys were less than inspired to learn, which made me less than inspired to teach them. I know they are not always going to want to apply themselves...but this week...yikes!
By Wednesday things improved a bit. We made a barometer from Janice VanCleave's Weather book. JT was excited by his writing assignment. I asked him to compare and contrast two Pokemon. Sneaky, aren't I? Both of the boys are having more success with our current math plan. JT is back to Calvert(more on that shift later) and EM is being introduced to concepts of multiplication. The commutative, zero and identity properties are our friends!
After our rough start this week, I have been thinking a lot about focus. Then today I watched a video on YouTube about an 8 year old artist named Autumn de Forest. Her style of communicating reminded me of JT, except she had a control of herself that I rarely see in him. You could tell she was focused and intent on sharing her passion with others. The more I thought about her, I realized she had found her passion in her art and perhaps that is what took all of that talent and harnessed it into something productive. I see mostly counter-productivity in my home. I would love to find the passion my children have inside of them. Occasionally I will see a glimmer of the possibilities when one of the boys is working on something they love. The more I think about this, the more I believe the next logical step in our homeschooling journey will involve more project based learning and the exploration of their own personal interests.
The boys watched the video with me. When it was over, we worked with some new watercolor paints we had purchased last week. They were both more interested in the painting after seeing the amazing art Autumn could create. Maybe they just need to see more passion in others to push them to find their own inner drive. I plan to start exposing them to more success stories through reading and other media in the near future. Maybe if I can focus some of that energy, they can be motivated internally by their own desires, instead of being externally driven by me.
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