The First Day of School
Posted on January 23, 2012 - Filed Under Homeschool, Kids, Mom Stuff | 3 Comments
I’m a terrible blogger these days. I’ve taken so few photos and they are ALL still on my camera. And I didn’t take any photos today, which was the first day of school for the boys. Dorian has been sick, so we are a week behind.
We made the day special by getting out some dinosaur pencils and erasers that I got in Canada, but the boys were most excited about Papa helping with the teaching! He’s doing math and music, but he helped with the other subjects, too. In fact, he showed us how to do a traditional project from the schools here, where you roll bits of tissue paper into tiny balls with your forefinger and thumb and then glue them to lines. We did the boys’ names because they are still not proficient in writing their own names. Dorian, interestingly enough, could roll with both hands, no problem, whereas even I have issues doing that! I think he might ambidextrous like his aunt and grandmother.
Dante had trouble sitting still for that long, so he was up and down, which is fine, because he concentrates better that way. He spent a large chunk of his time drawing pictures of what we were doing, instead of actually doing the projects. 
Dorian, on the other hand, was super focused and very meticulous about doing his work well. He takes being in Grade 1 very seriously.
I headed to work at 8:45 and Irving began to work on math with the kids. He finished his planned lesson, but they were all having so much fun, they kept going for another 45 minutes! Guess we’ll be a mathematical household!
Overall, the first day of school was a success and will hopefully continue like this!
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3 Responses to “The First Day of School”
Talk to Me, People!
I know Talia gets really excited when her Papi does a lesson with her. I’m glad school’s going so well for y’all!
Are the schools there decent? Do you just know, from your own childhood, it’s better to homeschool your kids? My school experience was stressful. The teachers were awful who had no energy for us and a little abusive. The kids were decent but now I hear horror stories about middle school. It’s awesome your husband is teaching. I think that is fantastic!!!
Irving is a trained teacher, Sara, and I’ve also taught in a private school here. Neither of us is impressed with the quality of education available. In the school where I taught, they had at least one day of no classes per week and the entire final quarter is basically based around band because of September 15th. That alone is enough to make me want to teach my own kids, what’s the point of sending them to school if they’re just going to be fooling around for about 3 months of the school year? Thanks to my personal experience, I do know that one on one teaching is better than a classroom in many cases and it allows us to make sure that the boys learn in both languages, as well as work at their own pace. For example, if Dorian learns to read faster than the average child in a classroom, he can simply move on to more complicated topics, whereas in a classroom, he would be held back to the speed of the slowest learner. On top of the quality of education, we are also in control of the morals and such that they learn, which I think is important for the earlier years, at least.