An Insanely Sane First Two Weeks

I had intended to write something witty and amusing about our crazy first week of school, but here it is the end of week two and nothing remarkably bizarre has happened yet, which is rather remarkable in itself.

I had anticipated a stressful year because I'm essentially teaching three grades (Levi and Luke are at such different levels academically), all of which require a lot of teacher time. But to my pleasant surprise, Isaac and Luke are able to work more independently than I had expected, allowing all three boys to be working at once, at least for brief periods of time. Throw in the few group subjects and things have been falling nicely into place.

Despite my optimistic nature, I can't help but wonder "what's wrong?" and "when is this all going to come crashing down?"

I have noticed a few little quirks -- not problems, just quirks -- that I'm not going to let bother me. For instance, Luke does his math problems in random order. He'll start at the top of the page (sometimes), then work down the side, or skip to the bottom and come back up. Sometimes he'll miss one in the middle somewhere, so I make sure to check that they're all completed before he leaves the table.

To my surprise and delight, Isaac is very excited about the journal I'm having him keep. Three days a week I have him write a few sentences about whatever he wants -- really, WHATEVER he wants. I told him he could even write "I don't know what to write. I don't like this journal. Have I written enough yet?" Amazingly he chooses to write about our family, exciting happenings in our home and other things that interest him. It's good penmanship, spelling and grammar practice for him, but really it's more for my benefit because it allows me to assess which English areas need more attention and practice.

Levi has also surprised me with his reading progress. He struggled so hard last year to connect the name, sound and visual of the letters of the alphabet, but now he's putting them together and sounding out simple words and not hating it! Thank-you, Lord! This is truly an answer to prayer. I really thought we had a severe dyslexic on our hands, and maybe there is some of that in him, but the past two weeks have shown me that it's not as bad as I had worried it might be. I know, I know, we're still only on lesson 8 ("Dan has an ax. Max was mad."), but that's eight lessons more than he got through last year!

I'm sure we'll have our share of hairy days this year, and likely by next May the boys will have tired of subjects that interest them now, but for now I'm thanking God for every day that we get through without moaning, groaning, tears or tempers... or me having to lock myself in a bathroom for a parent/teacher conference.