Day 1 With the Olympic Unit Study

Have I said just how glad I am that I bought that Olympic Unit Study? Sigh... it has just made my life so much easier and anything that does that gets two thumbs up in my book.

After our first day with it I have realized one thing. With having one older and three younger students I'm going to have to shorten it up and make it a bit easier on them, and me. With one just beginning to write, one perfectionist who has to have every letter perfectly formed and every word perfectly spelled, one who just tries to fly through and get done as quickly as possible, and one needing my laptop to do a bit more in-depth reading... it's only Day 1 and I was already growing aggitated!

"Mommy, how do you make that letter again?"
"Mom, how is that word spelled?" (erase, erase, erase)
"How can you be done already? Why do you have to draw over and over your lines a thousand times and then draw all over the rest of your paper? Son, please don't make your papers look so sloppy."
"Mommy, is this right?"
"Mom, I need to look this up."
"Mom, is this a good J?"
"Just a minute, I'm using the laptop to help the younger ones."
"Sigh..."
"Mom, does the letter g go under the line?"

That's not what I want for me or my kiddos, so I'm going to be making one slight change. I will simply type up simplified questions (relating to the same info from the study) for them instead of having them write out the question and answer given in the study. It will drastically reduce their writting and therefore drastically reduce my frustration.

But other than this one change, things went well today. We started about 9:00, took a break at 10:00 for a snack and to go outside for a few minutes, then came back in and finished around noon. Obviously as we add in other subjects we won't be able to spend this much time on a unit study, but I'll just adjust it to fit in our day and have fun learning right along with my kiddos!