We all do it...

that "thing" you do when you feel like you're overwhelmed by schooling your kids. I think I've done it all: Ordered new curriculum, revamped the existing program, cried, laughed, scrapped it and started over, made it harder, made it easier, changed styles, put the kids in school ('kay, I've never done this one), threatened to put the kids in school (guilty), joined a co-op, quit a co-op, chunked the books and "de-schooled" for awhile, gotten baskets of books from the library and vegged out while the kids dove into the books on their own, gotten all work-booky... :::sigh:::

Yesterday I did a new one. I was in the schoolroom working on our plans for the upcoming week. I had my laptop on the table (on which I keep my lesson plans) and was busily typing away and going though the kids' weekly binders, while the desktop computer behind me played samples from the BJU HomeSat DVD courses. I watched all of them. Yes, I did. (Well, for the grades my kids would be in next year- 6th and 8th.) And, I'm going to say it- They were good! I was very impressed! The teachers were smiling, dressed in outfits (not in their jammies), coherent and cheerful. There were lots and lots of visual aids and applicable examples. They address the camera, not a classroom full of children.

Get this: The sixth grade reading teacher was reading a story about a snake, and talking about how the writer used a simile to describe how the snake moved. "Like a slinky." Let's see, do snakes really moved like a slinky? So she pulls out a slinky and you observe the slinky and decide what a great simile that was. Okay, I may or may not do that, depending on how much coffee I've had and the proximity of a slinky. BUT- then she reaches down and gets this pillow case and puts it on the table and proceeds to pull out a real snake, so the students can watch it move and discuss the simile. For the remainder of the clip, she reads the story in a very expressive voice as the snake slithers like a slinky all over her book. What sixth grade boy wouldn't like that?? I would be using an expressive voice, too, if a snake were slinky-ing all over my literature book, but it would not be the story. LOL

It's official. I've hit my February Funk.

Off to do our reptileless reading for the day...

;)