The Best $1.78 I've ever spent

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but my 7 year old son hates to read. He has fought it for years. I've waited patiently for things to just click like they did for my now 9 year old girl, but I'd lost all hope of him every enjoying reading.
Well yesterday we were at Target where they have their Magic Tree House books on clearance. I picked up 4 and told him to pick one to read. Immediately I was inundated by tears and, "I can't read that! It's too hard."
So, I picked up the one he chose and opened it to the first page. I told him to read the first sentence. He read it with no problem. Then he read the next sentence and the next. Then we left the book area with his nose in his new book.
I don't care if the books aren't well written. My son is reading right now, by choice! He doesn't even like to read picture books, he just looks at the pictures. This is huge!

What a difference!

School has been quite enjoyable this week. What a relief that is! It's not because my kids changed overnight either, its because I changed my expectations. Instead of making them do a whole spelling lesson, they're doing one page. In math and Latin, instead of moving ahead as soon as they've mastered a lesson, we're lingering a little while to make them feel good about knowing it. Because of these simple changes we've had time to do science, Bible and history, including projects.

Next week we'll continue at the same pace, but I'm going to try to introduce reading time. I've wanted to implement a reading session for quite some time, but I haven't been able to yet. I'm looking forward to getting some of the great books we have read.

Well, I seriously need to get a schedule in place. We have 3 doing school this year, with another showing signs of readiness to read, and a newborn. The only outside activities we have are Brownies, Girl Scouts, and co-op classes. We also have animals (cows, chickens, a dog, and a cat) to take care of, in addition to the housework.

So, I bought Managers of Their Homes and was going great guns reading and looking forward to implementing it. Then I read the part about scheduling babies, specifically scheduling their nursing, and I just can't bring myself to read any further. I'm so philosophically and spiritually opposed to scheduling nursing, that it makes me feel bad about their whole scheduling plan. I've got to either ignore the parts I feel strongly about in this book or find some other way to schedule our days. I'm not certain if I'll be able to do that though, since my perception is skewed now.

I had planned on schooling through the summer, but somehow in those last 6 weeks of pregnancy I just couldn't find the energy. Now that G man is 6 weeks old we've started back up.

Last week Mister Blue (age 7) says to me, "I don't want to be in Cub Scouts. I'm shy, and I'm not good at anything." I was mortified. Here the son I've worked so hard on schooling thinks he's not good at anything. Ack! As a result, I've decided to take a slightly different tack this year than I'd originally planned.

I've had Miss Green (age 9) and Mister Blue doing the same math work for a year now. She's been slightly behind his understanding, but this year its switched and he's feeling lost. They both started Math U See Delta this year, but somehow he forgot everything he learned in Gamma. I'm letting her continue on in Delta and I've ordered Singapore Math 2 for him. I'm hoping to do a quick review through it and then start up again in Delta. In the meantime I bought Quarter Mile Math for him to review his multiplication facts. He's absolutely loving it and asks to do it several times a day.

We're also changing his spelling from Spelling Workout to SpellingTime.com. I'm hoping his self-confidence will improve with these changes, but I'm not going to hold my breath.