A Glimmer of Hope

It's possible, though I don't want to jump to conclusions, but it is possible that I may actually be able to teach my children a thing or two. I know, I know, crazy, right? But listen to the success we had today.

Ella has been doing 1 minute addition drills as part of her math lessons. She has a list of 20 addition problems and one minute to finish as many as she can. Correctly. There's always a catch isn't there? She has struggled with these drills because she doesn't have the basic addition sums memorized yet. She still needs to think about the problem and occasionally count on her fingers. So the past 7 drills have been frustrating for her because she usually had 4 or 5 problems left when the minute was up. And for a little girl who doesn't have much of a competitive streak (and considering her mother, *ahem* I'm still not sure how she missed that gene), this was surprisingly annoying to her.

Anyway, today just as I was saying "time's...." she screamed and tossed her hands in the air and yelled, "I did it!" She was so excited. Then Jack jumped up and yelled "Did it too!" He didn't know what he did, but he definitely did it with enthusiasm. And it totally made my day.

Then, because God knew I needed a bit more encouragement, we tried out the new language curriculum and it was a hit. Not just a hit, but a grand slam, going, going, gone, out of the park smashing into someone's windshield hit. Now, I'm still not sure how I feel about sharing specific curriculum reviews on this site, but I do want to say that Explode the Code rocks.

It was recommended to me and let me just say, "Wow!" Ella did 2 whole lessons (16 pages of work) and wrote a short story. And then she asked to do another lesson! Woohoo! We just might make it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bookmark this post so I can find it quickly the next time I think I'm a lousy teacher.