Spring Fever?

I know we all have colds, but not one of us has an actual fever. But it seems like we aren't getting anything done. Well, I take that back. We're getting a lot of things "done," we're just not having any fun doing any of it. In the last week it's been harder and harder to get Harry to "just sit down and do his work!" Sam is thrilled that I'm including him with letter pages to write and numbers to add, Annika is also happy to have some coloring books to color and paper to cut. Emma is happy being held and drolling all over me. But Harry isn't happy.

And I totally understand that. He is a little clone of me in many ways. So much so that sometimes it's scary! I think that right now he's bored. And, honestly, so am I. We go from doing a couple of pages of math to a lesson in his grammar book to a spelling test (which he loves now, go figure) to reading something. It's a lot of going from this to this to this with no connections made at all. I have an idea of how to solve that for next year with different materials, but for now what do I do? It's important what we're working on and I need him to learn spelling and math and grammar along with history and science. And all of those other things that are important.

I think we are going to get more books out for read-alouds. I'll look through them for interesting words and interesting things we can learn more about. We might switch math for a while to another book that's interesting by virtue of the fact that we don't use them all of the time. For science we'll go outside more. We need more play in our day I think. So in general we'll go outside more. That alone can cure most ills. I'm going to listen to my feelings more when I start thinking that we need to do less and be more. Yep, that's a start.

But for today, here's what we worked on:
math--review page
spelling--he got one wrong so he wrote it three times in his spelling notebook
grammar--telling the story of the three little kittens and him telling it back to me
50 Famous Stories--George Washington and his Hatchet
The Winter's Tale--they just love Shakespeare!
We looked up Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Nazareth to talk about how far apart they were (are)
There is something else that I can't think of now, another read-aloud. hmmm. Nope,not coming to me. Maybe later

The thing with Harry is that if I left him alone he probably would learn everything he needs/wants to know. I just don't trust that well enough. But I need to find a way to channel that a little better. Hmm. Lots to think about.