What a difference a day makes! (Or several weeks.) We just started school again. I’ll admit that taking breaks is one of the luxuries of homeschooling that I like the most. We took off about three weeks in April and resumed last week.
Boy, did we need a break. I decided in the last month or so that Woody will be “repeating” First grade. I know that boys, especially, benefit from being held back a year if they have birthdays May through September. It was one of those things that I easily agree when other parent’s share about the benefits of retaining their boys for a year. It is so easy to see in other people’s children, but I struggled to see in mine. I finally came to realize that while Woody is doing wonderfully on all academic levels, his maturity level needs some…um, shall we say, refining. Especially, if and when he should attend public school some day. I would much rather have him as the oldest of the class instead of one of the youngest.
Thus, we’ll be “repeating” First grade next year. Although, we won’t really be repeating any material – we’ll be using some things I already have for Reading, Writing, Spelling, Social Studies, Geography, & History. We’ll be moving forward to the next level of Math curriculum. And, he’ll be doing Science, Spanish, and Art at the enrichment center. So I seriously doubt he’ll have the chance to be bored.
As for Woody, that break was (apparently) just what he needed. He is excited about doing school again which warms my heart so. Just this morning, I told him he needed to get his glasses so we could get to work. As he scurried off to find them, I heard him exclaim as he recalled where we left off on yesterday’s lessons. “Yay! We get to do the hippo story today!” Before our break, I didn’t hear “Yay!” about much of anything. It is great to see him so excited about school again.
