Truce, treaty, and learning style

All in all, a successful first week of school. Wolfgang and I had one major blow-up at each other; thereafter, we decided that, should we ever do that again, I will give up coffee for two days and he will not be able to go to his friends' house for the first two times he asks.

This particular blow-up pertained to math. Math has always been a sore spot for us. It's not that he can't do it. He gets it pretty easily, but he just can't stand the fact that I sit him down to do it. I started to suspect that the reason he dislikes it is because it is compulsory and he can't be very independent with it~~we have a "hands-on" parental interaction program (Saxon) and I started to wonder whether another program might permit him to learn more "on his own," rather than me teaching him.

After posing the question to my online support groups, about 7 people offered that Math-U-See has allowed their students to be very independent, watching a DVD lesson and doing work independently. I think that may be right up his alley...not that we have a TV/DVD player anymore, but we do have the computer and I'm sure he will appreciate being able to sit in front of it for a period of time to watch something. It's been awhile. :)

Another thing I learned about him this week resulted from our learning profile testing that we did for the three school-age children to learn more about their styles, motivations, etc. Our homeschool charter school offers this on a voluntary basis and we decided to take advantage of it. Wolfgang tested as a 44% visual learner, 44% audio learner, and just 12% tactile, or something like that. (I don't have the paperwork in front of me.) The child gets extremely distracted by the many social opportunities around him with his siblings (it was far worse when it was 20 other students at school) and the DVD will probably be enough to dominate his attention span in a useful way. We're taking the plunge and switching programs.

I haven't entirely studied the many reams of information pertaining to their test results, but I also felt very reassured to learn more about Psalm. Psalm is our very independent learner, above and beyond the other children. He resists interaction when learning something new. He taught himself to read entirely on his own, actively pushing me away until I caught him reading a whole book from beginning to end aloud. Turns out, he reads at a 3rd grade level. GO, PSALM! I'm very proud of him, even though I feel like I had so little to do with it. :) Apparently, he tested as someone who stays in the background and observes first before actively engaging in something new. I really appreciated hearing this. I KNEW this about him, but hadn't really put it into words and it worried me that possibly I wouldn't be able to work well with him in the homeschool capacity. Since what he's doing is working for him, I feel like I have the "permission," so to speak, to quit worrying and just let him do it his way.

Finally, I learned that Zoya (age 5) is reading at the 8th grade level. WHOA! I knew she was skilled but this rather shocked me. They informed me that I will need to "make sure she's challenged." hahaha! No kidding. I know this already...in addition to her temperamental craziness and extreme physical affection (we get tackled practically to the point of falling on a regular basis) she has no limit to what she will sit down and try to learn. She has almost learned how to play Solitaire with a deck of cards at this point...has real strategy with card games, and usually kicks my butt with a true poker face, quietly placing down her final card with a little smile.

I think that's it for now...my hubby just got home and I am sneaking in this last line before being wifey.