Eager and Reluctant Students

There are two basic type of students in our household. The Eager Student, and the Reluctant Student. I shall now give a few examples. Ethan is a reluctant student right now, but we'll just blame that on Senioritis. This morning he stayed home with a kinda stomach ache (again) so I'm going to say it was mostly cause he was tired. But we were hoping the dentist office had an opening and maybe he'd be able to go get his cavity fixed - which is one of the last things he has to do before finishing filling out his mission papers, exciting! But they didn't have any openings until the afternoon, so we're scheduling it for tomorrow. I ended up taking him to school around 9, but I was glad he was home in the morning, cause that meant I was able to go without Daniel and Peter to the school to rep the parents at "Books and Bagels", also known as "Dads and Donuts" (I'm not sure which one they called it this year.) Owen came with us - with his backpack and everything!

Owen is an really overly Eager Student. Most of my up and coming kindergarteners have been overly eager. Owen's been ready to leave in the mornings with the girls... He'll tell me "I'm ready for school" as he gets on his shoes and backpack. "Not yet Owen, you have to be 5 years old to go to school" and then he says "Let's go to store and get present" cause if we go buy him a birthday present, then he'll be 5! And then he can go! No, buddy, it doesn't work that way. So I try to say "You get to go to school after your birthday, and after Park City" but that doesn't really translate for this 4 year old either. Yesterday Corey was telling him "You have a lot to learn to get ready for school!" Corey got him set up on ABC Mouse.

"You need to learn how to write your name..." And then Owen hopped down, went and traced his hand, wrote a few pretty-close-to-being-in-his-name letters, and then went and gave it to Corey to turn it in.

"Ok! I'm ready for school!" No, Owen, we've got some work to do here. Since I'm not letting him go to school, I have to deal with him all day nagging me to go to school. And I have to bolt the door so he doesn't escape. I'm glad he wants to go. Cause a month ago, any time his sisters mentioned school, he would protest and insist he would NOT go to school under any circumstances. Today he was excited about it though, and especially excited that I let him come.

I was glad I could leave Daniel and Peter at home with Ethan, cause it was a little tricky keeping an eye on Owen. Enjoying his donut and apple juice. Well, hey! This school thing is great!

The kids enjoyed a nice sugary breakfast, great.

Natalie sat by me. Pretty fun

Natalie wanted to go to the Bookfair to look at things with her friends, I said that was fine and she left. Then Lily was asking me to ask a mom for her phone number so we could set up a play date, and as I was doing that, Owen took off - he was following Natalie and a crowd of kid. Ah! I jumped up to go grab him - no, Owen, we have to go back home, sorry! I was a little afraid he'd cry about going home, but he took it well. I told him we had to go get Peter.

So this is good. I really was concerned that Owen would not want to go to kindergarten this fall, but I think he's going to do just fine. Sophi or Natalie said recently that they are a little scared that kids will make fun of Owen because of how he talks - that he still doesn't know a lot of words or pronounce things correctly, but he'll have his big sisters there to look out for him. The elementary kids are doing good, Ethan's been accepted to BYU, so Corey and I have tried to turn focus to the middle three - Hyrum, Wes, and Abi. Corey went to parent teacher conferences a few weeks ago, and Abi is struggling with Math. Corey suggested we get a tutor but Abi begged us to not make her go to a tutor. I said I'd help her and she promised she'd try harder, and this is how that is going....

Over the past week we've had one very dragging her feet study session (during chapter 7) and one good session (chapter 8). Today we tried to finish catching up by finishing all of chapter 9. First session/hour today was pretty bad....

When I started to record her uncooperativeness, it made it more bearable for me. I have vague memories of behaving like this myself when my mother was trying to help me. I'll have to ask my mom if my memory serves me right.

I told her we could stop after she got one answer correct BY HERSELF. Unfortunately, that would mean that she was going to have to actually pay attention and engage her brain and make her brain understand the concept at hand.

She finally did get one done by herself.

Then I let her take a break for a few hours. When we came back later, she was in much better spirits and that went a LOT faster! We even started to time ourselves on each question to see how long it took, and most of the chapter review questions were less than 60 seconds.

Good job Abi!

And now this memory is preserved her for you to show to your future daughter when you're helping them with homework.