Joyfully Educating Mi'ita

My friend reminded me that learning is supposed to be joyful. Anything learned by cramming down the throat is not worth the pain, nor is it well retained. That is much easier to do when you have more patience than that of a gnat.

We had a good day today. Mi'ita woke up under the weather, so I was going easy on her. I think we got more done today than we usually do, so perhaps going easy on her is the ticket. I forget that as smart as she is and as well as she reads and understand concepts, she's still a kid. We need to include the arts and crafts. Our first lesson of the day was art, and we sketched her bearded dragon. The last thing we did was build jello models of both an animal cell and a plant cell. Then ate one. Yum, yum.

I also let her watch two Magic Schoolbus videos. The books are good kid science. The videos are crap, in my humble opinion. There are good things to learn via television, but you certainly have to pick and choose. We watched half of a show on human genetics today, and that was definitely worth the modified brain waves.

We went to the library today, too. Every week I make her pick out 1 poetry book, 1 biography, 1 science book, 1 history book (ancient history right now), 1 novel, 1 nonfiction video, 1 art book, 1 folktale/legend/myth, plus whatever else she wants. Since she reads at the adult level, I was picking out for her simple adult books with lots of pictures. Mistake. She likes the format of children's nonfiction and the bite-sized information. She is getting quite good at finding her own materials now, using the catalog and call numbers. I didn't have to help her at all this time, and it was only our second trip. She made good choices, too. I really can't get her to read anything that I suggest, unless I am totally nonchalant about it and really and truly don't care if she reads it or not. She is such a contrary child.

Since we were going at a relaxed pace and had included lots of breaks in the way of free reading time and Magic Schoolbus videos, we went all day until dinner time. We still didn't get Latin in, nor did we walk the dog. She did write a fabulous story about her lizard, though, and spent a good hour on it. We'll see how much I can get her to revise it tomorrow. She wants to build a blog of her own writings, so we'll publish it on the web. http://storyperson1234.blogspot.com/

All in all, a good day.