Homeschooling Monday

Math - Ratios. Zoe grasped ratios very easily.

Language Arts - Four part diagramming of a sentence, Latin stems in Caesar's English, reading aloud and discussing four poems.

Japanese - Katakana

Music - more practice of voice and piano for upcoming recitals and talent show. (Zoe is pretty stressed about the song she is singing in the recital. It is very difficult and she is sometimes having a doom and gloom attitude about being able to perform it with a recording of the accompaniment. Last Monday she cried on the way home from her music class and then she told her father it was "a catastrophe!" *jeez* I am trying to be understanding, validating, as well as positive and motivating. I think she is going to do great. But I guess the real issue is how to help her feel more in control of her situation.)

Science - Making circuits with wire, light bulbs and batteries. Diagramming and labeling circuit parts and whole. Explaining the uses of the parts of a circuit.

History - The Spanish explorers head north into North American looking for gold. Reading, answering questions, filling in map, making a profile of Esteban.

Reading - Julie of the Wolves

*update*

Music Lesson - I thought it was a good lesson but Zoe had a bad attitude afterwards.

So I finally had enough with the defeated negative attitude about this song. For the past 3 weeks I have been walking the fine line between validating her feelings, soothing her fears and inspiring her to have confidence in herself.

Zoe has confidence in herself like 95% of time. But other other 5% does the whole 'I CANT do this! I CAN'T!" like a normal kid. She pouts and glares and is totally self-defeating. And that is all it is... she is defeating herself. Because there is nothing that Zoe hasn't been able to do. She did this for bike riding, for swimming, math at one point, playing baseball, learning kanji, piano at one point, etc.

What is it? What is she feeling? She seems to get overwhelmed. She gets totally wigged and can't think straight, loses all confidence, start catastrophizing, etc.

I have always tried to have homeschooling be challenging for Zoe. I think it kind of is. But she still usually gets everything right anyway. It is not like she is doing 5/6th grade work and getting C's. YKWIM?

But certain things "trigger" this feeling of being overwhelmed. And it is not always the same thing. Mostly all these things - math, piano, voice, learning new things are happy and exciting for Zoe. I haven't figured it why certain times trigger and others don't.

But today I told her that I am tired of the attitude. I told her that singing is supposed to be fun. This isn't fun. If she wants to perform then she is agreeing to certain amount of practice and to doing her best. If she can't do that without a big cranky 'tude then she can stop performing, AFTER this performance since she has already committed to this.

I told her I understand she is feeling kinda worried because the song is hard. I told her that I want to be understanding and loving and helpful but that I am not going to be all that and also her target for angry glares and complaining. This is her thing, not my thing. And if she wants to keep performing the attitude needs to stop.

I said some more things and then I turned up the radio and drove to Target. I could hear her crying in the back seat. I gave her time to think about it.

Once at Target we made up. She said that she wants to keep performing and I said I want to help and support her.

I know that one talk hasn't fixed everything. She will do this again. But I really do want to figure out how she can help herself through this because when she grows up I wont be there to walk her through her valley of fear. Any advice?