Summer Faith Adventure Day 3

Day 3 began my turn to host and teach the Holy Heroes Summer Faith Adventure.

One classroom management problem we had been having was keeping the children sitting on the couch during the video lessons from leaping, jumping, climbing on each other, tickling, poking, shoving, and generally participating in mayhem. I thought about it and remembered myself being in Kindergarten and having my own carpet square to sit on. So, each child was given a carpet square or pillow to sit on and they weren't allowed off. It helped the problem quite a bit!

Another idea I tried today was giving sticker rewards to encourage more participation in answering questions. Each video lesson is followed by the teacher asking questions. Last time, one child kept answering all the questions and the other three were mostly very quiet.

So, this time I bribed them.

I started the day by handing out their very own small envelopes on which I had written their names (oooo, their own names!) in which to collect stickers. Another change I made was that, before watching each video lesson, I would ask them the questions ahead of time and tell them to listen for key words. Then I led them in the questions and handed out stickers for giving even close to the right answer and I started getting fabulous answers! Then when we would ready ourselves to watch another video lesson, the kids would ask eagerly, "Will there be more questions for us to answer?" Now my new so-called problem is that all four kids are shouting over each other to give me answers.

I feel extremely pleased that my idea encouraged so much more participation, but I simultaneously feel like a bit of a failure because I'm having to resort to out-and-out bribery to get the kids to learn, and maybe that is a bad thing. I don't know, it's a difficult philosophical point! Are children supposed to be born wanting to learn every subject we adults feel they should know, or are we to teach them over the years to love learning for learning's sake? I'm sure an unschooler at heart and a traditional schooler could have a good discussion about this!

The snack today was soft pretzels because pretzels are traditionally Lenten (being made of flour and water) and are the shape is of "praying hands." Unfortunately, the above pretzels look underdone because they are underdone, my having read the recipe wrong and cooked them 100 degrees too low.

 For our craft, we made prayer books, and above is Mary's finished product.

 Grandmom helped occupy Margaret and Caleb, which made the morning easier for the mommies.

The outdoor game was called Protect the Priest and was a version of Dodge Ball. 

Immediately the 3- and 4-year-olds did not want to play because the game involved throwing (soft!) balls at each other.

My fellow mommy teacher and I have decided that--after three days of failed efforts to get the kids to want to play the games--our children are just too young to understand the rules of the games. So, we will simply give them some outdoor free play time to run off energy . . .

Of course, I am not sure if anyone will want to play in our back yard again after what melodrama happened next!

John was playing in one corner of the yard when he came running to me, weeping, and showed me two pinprick holes. I said he must have been playing in the rose bushes and he told me, no, he had just been playing when suddenly "I began hurting so much!"

That is when I noticed the very much alive wasp crawling on the back of his shirt and I began trying to flip it away, causing John to ask what I was doing. "Oh nothing, just hold still," I tried to sound calm. I finally whacked the wasp off and crushed it to death (those exoskeletons are strong!), and then let John know he'd received his first sting.

And that is how we had the homeschooling lesson that wasps do not lose their stingers when they sting, which is why they can sting over and over again.

Poor John was hysterical, we took him inside, all the girls followed, watching agog with concern until I shooed them away. Tylenol, Benadryl, an ice pack, and two episodes of "Dinosaur Train" later, and John felt a bit better and is now napping.

We live in a woodsy area with plenty of bumble bees, wasps of several types, and cicada killers (harmless but terrifying looking), so I'm not sure the kids will be eager to play in our yard any time soon!