I Need a Powder

I'm freaking out about school. Not so much for FM#2, but the big one. The decision as to what to teach and how is getting more and more serious every year. We're jr. high now and only a couple of years away from "credits". Don't even mention dual-credit because, oops, see, I threw up a little bit in my mouth.

I've always struggled with Tapesty of Grace - using it to its full potential - which I haven't. I'm not a Fun Mom who does those oh-so-memorable projects which invariably involve sewing some sort of blasted costume - I don't sew. Or cooking some sort of gosh awful food. Have you read a medieval cookbook?

Ultimately, I want to give him writing assignments that correlate with IEW, but use his history reading because, let's face it, Tapestry's reading assignments don't leave much time to read anything else. But I can't. Maybe I'm genetically predisposed to not being able to think that way. I'm an engineer by training and we work with formulas, within parameters. I don't know. Maybe I should be able to do this. Add to that the fact that next year we really need to do Latin. And I hear people talking about Logic. And he needs to learn to type correctly and ouch, my head hurts.

Why is it that some moms seem to know exactly what to teach their children, the absolute best materials to use, and how to teach so their children will absolutely love it? It's like they've taken some super-secret course or something. On top of that, their children seem to love reading Beowulf and the Iliad in their spare time.

And I'm particularly talking about boys because I have a few over here. My big one acts like he deplores reading. I am tired of the TV this summer (already) and if they can't watch TV they want to be on the computer (I'm tired of that, too) so I made "A Rule!" that they had to read two hours everyday and we'd have very little TV and computer. That went over like a lead balloon.
"Aw, Mom!"

The middle one would read to me and I picked out two books for the big one to choose from, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Twenty-One Balloons.

"Mom! Those are boring. I tried to read that one and it was terrible! How about a Hank the Cowdog?"

Okay, says I. I figured I'd ease him into this slowly. First Hank, then the hard stuff, but "it has to be finished by Friday."

"FRIDAY?!"

So he mapped out how many chapters he needed to read each day (4) and determined it was doable. Like I said, he acts like he deplores reading. The whining. In actuality, he likes it. Once he's into a book he can't put it down. He read six chapters his first day and that was because I finally said, "Lights out."

So maybe I'd be more effective and sure of myself if it weren't for the whining. Do they ever stop that? It makes me think I'm doing something terribly wrong and surely I must be because all these other moms have children who love to learn and seem to do it with great zeal.

Seriously, my head hurts.