Stuff, Stuff, and more Stuff

Interesting title, huh? I'm sure it just makes you want to jump in with both eyes and read away!

Today is Declan's first sick day! Poor guy woke up this morning with a bit of a fever and said he had a sore throat. Actually what he said was, "Mom? Can I have something soft for breakfast because my throat is sore?" and while I assurred him that I would make some Malt O Meal for him, he told me all about how he had repeated "soft food, soft food" over and over to himself to remind himself to ask me about that when he got up. So he has been on the sofa all morning, watching all manner of videos and generally feeling punky. I know he's feeling punky because he's only gotten off of the sofa once to go the bathroom. And that's a big deal, because he's usually one energetic boy! Usually his "sitting on the sofa" is accompanied by rolling around and turning upside down and eventually getting up and playing some type of superhero game in the livingroom.
He did watch Leap Frog Math Circus, so I guess that could "count" as school. Somehow that seems a little too militant for though; it is just Kindergarten, after all. Now, if he'd been watching The Talking Physics Factory for an 11th grade credit, it would be a whole 'nother story!

I'm realizing how very differently I'm approaching Kindergarten for Declan than I did for Reilly. For her, virtually everything was fun, fun, fun. Games for everything, writing letters in playdoh and shaving cream, doing tangrams and patterning blocks and all kinds of stuff like that.
For Declan, it's not so much all of that. In a typical day, he'll come in, do a handwriting page or two in his Handwriting Without Tears book, do a page in his Math U See Primer book, and do a lesson from The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading. Then he's done for the day. When we do science and history on Tuesday and Thursday, he does those with us as much as he can, and really seems to enjoy the way it's going. I give him breaks as needed, usually after we've done science or history because those things take a lot longer, but oftentimes he just works through his stuff without complaining at all and then goes off to play until Reilly is done. Sometimes I worry that he's not getting all the bells and whistles that Reilly got with kindergarten, but then I think that, heck, if it's not broken, why fix it? I'll save the bells and whistles for sometime when he does get bored!

I will say that I've already had several conversations with Reilly about why Deco gets to go off and play while she has to stay at the table and work. It's hard to explain the difference between kindergarten and third grade, especially when she conveniently doesn't remember that she got to do all manner of fun stuff in kindergarten!

Here are just some pictures of waaaay back on our first day of school on the 18th. We didn't have pancakes this year, per my usual tradition because I didn't have the stuff to make pancakes and my kitchen was about to be condemed by the health department. That's what they get for surprising me by wanting to start school early!