248: good intentions

hey y'all. 

top of the morning and all that good stuff! 

i sure did mean to sleep until 10 this morning. but my subconscious mind played a trick on me. or maybe it was something bigger, a Universal conspiracy of sorts cuz i needed to be up early for some (as yet) unknown reason. 

any way, i forgot to turn off my daily alarm on my cell phone. and even tho the phone was on vibrate, it woke me up any way.  :-(  but i ain't mad at you God. 

i cleaned (most of) the bathroom, addressed a mess of envelopes that need to go out, remembered that baby bliss wants to go to Victoria's Secret to get the new Spice Girls CD, and remembered to make a Very Important reservation for tomorrow morning. 

i also had time to think about some home schooling stuff. i don't know if i mentioned this before, but baby bliss loves movies and music. with the same passion i have for reading and writing. so i've come up with a way to bond her favorites with the subjects she likes less (reading and writing). i found some book report templates online and morphed them into movie analysis worksheets; i'm about to do the same for music too. 

usually we do a lot of verbal work with these subjects, which was good because i've been able to document baby bliss's correct use of her ever-expanding vocabulary, her grasp of inference and innuendo, how well she pays attention to detail, and her evolving ability to logically assess contextual circumstances and predict outcomes. 

but the time has come for baby bliss to move in other directions. 

now she'll have to stretch her brain a little more and put it all on paper. i anticipate a little bit of resistance but not much. if she wants to continue watching her favorite movies during the week, she'll embrace the idea. :-) 

and it's not that she won't read or write. she likes reading and writing fiction (short stories) and has been known to dabble at poetry. i also stress the importance of sustaining long distance friendships by encouraging her to write letters to her friends back where we used to live. 

i proof and edit all her works (not for context or content, only for formatting, grammatical and punctuation errors) while we go over the rules for English grammar and punctuation, but baby bliss is responsible for making all corrections. 

sometimes one letter or story takes a few hours but it's okay. for us, home schooling is all about taking the time to get at least a basic understanding of one thing before we move on to the next. so i don't feel like i'm coercing her. i'm just helping her understand that movies and music can be tools for education as well as entertainment.    :o)