Logan's Attention Span

Logan has an amazing attention span.  We've always known it.  When he was only a couple of months old, he'd sit still for up to an hour looking at just a couple of pictures in a book.  When he was a little older, he'd sit for hours being read to.  At 17 months, he watched all of Ben Hur without moving (the 4 hour, very adult movie with Charleton Heston).  His endurance for storytime is limitless.  He sits still in Primary and listens to all of sharing time.  When he finds a project he's interested in, he works on it and works on it and works on it.  He follows every word of our conversations (watch out for questions!) and doesn't tire of working out explanations.

Last week, he outdid himself, though.  He pulled out a lego set that he hasn't played with in at least a year because it was too difficult to do by himself.  He started working on it at noon.  At 5pm, he was still working on it, but was finally getting frustrated.  (He hadn't been convinced to follow the instructions when I pointed them out.)  So he took it all apart, even though he'd made significant progress, and started all over again with the instructions.  At 9:30pm he finally finished it.  During that time (12-9:30) he probably spent less than an hour in forced meal breaks.  Otherwise, he was focused.  He was SO proud of himself.  We were SO amazed that he worked so long and hard on it.   

Read This!

Today my attention was drawn to this speech given by John Taylor Gatto:

http://4brevard.com/choice/Public_Education.htm

There is a lot to think about in there, and wow am I glad I homeschool!  I don't have time to comment anymore on it (my thoughts aren't organized enough at the moment to do so anyway) so that's all I'll say.

(I highly recommend his book, Dumbing Us Down.  It's a very insightful and easy read.)

Back At It

We had a nice Christmas break and did nothing school-ish aside from reading as a family.  We didn't exactly plan a break, but we never have kidschool on days when Jim is home...and since he had a week and a half off, they did too.  Add to that two months of pregnancy/ miscarriage related sickness, exhaustion, and other related symptoms, and these kids have had quite a few other 'break' days recently.

So I'm happy to announce that I'm back at my normal energy levels and kidschool is a daily thing again.  It feels good.