August 7, 2020 (Friday, MECQ)

Dear Diary,
 
Today is the seventh day of homeschooling for my seven-year-old son. Even though we woke up at 8:30 am, we just started at 12:40 pm because I wasn’t feeling well.

One of my life coaches told us that whenever you feel under the weather, you should take a bath. The water will refresh you and just focusing on the bath will relax your mind. I did that and true enough, I felt better.

I tried warming up by making our bed. My son would usually be the one to make it for the past few days. But we know that realistically speaking, a child can never perfect the task for now. So once in a while, adults should make sure that the sheets are really still in place.

After making the bed with my son, I went on to fold our laundry and repair some clothes by sewing them with my portable sewing machine. Then I had the idea that I could multitask. So I called my son to start the class.

He started his PC and opened his notes. He also updated the day and date today. After that, he identified the weather and noted that today is a rainy day. Next, he sang the national anthem along with the YouTube version I made. I realized that I shouldn’t force him to memorize it so soon since we will be singing it every homeschool day that we will have.

While he was singing along to the national anthem, I noticed that he was as antsy as yesterday so I made sure to kindly teach him that as we should behave while praying as a sign of respect for God, we should also behave when singing the national anthem in respect to the Philippine flag. I am glad that he quickly stood still and stopped moving around.

As we weren’t able to finish discussing our video for Values Education yesterday, I asked him to watch the video again with the intent to understand so we could discuss after. He did this while sipping some hot soup on this rainy day. The volume of the video was not enough to audibly hear it even when maxed up due to the noise of the heavy rain. But my son persistently listened to it nevertheless. This took him 30 minutes since he replayed some parts which he cannot hear well. 

After he successfully finished watching the video, we discussed the story and the lessons it brings. We spent 10 minutes trying to make sense of the story, its characters, the sequence of events, and the moral lesson. 

Math came next and we discussed the days of the week and their order in both English and Filipino. We tried to discuss and memorize this for 30 minutes before he asked to just review it tomorrow. He expressed his desire to take a shower and I let him do so.

After a 50-minute break, we resumed our study at 3:05 pm and discussed Filipino (Pagbabasa and Pagbabaybay). After 20 minutes of reading and spelling drills, he said that he was ready to take the quiz even though I knew he wasn’t. He wanted to get things done and over with and I do not want to encourage this carefree attitude and the carelessness with preparation for quizzes. 

Carelessness and a lack of preparation can spell the difference between success and failure even as an adult. It could make or break you. It could even let you lose a job. I wouldn’t stand by and let my son acquire this bad habit.

Therefore, I intentionally waited for any mistakes that he will commit so I can use them to point out that carelessness is bad. I have included two long words which he spelled incorrectly in the same quiz before. He got them wrong again this time and I found the perfect opportunity.

I told him that I can see those two wrong answers again and I will punish him if he cannot spell them correctly this time. He got alert upon hearing the word ‘punish’. I gave him a chance to identify which letters are wrong in those two words. I let him work on it albeit painstakingly until he got them right. This caused him to spend 35 minutes on the quiz today instead of the usual 10 minutes. I explained that had he studied his spelling well, he wouldn’t have misspelled those words and he would have finished earlier as he usually did.

Once I am certain that he has learned his lesson and that he has retained the correct spelling of those words in his memory, I let him take the quiz game on Nihonggo for as long as he wants, which lasted for 45 minutes. He was in such a hurry leveling up that he forgot the importance of learning. I guess I will have to explain to him to take it slow next time. We might move from game setting to study setting.

Today’s subjects included:
- Values Education
- Mathematics
- Filipino (Pagbabasa, Pagbabaybay at Pagsusulat)
- Other Languages: Nihonggo

We are finally caught up. I finalized “his notes” for today and prepared the lesson for tomorrow in one hour and 15 minutes. That’s it for our seventh day!