August 9, 2020 (Sunday, Family Day)

Dear Diary,
 
Today is the ninth day of homeschooling for my seven-year-old son. He woke up at 10 am but we started at 11:30 am after he made the bed and had his brunch. 

We stated with the usual prayer and with identifying the date today. When he looked outside the window, my son found that today is a rainy day. He also sang the national anthem for practice and habit. In addition, we had a ‘word of the day’ starting today.

Reviewing what he learned about using the Dictionary app yesterday, I asked him to apply it in searching for the meaning of today’s ‘word of the day’. While he was trying to read the meaning of our vocabulary word for today, he was having difficulty and complaining that the text was too small and difficult to read. He requested that I enlarge it. But I could not enlarge the text unless I zoom. I showed him that he could just select the text then copy and paste it into his notes, before enlarging the text.

The text manipulation piqued my son’s curiosity. Whenever my son is naturally curious, I am elated and motivated to teach. He was curious about how I enlarged the text so I repeated the action and showed him how to select text and drag the selection using the mouse before showing him how to enlarge a text. Moreover, he was also curious about computer shortcut commands today so I taught him  and let him practice using the functions of:
- Command Z (undo)
- Command X (cut)
- Command C (copy)
- Command V (paste)
- Command I (italicize)
- Click Select and Drag
- Command + (enlarge font size)
- Command - (reduce font size)

Apparently, he was also curious about how to attach links to texts since he finds it fascinating that we could watch a YouTube video by simply clicking a link in ‘his notes’. So I also taught him that today. He was able to practice that thrice. All attempts were amazingly successful for a beginner. My son was a quick study with all things computer, I guess.

Due to learning computer commands and all other computer tricks, our ‘word of the day’ was delayed. It took my son one hour and five minutes to practice the computer commands and tricks he learned today. He really spends time with things he prefers to do. So when my son asked to do more link attachments, I had to refuse as it is going to be just a repetition of something that he already knows how to do. I asked him to move on to the ‘word of the day’ instead.

As we were trying to understand the meaning of our ‘word of the day’, I noticed that he is struggling with reading comprehension as well as with forming complete sentences. He also struggled in translating his thoughts from one language to another when we attempted to have a Tagalog version of the ‘word for the day’ and its sample sentence. This portion of today’s homeschooling took us a long time, not because he likes it, but because he is struggling with it. We spent 42 minutes on this.

We then proceeded to spelling drills again today for 15 minutes before having a quiz for 10 minutes. Unlike yesterday, he was performing and participating better today. As they say, there is always sunshine after the rain.

My son got a score of 9 out of 10 when I used words that were included in today’s discussion. I also realized that I have been unintentionally making it hard for him with the spelling words. It helped a lot that I used recently encountered words. I will definitely take note of this moving forward.

As everybody was hungry, we decided to have some snacks. Rainy days really make you go hungry far more often than regular sunny days. We resumed at 5:42 pm with learning how to properly mop the floor and knowing the people who earn a living by mopping the floor. 

Before I knew it, my son ran as fast as he could to the washroom in the middle of us watching a video about how to properly mop the floor. He quickly prepared the mop and came back bearing a soaked and soapy mop! I found it amusing and I couldn’t help but laugh. His shorts were also wet and the mop was bigger than he is.

I taught him how to wring the mop by itself and helped him dry all the water drippings from the washroom to the study nook. After that, we went back to watching the video and reviewed everything that was taught in the demo. We finished in just 8 minutes.

The next activity for today is playing Jack ’n Poy for MAPEH. My son called my husband to play with him. The latter enjoyed this simple hand game but my husband found it boring so he begged off. This lasted for just two minutes so we immediately moved on to drawing a dragon for arts. My son independently watched the YouTube video from Art for Kids Hub and followed it automatically. 

I was free to do other things for 13 minutes until my son gave up and asked that we continue tomorrow. Since it was already late in the afternoon, I agreed. Today’s subjects included:
- Computer
- English (Reading, Speaking, Spelling, and Writing)
- Technology, Home Economics, and Livelihood Education
- Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health

I finalized “his notes” for today and prepared the lesson for tomorrow in 38 minutes. That’s it for our ninth day!