Homeschooling has been rewarding, and Kendall is doing much better than he was in public school. I attribute this to keeping focus on the fundamentals such as Bible, Math, Grammar, Science, Reading, History, and Writing.
At some point it got into my head that I should be doing more. Why? Because that's what I do. I always want more and more and more. Yes, I am an overachiever. I always want to do everything, and if someone doesn't think I can't do it, then I want it even more. So I thought, "I want to teach him Latin. What's one more thing?"
So I purchased the Latin stuff. A few weeks ago, we started doing Latin. It has become the thing that we put off and put off. We are now about 5 lessons behind. It's not that it's difficult, it's that this "one more thing" has become the thing that has fallen off my plate onto the table.
Aside from Latin being the thing we put off, another thing came to pass that pushed me further on toward my revelation. I was grading papers (mostly Grammar & Math) and noticed that Kendall was not doing as well as I expected on his work. So why should he be doing something extra if he's not performing well in the fundamental classes? He shouldn't.
One of the things about public school that I hate is that they send ALL the kids to Spanish, Art, Music, etc.. Even if they are in 4th grade but read at a 1st grade level. Now, someone please explain to me how 40 minutes of Spanish is better than them spending 40 minutes working on their reading? I digress...
I realized that I was doing the same thing. I was doing it because I thought it would be neat. So, for now, we are going to stop Latin. I may go through the curriculum and modify it so that it can be incorporated in spelling, but that seems like a lot of work at the moment. All in all, it's not more important than fundamentals.
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