Dreamer

"Surely, I must be in the presence of greatness," I often tell myself while attempting to teach my third grader. "She has to be one of those type of people who don't fit the mold and yet change the world." Some days that gets me through. See, she has been blessed with her daddy's wonderfully imaginative mind. That typically means long, difficult school days filled with frustration. Writing is a chore. Staying on topic is work. Math is a bore and English is a waste of time. Much of the day is spent bringing her back from wherever she went in her head.

Now, don't get me wrong, she is brilliant. By the end of kindergarten she was reading ten-letter words all on her own. I pretty much taught her the letters and their sounds and she took it from there. She can spend half of a lesson totally uninterested and yet know all the answers. She loves anything that requires creativity, like music, art, and literature. She can finish a novel geared for children older than her in an afternoon.

This school year has really changed the way that I teach. Third grade has brought on more difficult work than we saw in second grade and a lot more book work. It took me a while but I think that I have learned the tricks that I need to know for helping my dreamer to learn. We often break up the book work. For example, she may do three lines of math problems, a cursive worksheet, three more lines of math, some English, and so on. When she gets real antsy she will take a break and jog around the yard or do jumping jacks. She is also very competitive. If left alone she could take all afternoon to do a few lines of math but if I time her it's a whole other story. We keep track of her best times and she is always trying to beat them. She loves history and science so I strategically time them for when I need to reign her back in. We have recently discovered lapbooking and it has worked miracles for us.

With all these tricks we still have bad days but it is so much better than it's been in the past. I have no doubts that if she were in public school they would want her on medication. She would be one of those tragic cases of a smart girl that was left behind. I am so grateful that homeschooling gives me the ability to see what she needs and to understand the way that she learns. I may say it tongue-in-cheek most days but I really do believe that she is a unique type of person and I fully expect her to go far.