I have to praise these workbooks we got

I found some workbooks at Borders book store about a month ago and I just have to let you know how much my kids love them. They are made by the same people who make Hooked On Phonics, and they come with the same poster/sticker system. I bought all three books, as I’m not real sure what the youngest knows or is ready for yet. We got Hooked On Pre-K, Hooked On Kindergarten, and Hooked on 1st Grade. I’m hoping they come out with a hooked on 2nd grade before the oldest is finished. These books are only math, language arts, and logical type problem solving/puzzle sections. But I love how enthusiastic the kids are about them. The Hooked on Pre-K has a coloring section which allows for her to get stickers (in the book and on the poster) while I read their history lessons and go over the answers with the older one. She feels like she’s participating and getting rewards. Definite bonus. Before I had a coloring book which was her “school book” that she’d “work” in while the older one and I went through History and Science together. I even bought some stickers for the pages she finished, but this system just makes her so much more happy about it all. I’m only interested in them loving to learn and them getting their basic skills learned and set in their brains for the future.

My son sort of lost his enthusiasm for learning about the time he started school. His dad and I were divorced by then, and I was left out of the loop (since I chose to let him stay in his familiar house and live with his dad) and never got any reports from school. As he got older, he just got worse. Aside from reading a Calvin and Hobbes or Far Side book (not that they are really what I’d consider “books”) he’s not read anything voluntarily in um…oh wow…ever. I’m trying to save the girls from losing that love of learning. He was so enthusiastic as a young child, it makes me want to kick some teachers ass for killing his spirit. And not only for him, but for me as well. I remember being yelled at for having finished my whole text book in the first week of school (yeah, I’m a total geek) because it made the other kids feel bad. Um…it’s not my fault they were interested in other things. Of course, as a child, it’s traumatic to be told by a teacher, in front of your whole class, that you did something wrong…that doing all your text book lessons in one week was BAD…that learning quickly was a BAD THING!! It shouldn’t be any wonder that I have no respect for the public school system. And I found out that my son was being subjected to that same ass backwards way of thinking when it was almost too late. I think moving him to a better school system and then pulling him out completely, when we moved to this state, to homeschool him was the only way he didn’t end up completely beaten down.

He still didn’t do incredibly well. He was a grade A con artist by then…could get out of doing a lesson in less than 10 seconds and leave me thinking I’d done something great. Now he’s living on his own though and he’s found out that he can’t do that any more. It’s quite a shock to the little shit.

Well, I’ve had a long day and I’m exhausted.

See ya!!