Beautiful words, beautiful work

After our work today, Sean said, "I am a very lucky person, I am so lucky." I agreed, and asked what he thought made him so lucky. He said: "Because I have so much work."
That is what he calls his school lessons, his work. And to be so happy to have work to do is a beautiful thing to me.
We recently received our box of beads. I was quite excited because the possibilities are endless with that box of materials. He already knows the value of each bead bar from his time in school. He decided to pull out a bunch of different bars and give me a math problem. He had a lot of 10 bars, and a few of each of the rest, all the way down to the unit beads.

I turned it into a math problem for him by asking him for help.  He finally realized he was counting by 10s and quickly had that up to 100. Then it got tricky again, until at 120 he realized he was counting by 10s again. But he also had 9 bars, so we weren't counting by 10s anymore. He had to start adding 9 to the numbers, then 8, and we stopped at 325. He cut up little pieces of paper that I called "tickets" to make it fun, and he did the addition and I wrote the number on the tickets to place next to the bars. 

I was surprised at how long he stuck with it. Toward the middle of the work he decided to go to his thinking spot and have me tell him the amount and how much to add to it. So he sat there with no visuals, and it took patience on both our parts to do it that way.

At dinner tonight he said it can be very challenging when you don't have your mom to help, but he thought he could probably do it on his own tomorrow.

We left everything where it was and he will continue the work tomorrow.

Yesterday we went to a Meetup Group of homeschool families. I always hear that homeschooled kids aren't socialized, and even worried about it myself when I first made this decision. That meeting was packed with parents and kids. I don't really think the socialization that takes place in most schools is very healthy anyway. I'll save that rant for another post.
Today we had a play date at the park with Shane (my friend) and Jacob-Joshua. They use the Waldorf curriculum for homeschool.
Sean and Jacob-Joshua had a great time playing for a couple of hours. The weather was perfect, the park was so nice, and I enjoyed the break and some adult conversation with Shane. It was nice to talk about something other than work for a little while.

We were ready to leave and they decided to pose for a goofy-face picture.

This was a favorite for a little while.

Thanks for coming out to play Shane and Jacob-Joshua. We both had a great time and enjoyed your company very much!