My eight year old, unlike my other children, needs to be cajoled, coddled, and complimented into learning. I don’t cajole, coddle or compliment well. Her grades are good but it just seems more difficult to get there.

All the children have finals this week, starting with Religion and English on Wednesday.

Here’s the timeline of the past week:

Thursday: The study guide comes home. We jump right in. They sit at the kitchen table memorizing and I quiz them. Some right. Some wrong. But it’s the first day. The eight year old got many right but she called the Assumption of Mary the “Intention of Mary.” I corrected her and she nodded her head.

Internal thoughts: I’m an awesome Dad. Prepared. Organized. Awesome.

Friday: We’ve got an hour to kill before going to the church fair so I announce that we should all take out our study guides. Groans. But they all sit at the dining room table and chat a little but mostly study. I quiz them and they’re doing great. We get to Mary’s feast days for the eight year old and she’s rattling off the Solemnity, Mary’s birthday, the Immaculate Conception and then she says, “The Inception of Mary is on August 15th.”

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