Yesterday felt productive and positive (insert smiley emoticon, which I don't know how to do in Blogger!). Tamsin variously enjoyed play-dough, Stickle-bricks, Brio, and varied imaginative play (including one lovely scene of pretending to make a complete dinner with bowls, food, knives and forks and a drink - which were actually various boxes, candlesticks, magnetic letters and coins - and serving all of us including several toys).
She also requested a couple of workbooks, so we did a few pages of "Telling the Time" and "Letterland Building Words/Letter Blending". The latter was a test of my lack of patience -v- what I knew I needed to do. She perfectly recognises all the letters and knows all their sounds, and yet when I encourage her to tell me the letter sounds "p - i - g", which she does perfectly, and then ask "so that says ....?", she will respond "spade!" because there is a picture of a pig digging! Several other examples of the same thing occurred. When doing rhyming words I show her and teach "r....e....d says 'r...ed' ... which is ...?" "Red" she shouts, (I am thrilled!) and yet, then I point to "b" which she can identify and say, "so b...ed says ...?" and she shouts "blue!". Hmmm, methinks she's just not ready for this yet! I was rather impressed with myself that I managed to keep (externally) calm and patient and encouraging, rather than shouting "no .. don't be stupid!" as I was tempted to do! I kept it light and funny and kept checking with her whether she wanted to carry on or stop. She chose to carry on for about 20 minutes. I don't now how much of what she got right was just guesswork and fluke! Ah well, all in good time. From what others say, one day it will all just come together.
In the afternoon, we went swimming, which was Isabelle's first time! I was a bit nervous coping with holding Isabelle and therefore not being able to do much with Tamsin, and it was definitely more limiting and less fun than just with Tamsin on her own, but Isabelle took it all in her stride, with just a little bewilderment. Tamsin can't actually swim yet, and I don't use arm-bands or any other inflatable aids because I remember trying to learn to swim myself, and being terrified of losing the help of those things, and I think I was the last person in my class at school to learn to swim, at about age 8 or 9. It feels better to me for them to just gain confidence in being in the water without inflatable aids, and then they never have to learn to give them up. Although I can see that at this stage, with two of them to cope with, it would be much easier if Tamsin could swim about on her own instead of just bouncing along on her toes.
The day took a sad turn in the evening, when Bill had a call from his sister to say that their Mum probably hasn't got long to live. She is in her 80s and has been ill for a while, but there was some hope that she would improve. It's not looking that way now.
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2 comments:
Had to laugh at the blending troubles. Sounds just like our house! I suspect that the "experts" forget to tell you that there can be a huge gap between them learning the letter sounds and working out what to do with them. I keep telling myself that if I just keep planting seeds some day spring will come and I will have a little reader... sigh, happy thoughts!
Good on you with the no armbands! We did this with Becca and she was beginning to get the idea then for some bizarre reason I decided to enroll her for lessons, on went the armbands and bye bye went the confidence without them :o(
Sorry to hear your bad news. ((((all of you))))
sorry to hear about Bill's mum, too.
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