It felt like another positive day today, despite not getting much underway till after 11am. Before that it was breakfast, showering (me), bathing (girls) (Jade loves baths and always wants one after I shower and stays in for ages!), second breakfast, Jade and I both spending ages reading the Bright Minds catalogue which arrived in the post and marking up various interesting-looking things, getting the dry washing in, the wet washing on the line, another load in the machine, and brushing a cushion's worth of fluff from the dog!
After that I persuaded her to have another go at some copywork she (deliberately) messed up yesterday, then she did a couple of pages from the Letts Maths (5-6) workbook, and then we had lunch!
I read some more chapters of "My Father's Dragon", and then we had a quick look at "Everyday Things" or whatever that Usborne book is called, which was a couple of pages about trees, then she answered a few questions about what we'd read.
Meanwhile Shannon spent a LOT of time turning the pages of the Sonlight Instructor Guide. For some reason, she finds this absolutely fascinating and can spend ages doing it!
I thought there was something else at that stage, some more reading or something, but I can't remember what. Whatever. Afterwards, we started carving our pumpkins!! I went online and found a free pattern that I liked (cat sitting on the moon, + stars), and Jade stayed with the traditional grinning toothy face. Both girls helped scoop out the gunk from inside - er, actually no they didn't because Shannon didn't like the feel of it and was wailing that it was 'gloddy' when she got some gloop on her arm and foot - a lovely word, I thought! She did help clean the top of the hob, though! Then I carved, and cleared up, and roasted pumpkin seeds, while they went off and played. The pumpkin seeds were ready, and none of us liked them - they were too woody.
By now it was around 4pm so I got the girls dressed (usual barely-clothed state most of the day) and we gathered up most of our library books and went to get a new batch, ready for being away next week. Then the girls watched more Tom & Jerry on DVD while I made dinner. Shannon took ages to fall asleep and I got cross with her, and Jade is still awake (10.45pm).
P.S. 2 soggy accidents today from Shannon plus 3 successful potty visits.
Oh, and FWIW, as a PS to yesterday Jade spent quite a while (with my help and encouragement) on Education City and I got her doing some of the literacy activities she hadn't done before and she did really well. She hasn't done any of the maths. No surprises there then!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Pants!
Yesterday, Shannon wore pants all day for the first time! relatively successfully! I think there was one 'accident' in the mid-afternoon but the rest of the time she did very well. And we even went out for the morning, to church. She is very good at using the potty/toilet when naked, but previously whenever clothed she would just assume she had a nappy on and use it! I decided to persist with the pants, though, and just keep checking/reminding her to use the potty.
Today hasn't been quite so good as she said she needed a poo but refused to go on the potty, or have a nappy on, so just made a horrid mess! I put everything she was wearing in the bin! Ah well, on the whole we're making progress of a sort.
I hadn't meant for last week to slip by with no 'work' going on, but with L-from-next-door round here most of the time it was difficult to get on with anything much. We decided to get back to it this morning, and I had just settled down with everyone on the sofa to get on with the story of Moses when the doorbell rang and there was L again! One of those dratted Inset days! Anyway, I just made her sit and listen too, and she and Jade both seemed to really enjoy the story, read from two different books, from Moses' birth all the way through to the Ten Commandments, all territory which we haven't covered before so that was good.
By then it was lunchtime! OK, so before the Moses stuff we had done some tidying, dancing, and general procrastination!
After lunch I had to do something about the dire lack of food in the house, so took all 3 girls to the local small supermarket where they were incredibly LOUD but at one point we all had a fit of the giggles so I thought that was an improvement on the demeanour of most people when shopping!
The rest of the afternoon the girls have played with another girl from across the road, mostly on the trampoline. In fact L and J just appeared downstairs naked except for towels wrapped round them and announced they were going to do a 'naked dance'! Sadly L's brother then called for her to go home for tea, so that delight will have to wait for another day!!
Today hasn't been quite so good as she said she needed a poo but refused to go on the potty, or have a nappy on, so just made a horrid mess! I put everything she was wearing in the bin! Ah well, on the whole we're making progress of a sort.
I hadn't meant for last week to slip by with no 'work' going on, but with L-from-next-door round here most of the time it was difficult to get on with anything much. We decided to get back to it this morning, and I had just settled down with everyone on the sofa to get on with the story of Moses when the doorbell rang and there was L again! One of those dratted Inset days! Anyway, I just made her sit and listen too, and she and Jade both seemed to really enjoy the story, read from two different books, from Moses' birth all the way through to the Ten Commandments, all territory which we haven't covered before so that was good.
By then it was lunchtime! OK, so before the Moses stuff we had done some tidying, dancing, and general procrastination!
After lunch I had to do something about the dire lack of food in the house, so took all 3 girls to the local small supermarket where they were incredibly LOUD but at one point we all had a fit of the giggles so I thought that was an improvement on the demeanour of most people when shopping!
The rest of the afternoon the girls have played with another girl from across the road, mostly on the trampoline. In fact L and J just appeared downstairs naked except for towels wrapped round them and announced they were going to do a 'naked dance'! Sadly L's brother then called for her to go home for tea, so that delight will have to wait for another day!!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Okaaaaaay.....
Don't know why I've been MIA, really. Been quite busy but also just got out of the habit of blogging, I guess.
I really don't think I've got this HE thing quite right for our family, TBH, but not really got time to work out anything much different to what we are doing. We have Sonlight K, which officially we started in January and we are currently on Week 6!!! Obviously we get very sidetracked. I've been trying to stick to it more recently, just to see what it's like to have a definite programme to follow and to see if it works for us, and I'm not sure that it does. We are doing a fair bit of non-SL stuff, e.g. Story of the World, and Miquon maths (which isn't listed in the schedule even though a maths programme is part of the SL plan) plus all sorts of other bits and pieces I have picked up here and there, and yet I feel a great pressure to do as much of the stuff listed for each day as possible, regardless of whether it's working or not. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this yet, except keep a kind of 'watching brief' on it. I do feel I'd like to get significantly further into SL K before dropping it. Maybe we will find a way of using it without me feeling so compelled to either follow it or feel as though we are 'behind'. I do feel it is helping us (Jade and me in particular) to get into the habit of sitting down and doing a bit of formal work each morning, and then I feel more relaxed about just letting the rest of the day unfold.
Anyway, after all of that preamble, yesterday we started some Miquon simple addition and subtraction. Now, we've done this a few times before, but there's been quite a gap since we last did much maths. It's amazing to me, though, that a girl age 6y who has a reading age of somewhere between 9 and 10 (last time I checked) has such trouble with very simple numbers. For example, at one point today I asked her 1 + 1, and it took her a good 5 seconds to work out the answer! After coming up against this problem yesterday, though, I got out the Cheerios to use as manipulatives. Maths is much more fun when you get to eat the answer when you get it correct! We were just doing very simple addition and subtraction up to 10. I think doing this for several days in a row just for 5-10 minutes at a time should help, and she enjoyed it so much yesterday that she actually asked to do it again today! She really does seem to find the simplest mental arithmetic surprisingly hard, though.
We then went on to do three pages of 'Beyond the Code', which she has no trouble with at all. We did a couple more pages of that today too.
At lunch time yesterday we continued with her current passionate love of all things horsey by showing her the 'Join Up' video with Monty Roberts, aka 'The Horse Whisperer' - the original! It's absolutely stunning, and I would have thought that even the non-horsey couldn't fail to be impressed and amazed at the man's learning of equine body language, and what he does with it. It always moves me to tears when a wild horse moves towards him to 'join up' with him - it really is almost spiritual and deeply powerful.
I also attempted to make her a 'woollie' horse (link supplied by Sally) which came out looking more like a giraffe, and she wasn't motivated to have a go on her own!!
In the afternoon we went out to do a bit of food shopping and visit the Post Office, and she nagged me into buying her a 'Pony World' magazine because it had a free 'angel pony' on the front, which she has played with ever since. After we got home, it was time for next-door-neighbour L to come round and play, so that was that!
Today we've done the Cheerios/miquon maths, a bit more Beyond the Code, I've read a library book 'Tarquin the Wonder Horse' and looked at a Trains book, both before we go to the library this afternoon and change them. I've also got her whizzing quite quickly through one of the free Letts workbooks picked up free through that St Ivel Advance Milk promotion - oh I see that all the free books have gone now but you can still get 50% off Letts workbooks. I got an age 5-6 one seeing as she finds it such a struggle, and also to check if we'd left any gaps in her early maths! She did 9 pages of that this morning, and most of it was pretty easy but there's nothing wrong with making her feel that maths is easy!!
Meanwhile, Shannon was sitting with us at the table, looking through her BBC Toybox magazine, doing a bit of colouring, a bit of playdough, and a bit of being a nuisance!
They're currently watching Tom & Jerry and we're off swimming this afternoon, and then to drop in to the library on the way home.
I really don't think I've got this HE thing quite right for our family, TBH, but not really got time to work out anything much different to what we are doing. We have Sonlight K, which officially we started in January and we are currently on Week 6!!! Obviously we get very sidetracked. I've been trying to stick to it more recently, just to see what it's like to have a definite programme to follow and to see if it works for us, and I'm not sure that it does. We are doing a fair bit of non-SL stuff, e.g. Story of the World, and Miquon maths (which isn't listed in the schedule even though a maths programme is part of the SL plan) plus all sorts of other bits and pieces I have picked up here and there, and yet I feel a great pressure to do as much of the stuff listed for each day as possible, regardless of whether it's working or not. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this yet, except keep a kind of 'watching brief' on it. I do feel I'd like to get significantly further into SL K before dropping it. Maybe we will find a way of using it without me feeling so compelled to either follow it or feel as though we are 'behind'. I do feel it is helping us (Jade and me in particular) to get into the habit of sitting down and doing a bit of formal work each morning, and then I feel more relaxed about just letting the rest of the day unfold.
Anyway, after all of that preamble, yesterday we started some Miquon simple addition and subtraction. Now, we've done this a few times before, but there's been quite a gap since we last did much maths. It's amazing to me, though, that a girl age 6y who has a reading age of somewhere between 9 and 10 (last time I checked) has such trouble with very simple numbers. For example, at one point today I asked her 1 + 1, and it took her a good 5 seconds to work out the answer! After coming up against this problem yesterday, though, I got out the Cheerios to use as manipulatives. Maths is much more fun when you get to eat the answer when you get it correct! We were just doing very simple addition and subtraction up to 10. I think doing this for several days in a row just for 5-10 minutes at a time should help, and she enjoyed it so much yesterday that she actually asked to do it again today! She really does seem to find the simplest mental arithmetic surprisingly hard, though.
We then went on to do three pages of 'Beyond the Code', which she has no trouble with at all. We did a couple more pages of that today too.
At lunch time yesterday we continued with her current passionate love of all things horsey by showing her the 'Join Up' video with Monty Roberts, aka 'The Horse Whisperer' - the original! It's absolutely stunning, and I would have thought that even the non-horsey couldn't fail to be impressed and amazed at the man's learning of equine body language, and what he does with it. It always moves me to tears when a wild horse moves towards him to 'join up' with him - it really is almost spiritual and deeply powerful.
I also attempted to make her a 'woollie' horse (link supplied by Sally) which came out looking more like a giraffe, and she wasn't motivated to have a go on her own!!
In the afternoon we went out to do a bit of food shopping and visit the Post Office, and she nagged me into buying her a 'Pony World' magazine because it had a free 'angel pony' on the front, which she has played with ever since. After we got home, it was time for next-door-neighbour L to come round and play, so that was that!
Today we've done the Cheerios/miquon maths, a bit more Beyond the Code, I've read a library book 'Tarquin the Wonder Horse' and looked at a Trains book, both before we go to the library this afternoon and change them. I've also got her whizzing quite quickly through one of the free Letts workbooks picked up free through that St Ivel Advance Milk promotion - oh I see that all the free books have gone now but you can still get 50% off Letts workbooks. I got an age 5-6 one seeing as she finds it such a struggle, and also to check if we'd left any gaps in her early maths! She did 9 pages of that this morning, and most of it was pretty easy but there's nothing wrong with making her feel that maths is easy!!
Meanwhile, Shannon was sitting with us at the table, looking through her BBC Toybox magazine, doing a bit of colouring, a bit of playdough, and a bit of being a nuisance!
They're currently watching Tom & Jerry and we're off swimming this afternoon, and then to drop in to the library on the way home.
Monday, October 15, 2007
The Mom's Overture
One of these days I will blog properly, honest, but for now, here's another one of these:
Monday, October 01, 2007
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