So let’s talk about the nice bits 🙂
Big settled quickly to her work again this morning – it seems possible that I’ve now found the right level of things to be working with her on both spelling and handwriting so she enjoyed it today. We did some work on a_e and ay words – I gave her lists and she tried to memorize them and write them out herself, and then she thought of a couple more words of each type. I pointed out that she’d used a capital B in the middle of a word and she said that that was because she’s never sure which way round that one goes, so it’s easier to use the capital to get the right one. Hm, that must be indicative of something surely? And then I printed her more jardotted stuff to write over, this time just the alphabet and we agreed that any time that she’s going to do some writing she’ll go over the alphabet first to help her remember how it works. Apparently the little arrows to show which way to write the letters really helps, as she doesn’t remember anyone ever showing her that before.
Am wondering if because she could already read and write she just skipped lots of the montessori starter stuff, and therefore doesn’t have the sound foundations on this any more than she does on maths. Sigh. Hoping that we’ll whip through it now we know what’s wrong anyway.
She did some maths as well, and then got stuck into the Nature Detectives autumn/ winter mailing, complete with lots of top trumps on fungus. By this time Small had come to join us, and he started with another telling time sheet, then did two maths practices (each was only a page long mind 😉 ) although he did at one point complain that his writing was too big to fit the answers on the page. At this point I discussed handwriting with him and printed him a sheet out and he’s decided he would like to learn how to form letters. I know he hasn’t learnt before, it’s all just been acquired as he’s gone along, but I also know that there’s never any point in trying to introduce anything before he’s interested in it.
Not sure how much of the handwriting he did before he got distracted by the top trump mushrooms 😉 They then went on to play cards for another hour or so 😀
Eventually got them organised and headed out to the park to meet up with local home educators. The car park was heaving – had to wait for a woman to leave before there was anywhere to park, but then again, it was yet another glorious day. There were lots of families in the play area, including a family with a 6 year old boy who would like friends of his own, which of course explains why he and Small headed for opposite ends of the play area and ignored each other for the hour they were both there. Sigh. Have had a bit of a chat with Small about that this evening, he was quite pleased with himself for making friends with a little girl there but she was just someone we bumped into and may never meet again, while A is someone that we are likely to meet on many occasions.
Lovely lovely afternoon in the sun and the children played in the water with only minor intervention needed, then we headed for home. I’ll gloss over the carpark which I’m going to blog separately, then when we got back home, the kids watched James and the Giant Peach from this collection
while Tim pampered me with tea and toast.
Children are now in bed and I’m trying to work out if there’s anything I fancy to eat.
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