and the home ed part of it all

Now, I know it’s Sunday. I know it’s a day of rest for many. I know that my children don’t know that, and one of the things they’ve never got around to learning is that education is supposed to happen 9 -3.30, Mon-Fri, within the walls of a school. I’m quite pleased about that actually.

So today they taught themselves more maths, using the counters from our Make N Break game (which unfortunately now has a broken timer, guess I shouldn’t have let Small play with it after all 🙁 ) Big is now pretty comfortable counting up in 10s – I had done some stuff with her ages ago on it, but she cracked it completely this week in school. And she’s happy adding units on as well, so that area of maths is coming along nicely.

I caught Small sitting watching Dora, and reciting his numbers along to the tv, and I’ve heard him counting things a few times this weekend too. I’m not sure how far he can count, but I definitely heard up to 5. Was blown away when he continued to join in when they started to speak Spanish though, a month ago this child had fewer than 10 english words and was very reluctant to try to say anything, now he’s speaking Spanish???

The speech is rocketing along now. We’ve got sentences, names, verbs, pronouns. A lot of it is still very unclear, with several completely missing consonants, but he’s pretty patient with us, and backs up important stuff with signing, 😉 so we’re getting there. I’m loving being able to talk to him though.

They spent some time on the puter this afternoon when I finally got CBeebies working for them, and we did more painting. Small’s ambition appears to be to put enough paint of to his paper to cause it to completely dissolve. He nearly succeeded today as well! Big’s artwork is changing almost daily, and I’m very much enjoying watching it evolve. Her other big challenge today was her writing – she’s desperate to write joined up, but as she can barely print, it’s not coming along particularly rapidly. I suggested that practise might help, but she’s a bit allergic to that concept.

The other thing she wants to do is read her Rainbow Fairy book, Jasmine the Present Fairy She is afraid it’s going to take her a month though, and again, all I can suggest is practise. Am I missing a trick here, is there any shortcut I can help her with? I’m thinking not, it’s just about trying and doing, she’s got all the basic skills, so I can’t do for her any more.

Right, the bug which has laid me low most of the weekend still has a fairly strong hold, so I’m off to bed. I’ve already decided that I’m not up to the drive in the morning, so I’m either going to ring in sick or do some work from home for a couple of hours, whichever they prefer really. Hopefully that should finally shake it off, and I can pick up the week properly on Tuesday.