Further resistance to the planned workload today. Sigh. Wouldn’t mind if I’d planned a lot, but I hadn’t. One practice of maths, some spelling for Big (working on recognising syllables in words), some reading for Small and then the Montessori Great Lesson on the Story of Life. I printed off a couple of versions of a time line with all the different eras on, and the script for the lesson, and was really looking forward to doing it with them both.
It didn’t work out that way. They both did maths – I went over the one question Small had got wrong in his last session to explain the processing with him, and then let Big know which ones she needed to look at again. That’s unfair apparently – I should have gone through it with her as well. Except I’m not sure how I’m supposed to go through 4 + 4 doesn’t equal 9, while his was to do with balancing and having weights on both sides, early algebraic stuff in other words, needing explanation.
But there you go. He did some reading, and she went off on one about the spelling I was asking her to do. I’ll gloss over the details, I’m sure you can imagine it. There were only 9 words, there were instructions on the sheet, I talked to her about what we are trying to achieve, and it all went horribly wrong.
Hohum.
So Small and I ended up doing half the great lesson together, right the way up to the first amphibians arriving on land. And he really got into it, although the full lesson would have been too much for one session – there’s a phenomenal amount of information in it. Will have to try to fit it in with Big sometime this week, although somehow we seem to have ended up with another very full week. Odd.
And that was the morning well and truly taken up. They amused themselves for the afternoon, while I sat and demangled myself, and then it was Beavers in the evening for Small. Somehow the day seemed to go by very rapidly.
Did discover that not going out for a walk is very bad for my legs and feet – my ankles were seriously swollen last night. With another 7 weeks to go of this pregnancy, I take this as quite a bad sign 🙁
Jax, I am autonomous because I have observed autonomous learning in my two teenagers over the years, and the quality of it and pleasure in it and ownership of it is something entirely different to anything learnt because someone else wants them too.
But if I hadn’t experienced this I would probably still be autonomous as I have bloody minded oppositional kids and in the end I would have had to accept that it was the only way they were going to learn. 🙂
Please do not take this as a criticism, I am very bad at motivating people and making things fun, it is said in sympathy.
Are you putting your feet up in the evening, I have been doing a lot of that lately.
Good luck .
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