Saturday, May 29, 2010

Slowing down for summer

You can tell it's getting to be warm outside because we've been slowing down a bit with the lessons.  We're still reading at the speed of light because Red has been sick the past few days.  We finished The Boxcar Children in a flash and every other book in the library bag!  I think we'll probably read some of the other Boxcar Children stories at some point.  Right now we have The Red Fairy Book on hold at the library so that will probably be our next long term read aloud.

Reading lessons are finally going well.  We're at around Lesson 70 now in the Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading which is reviewing long vowels made by adding a silent E to the end.  There's no review during these lessons.  You're just supposed to focus on whether or not the child is getting that concept.  Thank goodness she seems to be getting it--- yay!  We're going at about two lessons per week in terms of pace and that seems to be working out just about perfect for her.  By the way --- I have firmly decided that My Little Pony puffy stickers can work miracles!  After we complete a lesson, she gets one (or two) and that seems to be a great motivator.

We're doing 1-2 lessons per week from Rightstart Level A.  There are some things she's getting (entering numbers on the abacus) and some things that she's not (combining two sets of tally sticks into one number), but we're definitely making progress.  We're up to Lesson 13 and I'm feeling pretty confident.

Then, there's writing.  I have to just keep telling myself that she is young and her fine motor skills aren't there yet.  Her grip (unless she's reminded to hold her pencil "like a princess") looks like a mangled claw, and counter clockwise circles (which are the building block of a lot of lower case letters) do not come naturally to her at all.  She doesn't like practicing writing either so I only make her do a couple of examples of each thing we're working on, which usually end up not looking very pretty.  I know we'll get there.  She's only turning 5 in a few weeks.  I know I need to take it easy and not worry about it.

And finally---I need to schedule time to do the things we really want to do together, like art, crafts, baking and games.  As we get into the summer months, I foresee us doing a lot outside.  I think one craft we're going to tackle is to make little markers for our herb garden that we're working on.  Last year we kept all our herbs in pots.  This year we're prepping an area to put them all in the ground.  I think it would be a lot of fun to paint either rocks or signs with the names of the herbs. 

Most importantly, I hope she's well tomorrow.  I'm finally well.  I want everyone else to be healthy too.  Crossing my fingers and saying a prayer...

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Reading Eggs

We're currently on a trial basis with http://www.readingeggs.com/ and Red LOVES it.  It seems to be a step up from http://www.starfall.com/ in that it doesn't allow you to have every word read to you.  She likes earning the eggs to buy things for her avatar (in her case, it's a fish with sunglasses wearing a cape).  She wants her next purchase to be a "gas blower" (i.e. a lava lamp)--- ha ha! 

We're four days into the new schedule and it seems to be going really well.  Today is supposed to be HS group/outing/game day.  Since I had my procedure with the doc today (it went well) not much happened until around 4PM when I was finally up and around.  She and I played Can Do Kangaroo and had a grand time until it was time for dinner.  Tomorrow is supposed to be Craft Day.  She wants to make chess pieces out of stuff you find outside.  She found it in a nature craft book we have out from the library.  And no, she does not know how to play chess.  This ought to be interesting...

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The New Plan

After getting suggestions on The Well Trained Mind forum ranging from bribe her to completely stop doing anything, I've decided on somewhere in the middle.  I bought a bunch of new art supplies (i.e. finger paint, tempera paint, colored pencils and crayons) and some stickers.  My new plan is to make each day of the week a theme day --- Monday is Art, Tuesday is Library, Wednesday is Baking, Thursday is Outing/Games, Friday is Craft.  So far this week we did a decorate a book bag craft at the library, went to story hour, finger painted, and baked banana bread.  We also managed to do one math and one reading lesson.  The strategy now is for now to do one 15 minute lesson each per week (with the reward of glittery Tinkerbell, puffy My Little Pony, or Dora stickers) or more if she asks.  She's only going to be in Kindergarten.  I need to focus most on play and habit training, followed by creative and imitation activities, THEN any academic work.  I think I (and a lot of other homeschooling parents from what I've seen) feel like their kid needs to be producing something in order to feel like their making progress.  It's just not the case.  We'll see how this goes.  The Tale of Despereaux has been AWESOME.  We'll probably wrap that one up tonight.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

And we press on...

I continue to be ill on and off.  I've been poked and prodded by doctors and will be poked and prodded more over the next week.  It has made "doing school" more difficult.  Not to mention, Red has been pushing back on the 15 minutes of reading and 15 minutes of math instruction we've doing on a daily or every other day basis.  I'm trying to decide right now whether to back off (she is pretty young still and I wasn't planning on doing formal lessons until she was 6 anyway) or forge ahead armed with stickers and M&Ms to entice her to do it.  The temporarily abandoning ship plan and starting summer early is looking more and more appealing as my illness goes on.  We'll see how it goes. One area that is going great is reading aloud.  She will listen to involved chapter books (e.g. we just finished Through the Looking Glass!) with no problem  We just started The Tale of Despereaux and she begged for one more chapter TWICE.  I posted to the Well Trained Mind forum an S.O.S. on what to do.  I'm hoping to get some opinions that will help me decide our next steps.