Been a long day
We’re trying to get back into a bit more of a regular routine now L is settling down and the schools are going back and there’s no one around in the day for M to play out with. A works shifts, so we have one routine for when he’s on normal days and another for when he’s on evenings, like this week. The idea is we get more stuff done because we all know what we’re supposed to be aiming for and don’t work at cross purposes.
Home ed wise, we expect M to get a certain amount of maths and phonics done each day (he’s such a perfectionist the regular practice and routine of doing it every weekday help, but getting going again after a break is hard!) and then the rest of the day is a mix of keeping on top of housework, doing purposeful activities together (i.e. not vegging in front of Recess) and also some TV and PC time, as well as playing out, going out to places etc. I thought we’d have a fairly easy go of things this week and get back into the routine gently, so for maths I got M a sticker book about times tables (which we were working on before L was born) and for phonics we were only reviewing phonograms (cos I’ve forgotten loads so I expect M will have too). Maths started off well, chatting about square numbers and M could remember alot of that. We moved onto the 6 times table and got wobbly at 5x, with protests that it was all too hard. I took L for a wee and said to M to get himself together to continue when I came back, which he did. Then in his sticker book I asked him to do a couple of pages of 2, 4 and 6 times tables and he had a meltdown over 4x4. I don’t actually care if he knows them well at the moment, but I do expect him to apply himself and concentrate for the short amount of time he is working on maths. He’d already told me 4x4 was 16 doing the square numbers and again about 5 mins before, but then all of a sudden he just “couldn’t work it out” and couldn’t even count on 4 from 12. Grrr… if he would just calm down and concentrate it would take no time, but he seems to think if he makes a big fuss we’ll let him off and turn the TV on. Hopefully within a day or two it will calm down. It doesn’t help that A gets really frustrated at him and we all end up cross.
The phonograms went somewhat better. We use The Writing Road to Reading which breaks words into 70 phonograms and teaches all the sounds for each phonogram along with spelling rules about how they are put together into words - sounds more complex than it is. They were fine orally and we went back over some of the phonograms with several sounds, and stuck with the simpler ones (didn’t get into the ow/ou/ea/ie etc ones with multiple sounds). But we got to the written review and he had a wobbly about writing and then couldn’t seem to get a grip on writing the letters decently. Again, I guess it’s just getting back into it.
Then M went out to help A do some stuff and we had lunch. In the afternoon we went to baby clinic to get L weighed (only cos I want to put it in his baby book, he’s obviously growing in size and heaviness and I try to avoid the HV cos there’s nothing that worries me) and then out to get some shopping.
M and I read Truman’s Aunt Farm together when we got back and he wrote a short letter to his auntie. Then he practised his tap dancing for a bit. His class starts again on Saturday and he’s moving up to Intermediates, but he was only just coping with the tap part of his last class (he easily manages the modern) and the new class is more advanced. So he practised his shuffles and ball changes and I’ll encourage him to practice each day this week to try and get back up to speed a bit.
We had salad for tea and watched The Secret Garden together. We’ve listened to a couple of versions on cassette in the car and had it on video a few months ago. This version wasn’t particularly close to the story, so that was a bit disappointing, though at least Martha was a more realistic age for a housemaid this time. Got M off to bed and since then I’ve been tidying (a bit) and surfing (a lot!) and waiting for L to fall asleep (now on the sofa while I finish this).
