Other Challenges

Sorry I've been MIA. I was hit with another week of low energy. I'm starting to see an improvement in myself with extra rest and more attention to healthy foods - but I'm still wiped everyday past 1pm. But, it doesn't damper my enthusiasm for our school day - even when it is a rough day. It still amazes me how excited I get seeing the learning happen  in person.

We had some more rough days after a really good week, mostly over motivation. Our learning time with core work started to lengthen again, and I was finding myself being a constant cheerleader rather than seeing her be more independent. It was/is mostly over phonics/grammar work. I always let her pick how our day goes (do we start with Math, or Language Arts after prayer/pledge/calendar time?). She always picks L.A. and starts with MCP (her phonics book) which is the only two pager book work (not a lot of "playing around" or doing hands on with this unless I decided to go method learning for this, which I have not jumped to yet - I need more time to research). I think she picks it because she wants to get the hardest/least favorite out of the way. But OH, those two pages can go on and on and on....!

Anyways, just this Tuesday it hit me (it only took me 2 months) - "Let's start with her easiest core work!". So, she did...and it made everything fly! Since she started with things that came easily (I picked spelling, then moved up from there) her phonics flew!  She finished LA in about an hour (that's in total - all areas) usually it's over 1 hour and a half or more...not including any real reading for fun or out of her core books. She stalls, gets water, talks to me, drops her pencil on the floor...). By the end of our core work in total (all subjects) we were at 2.5 hours. I'll have to see if we repeat that tomorrow (Today we did enrichment and other projects) to further test the hypothesis. 2.5 hours gave me PLENTY of time to do more reading practice with her, cuddling up with books, more hands on applications, cooking and measuring, etc. More of the the "stuff" that gets her turned on to learning.

Keep in mind, she still seems to love home school and tells me so, and we are not fighting over things - things just dragged, and could make our talk "testy" during Language Arts. Motivation is just a constant work in progress. Task persistence is not one of her strong points (also noted by her teacher last year), and I want to stay positive and figure out how best to help her and preserve our relationship.  

Now, in math (her favorite!) we've hit a topic she's struggling with - seeing how to make numbers from tens and ones. She can name the place values - but is struggling with MAKING them and counting out tens from a large group of objects and telling me how many tens she has grouped and then ones left over (For example, two groups of 10 and 7 ones makes 27) . Singapore Math presents things fast, and she obviously needs more practice and repetition hands on before she does more mental math so we are just practicing with lots of manipulatives and putting things in groups before moving on to the next step (adding/subtracting the groups). If I failed to write any of that clearly, my next post will have pictures.

Aside from these two bumps in the road...we also had a great week last week. I'll post that separately too.

One step at a time, my friends!!! One step at a time...and I'm being taught too!