Sean finished Algebra book 6 today, doing well on the final test and telling me that his brain was working well today. I noticed it too; he was going on all burners. Neither of us can predict when his good days will be.
Kieron did two lessons of Saxon today which brings him up to lesson 30. I like the strategy in the book Right Brained Children — to jump past a step when you are getting bogged down (OK, that is a paraphrase). Anyway, it worked for us. We were feeling sort of uninspired by the plodding through Saxon so I did a sweep through two chapters a day then skipped a day then two more chapters. It worked and actually seemed to brighten up both our outlooks on math. He even volunteered to do a math drill on the computer. We are up to measurement and that is pretty fun and easy for him anyway — clocks and thermometers and speedometers and things. I think we may spend some math time either collecting some “real life number lines” or making some sort of measurement lapbook. Maybe he can help me build the math centre for the littlies –yes, he would like that and demonstrating the instruments would be a good consolidation for him; he likes teaching. OR … not, depending on how busy it gets in the last couple of weeks before Christmas. Either way, being well caught up is a bonus.
We’ll continue with the reading and the Latin, probably, and then drop Latin for the week after that. I want to spend some time planning and thinking about what we’ll do in the New Year. I have some ideas but….
Aidan has been spending the afternoon with a Lift the Flap Counting Book — a thrift store find by his grandma, I believe. Anyway, it’s primary-colored and rather cute with realistic pictures, not cartoons. There are a given number of objects on a flap and then underneath is the number, so it’s sort of self-correcting. He just loves it.
Yesterday I made snowflakes with the younger three. Can you believe we have never done this? That is how craft-impaired I am. I think probably because there were too many schooly associations, but deschooling has helped me get past those and just enjoy the fun in the fun things. They had a blast, Aidan and Paddy got some scissors practice and Kieron got really creative, making snowy birds with fringed wings and Christmas trees with cutout spaces for ornaments. The bird art combined with his paper plane interest of last week and he made some birds that flew or actually, drifted rather elegantly around the room.
Yesterday afternoon we drove down to Aidan’s physical therapy and then went to their Grandma and Grandpa’s house and then to their cousin’s house where we ate dinner (Mexican) and then walked down Christmas Tree Lane with the extended family. Fun way to celebrated Our Lady of Guadalupe feast day and the littlest cousins, Paddy and my nephew who’s two, had a lot of fun together.
Today I had a migraine so I took them to the market and that was about it except for basic maintenance and the above-mentioned academics.
Here is the very rough weekly planner I made for Aidan. Paddy loves it too and later we taped on some visual print-outs from Google — like an AMTRAK train for picking up Liam — but it’s obviously a draft effort, not very polished. Still it is working — enjoyable visual-oriented way to reinforce time concepts and focus his perseverative questions onto something substantial. By perseveration I mean his way of getting into verbal loops when he is trying to get a handle on a new concept. To me it is an indication he needs repetition and a way to get a bigger and more multi-dimensional view on the subject. That’s sort of an over-simplification of a big subject but the main point is that I think his perseverating is a manifestation of a very positive trait, but he needs some help to get it into a helpful gear; we can usually tell WHAT strategies are helpful by his reacton to them.
