Skip to main content

Progress

Progress seems to happen very slowly, or even not at all, and then all of a sudden. For the first several weeks of school, writing the number 8 trips Anya up every time. Which way to go from the top? It always gets loopy in the wrong direction. Distinguishing the b's and d's is trouble too: "big" is "dig" and "dip" is... "bip"? 

We practice. The whiteboard works well for the 8's. She can try, and mess up, and then erase it--which eases her frustration. Just a few a day. 

I find some ideas for b's and d's in the back of the reading curriculum teacher's guide. With your left hand, hold your pointer and thumb in a circle, and stick your other fingers straight up. Do the same with your other hand. Imagine an e between them, to spell bed! 

This doesn't work. It's too hard for her to hold her fingers like that, and imagining bed is just too complicated. 

We keep at it. She practices some more 8's. 

In math, we are playing all kinds of different games to practice pairs that make 10 (6+4, or 5+5), but 7+_ and 8+_ keep eluding her. The 10-frame gets lots of use. 

For reading, I find a free printout online: 

The picture of the fat diaper cracks her up, and she loves it... a fat belly that turns into a fat poop (sorry, six-year-old humor!). Every time we practice reading, we keep the poster out where we can see it, and stop to ask--is it a belly or a diaper? 

Then, one week, a few times the loops of the 8 go in the right direction without any trouble. She starts to make little snowmen out of them, with a face in the upper loop and buttons down the lower loop.

We play "jump on the phonograms" and she figures out a few of the b's and d's. But the reading monster refuses to eat a "plob" or a "glab." 

We take an extra week to practice addition facts before moving on to subtraction. But the Monday morning of that extra week, she suddenly seems to know "_+3=10" and "8+_=10" every time--as if forgetting about it all weekend made something click. 

Now, in late October, this week she hasn't made any mistakes with her 8's. They flow in even loops. 

We haven't consulted the belly and diaper poster in a couple weeks now, but I didn't notice the exact moment that the balance tipped from struggle to ease. 

On the whole, a single math or reading lesson or handwriting sheet can seem relatively unimportant. But, the slow path of progress reminds me that the unimportant-seeming repetition, and the daily discipline (even when the sun is shining and it sounds more appealing to skip at day), truly count.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And, that's a wrap!

We finished Anya's first grade school year about three weeks ago, with a little popsicle celebration on the porch. We paged through a little book I've kept throughout the year of various projects; skimmed through some math workbook pages; looked at the first short story reader she started with back in September. It was fun to be reminded of where she started, and how much she's learned this year.  I’ll share some photos.  Math: where we started  Math: where we finished up  Handwriting/writing: where we started  Handwriting/writing: where we finished up  (Paragraph mapping)  (Rough draft paragraph)  (Final draft paragraph)  Reading: where we started  (This was review from kindergarten since we switched programs)  Reading: where we finished Beyond all of these skills, and much more important, I am so pleased and proud about the girl she's becoming. Our family experienced a lot of change this year, as we welcomed and adjusted to anothe...
1 comment
Read more

Homeschool reflections

School has been in session for a full month now, and it has flown by! I have started a blog post about it several times and never finished. There seems to be too much to say, as there is a lot going on here for the second-grader and preschooler. And for me! The summer was a time of learning and processing for me, and now I get to experiment with what I absorbed from multiple books on homeschooling.  I read:  - Family Matters  by David Guterson  - The 4-Hour School Day by Durenda Wilson  - Homeschool Bravel y by Jamie Erickson  - parts of The Well-Trained Mind and Writing with Ease  by Susan Wise Bauer  - I’m starting Teach Your Own by John Holt The biggest takeaways?  One of the biggest benefits of a homeschool education is that it is, in fact, not school at all. This is a terrible paraphrase of a really good quote in one of the books I read. I think it synthesizes what I learned about how a lot of what I think of as "school" or "educ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Calendar time

We start out each school day with calendar time. It signals the shift in our morning--school has started, and it's time to focus. It's also good practice for Alina. This is the only "school" activity that she has to participate in... after calendar time, she runs off to play.   We follow the same pattern every day. First we practice some slow, deep breathing, and the girls and I take turns with coming up with fun ways to do this. Some favorites are "curtain breathing" (made by Alina; you start with your hands over your face, and take a deep breath in while moving your hands out and away), the yoga move "cat/cow," and full body breathing (lie on the floor, and take in a deep breath while lifting up your legs and arms into the air). I don't participate in that last one right now, being 35+ weeks pregnant!  Next we look at their calendars and figure out what date and day of the week it is. We have a "days of the week" song that we someti...
Post a Comment
Read more