This morning, while lots of wonderful moms and dads were escorting their brood to their local educational establishments for the first day of school, I was enjoying a leisurely walk through the neighborhood. Alone. It only lasted four minutes, but my, was it glorious. My therapist is a four minute walk from my house, so I walk there and back while Dean stays home with the kids. We had a great talk this morning. I haven't had an appointment in several weeks - she was on vacation. She still feels like I put everyone on the "I must worry about/take care of" list above me, and I must stop putting myself last. You can't fill anyone else's cup when your own cup is empty... that sort of thing. She is correct - it is just so hard to do.
When I got home, Dean drove the van to work, which meant that I had no transportation for the day. I actually love those days. I have the perfect excuse to stay put - and it helps me focus. So we got a lot done - Rylan's entire lineup of Monday schoolwork, which was a first!
* Core Knowledge - read a few poems and worked on rhyming words - which she totally gets. Added some new vocabulary: bill, window-sill, cocked, wealthy and wise. Later in the day I heard her quoting Benjamin Franklin verbatim. Wow.
* Explode the Code - Short 'i' words - pig, mitt, dig, bit, wig, pin, hit, fin, fill, sit, big. Decoded with ease, spelled them and wrote them. Rylan can write beautiful little 'g's. For whatever reason though, writing a 'p' is difficult. ???
* Carson-Dellosa beginning reading workbook - 'color' words. She is reading them correctly - but if you remove the picture clues, then she gets bogged down with the decoding. Thus 'blue' and 'black' become one and the same... interesting.
* Reading Eggs - She is loving this program! She completed today's lesson in 17 minutes. I don't know what she did other than that she was reading 'am' words. I was upstairs during most of it changing diapers and switching laundry around.
* Read aloud - I read a little bit out of a question/answer science book. (Q: What happens to the stars during the day? A: - - -) I made it about 10 minutes and then I fell asleep. I had just put the two boys down, so she let me sleep and kept herself busy playing with her dollhouse (which we keep in our bedroom, so that it can be set up all the time) I love, love, love that she is such a wonderful, dependable child. She stays out of trouble, keeps quiet, and doesn't try to sneak out of the room or anything like that. Most of the time she will eventually lay down beside me and fall asleep herself. I don't nap often, but today I was really struggling after I put the boys down. I needed a rest - too many late nights staying up trying to get stuff done.
* Thinking Kids Math: we did tally marks for the first time. Most of it went over her head. She hasn't really grasped skip counting yet, so counting by fives is difficult. The task was to look at a calendar graphic, which had one of four possible weather symbols on each day - sun, cloud, rain or snow. The task was to count up the days it was sunny, and make tally marks. Count up the cloudy days, make tally marks and so on. We did that, and then I extended it by showing her the calendar basics. Again - she is really struggling with this. Time is difficult anyway - it is such an abstract concept. So we ended the mini-lesson by counting up the number of days until Jordan came home (24) and called it good.
*MEP - inequalities. She has the signs down (<, >, =), but she continues to be stumped by comparison questions. She will totally get which way to 'face the alligator mouth'. But after counting up one side of the equation (ex. 4 daisies) and then counting up the other side (ex. 3 tulips) answering the question "How many more daisies are there than tulips?", she will invariably answer '7' - because she thinks she just needs to count them all. Only when I match up each flower, one-to-one, will she see that there is one daisy left over that 'does not have a partner'. THEN she understands what I was asking her. We have gone through this scenario at least twenty times. I try and bring it up any time the situation presents itself - "Rylan, how many more goldfish crackers do you have than Owen has?". She will count them ALL. sigh.
* Carson-Dellosa math preK-1 workbook - fill in the missing number. It never ceases to amaze me all the different ways you can check a child for true understanding of a concept. Your child can count from 1-20 (1-100, etc..) a thousand times over - but when you skip a number and ask them which one, they are stopped in their tracks. If you switch up the order and ask them to sort it out correctly, they struggle. That is good. It means that their number sense is still developing, and you should never assume that they 'get it' and move on just because they can count correctly. They really need to 'know' their numbers. Number sense is the true foundation on math - and you need it to be solid before you start building!
So - I had all of these little teaching epiphanies aaallll day. And it felt good. I felt like a true teacher today - not just some frazzled parent going through the motions, like I usually do. Yay me!
