Our day of learning #4

Or rather, two days

Just a quick hello from me today. I’ve probably sat still already for far too long, and the end of week mess is staring at me. I have managed to finish my daily posts though, rolling Thursday and Friday into one. Hopefully they give a good honest look at how we homeschool!

My children are 6.5, 3 and 3 years old.

Thursday

A was really in a flow state on Thursday morning. She declared that she was going to make a dragon costume, put her headphones on and that was it. I actually had to remind her to eat. Her breakfast laid untouched on the table (“I’ll be there in a minute!”) and by about 10.20 I put an apple on her desk. Another twenty minutes later I dropped off some buttered crackers but it wasn’t until close to 11, when her costume was finally complete, that she finally ate.

Should I have interrupted her to do table time? Insisted she joined us for breakfast? I often wonder this. Is my maths lesson really more important than her project? I certainly wouldn’t want her to think so. It can be hard to maintain a routine with too many days like this, however!

I took advantage of my eldest being occupied and had a quiet start with L & Q. They looked at a book together over breakfast (very sweet!) and talked about what was happening in all the pictures. L asked to do wet on wet painting, and Q set L up a birthday surprise using toys.

If this all sounds incredibly peaceful to you, please know that I’ve written about here in my notes: ‘Q and A crisis’. I vaguely remember both A and Q getting very frustrated about their own projects at exactly the same time. Neither A nor Q manage their frustration very well. There most certainly would have been shouting and probably tears!

Everyone got dressed in a muddle, with me going up and down the stairs multiple times. I tried to start some of my planned activities with A once we were all back in the living room, but she was very reluctant to do anything. She said she was feeling tired. (Another dilemma: how tired is tired enough to take a day off?) She asked me to write her full name (including both middle names) on the white board for her to copy, which she did. This reminded A of a time at preschool when the teacher wouldn’t let her ride a bike until she had written her name. This really upset her because she genuinely didn’t remember how to write her name.

I tried to explain that sometimes adults put a bit of extra pressure on a child in the hope that they’ll try something.

This is how we got onto the topic of learning to read. A couple of nights in a row now, A has asked to read a book to me or Daddy at bedtime. As soon as the first page opens, however, she panics! I pulled out some very simple early readers and reminded her that we have them, and no they aren’t very exciting but they might help her build confidence. Maybe she needed a little pressure to try reading out loud.

I don’t think this is exactly how we got from the preschool incident to the decision that we’d try reading again. In fact, I agreed with her that it wasn’t very nice for the teacher to have withheld the bike. But she ended up trying to read an early reader book with me, for the first time in quite a while.

I opened the back doors and the girls pottered around the garden. Soon Grandad arrived and they scooted to their grandparents house, where they did some gardening and some puzzles (and probably watched TV) for the next two and a half hours.

When the girls got home, they played together in their bedroom and then we came together for poetry tea time. I taught the twins some Waldorfy finger plays about growing flowers and animal homes; A taught them one about a toilet that I think she got from Bluey.

A went to Rainbows that evening, otherwise it was dinner and bed.

Friday

Despite this being only this morning, already the details are fuzzy. Does anyone else feel like this by Friday?

We went straight to TV this morning as L woke up very early. It is very hard to decline a child’s request for TV at 6am.

No one wanted breakfast. I made toast and while the girls sat at the table briefly, they barely took a nibble and were off again. I made a post it notes game in the hopes of gathering everyone together again. L and Q had to find notes with their names on, A asked for something dragon related so she had to find the letters to spell ‘Toothless’. I then played I Spy with the twins the Montessori way, using objects from a basket (many of them beginning with /c/ which was our sound from earlier in the week).

I stayed up late last night to print some resources for A. She happily stuck the numbers on a clock and used a pipe cleaner to attach the hands. My matching clocks game was immediately rejected, however. A tried the early reader book I’d made for her in Canva (featuring Toothless the dragon!) but got flustered just a few words in. I decided to try something else with her, and brought out How To Teach Your Child To Read in 100 lessons.

We used this curriculum with A when she was five, and it got her reading sentences for the first time. We only stopped because she found it boring (and it was) and began to get distressed at lesson time. Out of everything we’ve tried for reading, it’s the only program where I’ve seen a quick improvement in A’s reading. I wanted A to give one of the lessons a try, to see how she found it.

Well it turns out that A wasn’t feeling very open to my suggestions today, and we butted heads. I offered her some incentives for giving it a try, but this didn’t really help. I asked her to step outside of her comfort zone, which she didn’t want to do - but she is never going to be able to read if she isn’t willing to read.

She had little trouble reading the sentences the way they’re presented in the book, however I’m not sure if it gave her the confidence boost I was hoping for. I will check in with her over the weekend, once she’s had time to reflect on it, and find out.

We all got dressed and took L to her ballet lesson. Our electricity went down around this time which meant an early finish at work for Daddy, so he took us to the leisure centre and picked us up again.

While waiting for L, I made the most of having a captive audience and tried to work with A on time again. We made a daily schedule for a dragon so I could show A how to write the time as on a digital clock, then we made some times on the analogue clock. A played Endless Reader on the tablet while Q drew a picture of the swimming pool on the white board. We counted while walking up and down the corridor, and sang songs (Hickory Dickory Dock while A made the times on the toy clock!) while sitting outside the studio. I probably looked completely nuts! But honestly I love home education on the go like this.

After ballet, the girls played outside for a while in the very wet play park. When we got home again Daddy made cookies with the twins in the kitchen and A tried a new maths app, and I tried to go between the two. Then L played the app in the den they’d built, and Q made a nest for her eggs, and everyone ate warm cookies straight from the oven. At some point Endless Reader went back on, then it was swapped for a film on TV. Peace at last!

This brings us up to the present moment, so I’ll leave things here for this week. I hope my ‘day in the life’ posts have been useful to some of you, it’s lovely to hear when they have. Life isn’t perfect here, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.