Ticking Along nicely

Ticking Along nicely...

Well with Jacob at school and the girls at playgroup life is ticking along and school is going well. Joel is an often reluctant, but very capable learner and although at times it takes a bit of effort to get him started at a task he can usually stick at it till it’s done and do a reasonable job - sometimes he even finds he enjoys it in the end! ( A maths exercise that would have taken Jake at least 3 hours, just took Joel 40 minutes. He was sure it was going to take him at least 2 hours (I think that comes of having seen it take Jake that long), but once he got going he was fine. It wasn’t 100% correct but that doesn’t actually bother me - I’ d rather he have a go and learn from his errors than be so worried about making them that it takes him forever,
     Phoebe had a bit of a wobbly this morning (not unusual at the moment) about going to playgroup. She does sometimes and I don’t know why because she is very happy there and enjoys it actually - painting, sticking, etc…much more than I do with her at home, but she really is a home-bird. Strange thing is though; she is the one who has been saying that she wants to go to ‘big school’ like Jacob. I know that she would be very unhappy in reality and probably wouldn’t last 5 minutes there. She is so much more introverted than any of the others. Anyhow she went and had a nice day, but I am dreading after Christmas when she will be going on her own – only 2½ more weeks before Boo leaves playgroup…I’m counting down - I am so going to know I have her at home!
     Abbie seems to be suddenly ready to learn and today at playgroup she traced over the letters of ‘snowman’. It was really neat and legible. Apparently she wasn’t willing to try and copy the letters without the under-print, but she’s defiantly making some rapid progress. Next step is to try and get her to actually recognise some of those letters and know their sounds I guess - that could take a little longer!! The days when she is at home I simply can’t seem to fill her up - she’ll have to slow down a ouch though or I’ll run out of resources (if that is possible I have SO many downloaded now, but to use them all would be paper costly!) I am not going to make any formal attempt to teach her to read until after September (she will be 5¾ by then and should be more than ready, if she hasn’t started to do it by herself already!). Just now we are going to work on some basic maths concepts  - shapes, (she still doesn’t know a rectangle and a triangle) numerical order, heavy/light - that kind of thing (using Singapore EarlyBird) and on her pencil grip (which is really not bad), getting her name more legible, cutting skills, sticking, gluing, making, drawing (all of which she loves and is quite good at for her age IMO () also on initial sounds of words (we play” I Spy…” a lot for that - using letter sounds instead of names. It worked really well for the boys). Hopefully that will keep us busy for a bit!
     Anyway I’ll post this and let Jake get on the computer. He wants to play Cluefinders. (
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