Co- op- ing

It’s been a good week so far (

Abbie’s reading seems to be really taking off now. She is even recognising letter she has not been formally taught yet and having a ‘guess’ at words she does not yet know. Her word recognition is a little slow - i.e. - she sounds out event he simplest words still (like it and on), but it’s coming, so that’s the important thing. She can now read the first two re-codeable books in the reading A-Z scheme with relative ease and although there is a degree of memorisation of the story happening there is definitely some reading happening too. She is beginning to realise she can do it too which is good because is absolutely the kind of child who has a real fear of failure and would prefer not to even try than to fail. She will always choose to stop while the going is good, so as much as possible I try to allow her to, to keep her esteem high. Sometimes I feel like I am working with fragile clay with her - one hard knock and she might easily shatter. Unfortunately I am not always the most gentle of craftsman, so she is good for me!! Strange to think of the pot moulding the potter, but I rather like to think that she is helping me to hone my skills.

Joel has suddenly (and it really does seem sudden because before half term this was still an issue) that he doesn’t need to make a huge fuss every time he is asked to put pen to paper - and it’s making a huge difference to the atmosphere here and to the quality of what he is producing too. I have tried to explain to him that writing is merely ‘talking to the paper’ and as he is such a chatterbox this really should not be an issue for him. Today was a ‘quick write’ day. “If I could do anything…” was the title I gave him and he wrote for about 20 minutes. He didn’t write a massive quantity, as his writing is still slow (the cost of neatness), but the quality of what he wrote was good and he did it without making any fuss at all (. Mid flow he looked up and said, “I’m not making a fuss about writing any more am I?” - GREAT!!

Maths is still too much of a battle for my liking, but Joel is defiantly improving and did very well today in his review test. He’s on to the second half of 2A now and I envisage us getting possibly half way through h2B before the year is out, but maybe not finishing it. He might surprise me - you never know, particularly as the second half of 2B is more about different concepts of maths and a bit less arithmetic. I guess I will do mock ‘SATS’ with Joel at the end of this year too, like I did with Jake, just to see where we are at comparatively. I suspect at the moment he is ahead of his peers for English and about level (or maybe a little ahead) with his maths. I don’t really care as such, it’s just nice to know and if he is anything like Jake (which he is not really…) then he will get quite a sense of achievement from doing well in the tests anyway.

Today we have had a friend’s 7yr ole daughter over for the afternoon. She is sweet. I had the pick of which of child to take (my friend has five, but needed to use her small car, so could only ferry four) and I chose R because I figured she would fit best with our schooling - which she did. We got the ‘graft’ out of the way this morning, so that we could have a light afternoon. I chose ‘Socially Speaking’ as the subject as this is always more fun when it’s not just the Hamptons involved. An outsider adds interest to the dynamics. We read “The enormous Turnip” - with acting and story telling (they had to join in with the repeating phrases as I read it). That was enormous fun - especially the all falling on top of each other at the end! Even Ellie got involved in that one (. Then we read “The magic Porridge Pot” - again they had to join in with the repetition. After that they interviewed each other about their families and hobbies and drew a picture of one another. We played “I went shopping and I bought…” which some did better than others at, but it was fun all the same. Followed by filling in a sheet where they had to decide what the two people in the picture were saying to each other. Basically the whole idea is to practice listening and communication skills - turn taking, sharing ideas, listening to each other, etc… R then taught my two how to play picture consequences - short and sweet, before I kicked them out in the garden to play on the new trampoline and to play hide and seek (which I jut didn’t want played in the house today as it gets to rowdy) - there are so many more places to hide in the garden anyway! I was intending to play the ‘Socially Speaking’ game with them too, but they’d had enough, so I let that go.

Anyway, I’ve been promising pictures for ages, so now I’m going to nip back over my last few posts and add in appropriate photos - any spares I’ll slap in here!