Tuesday.

Fourth week of the new studying structure.  Wow.

Today we started a wee bit later than normal, so his studies continued after lunch:

Taken the rubbish bags down to the bins.

Completed 2 pages of his handwriting book.

Collected wood for the fire.

Read "Dragon Danger" to me and answered the comprehension questions correctly.

Copy work based on "Dragon Danger" and drawn a picture to accompany his writing.

Completed a math lesson on comparing and ordering numbers.

Lunch

Completed 3 pages from his maths practise book, based on today's lesson.

15 minutes break, playing with his zoobs, having a drink.

Finish last 2 pages of his maths practise. (I wrote the answers for him, as his handwriting was deteriorating rapidly)

Read the next part of the chapter on Egyptians from Story of the World, Vol 1.  Rye answers the comprehension questions on the chapter, and narrates the main facts, which I write down for him. 

While Rye colours in Orsis, I read a chapter from The Awesome Egyptians (he attempted to read some himself)

Read together Children's Ancient World Together.  He is particularly interested in the various Gods and Goddesses.  So will explore that more next time we study History.

 

Study time over, Rye continued to look at the book, seems to have captured his imagination.  Eventually I suggest he go play with friends, he's not fussed and instead asks if he could spend some time on the Ipad as it's raining and really cold, so he doesn't fancy going outside.

Fair enough. 

Tuesdays the co-op has a house meeting, so while I'm engaged there, Rye has the choice of playing on the computer or I'll set up the projector and he can watch whatever he wants from Netflix's Kids.

Pushing.

I am right now kicking myself, hard!
Rye has had that break through,and it's exciting him enough that he's trying to read on his own - albeit with books far too advanced for him at the moment.  I'm taking his newfound enthusiasm and running with it...

Yeah, that's the problem.
Push, push, push...meltdown!

This morning, we began with handwriting practise.  He quickly developed, what I call "duck lips", give him his dues, he did persevere and finish the set pages.  I was careful to point out the improvements he's making and encourage him to look at the whole page of his writing, rather than concentrate on the letters that were screwy.  He is so quick to criticise himself.

We went onto maths - and I kicked myself that I hadn't checked the lesson in the Singapore Maths book.  Recapping 10s, 100's and 1000, and the exercises asked for the answers to be written in both number and letter form.   Oh dear.  Still, he did really well, and by the end of the page his writing of the word "hundred" had improved dramatically, which again I focused on!  Had I checked today's maths lesson first, I would have be happy with it counting as handwriting practise too.  Rewarded his hard work with a YoYo Bear thingy - it's fruit leather swirls and comes with cards that Rye wants to collect.  So yay, completed those tasks on a high!

I should have stopped there!

I got carried away and suggested reading practise.  First we looked at the lesson in the Classical Education learn to read text book.  Excellent work.  Then I suggested having a go at reading Fox in Socks.  Started off brilliantly, read 4 or so pages really well, he was visibly tiring at this point.  Did I stop.. no push a little more... push, push, push.  Gah!
"Just read this, and we'll stop", I said.  Rye had reached saturation point, he was yawning, stretching, fidgeting more than ever, what did I do?
I got annoyed - boom, a morning of excellent work ruined.

Clearly, I have a bit of a "thing" about finishing what is started, so to combat that, from now on I shall start using the stopwatch on the Iphone, and set 10 minutes chunks.  As Rye progresses the length of time he'll be able to concentrate, without brain scramble, will increase.

We are also still trying to find the right balance of free play time and activities while also living in a co-op where Rye has friends on tap.   Perhaps I need to embrace more learning activities where his friends can join in.  The other day I was babysitting my housemate's daughters while she went away for a couple of days; the children played games, and much to my surprise they all really enjoy playing Fiddlesticks (reading game) - the luck element of the game, meant one of the younger children who isn't reading yet won several times too, so it is suitable for all levels.

Kids playing King of New York

 I think meshing the "strewing" principle of unschooling, with the Classical Education pedagogy will, I think, make it more Rye friendly, and ensuring textbook based activities are well mixed with practical hands on activities, of which some activities can be "group" friendly.

I do like to be "solution focused", which sounds terribly pouncy, in reality it means I learn from the day's lesson(s).  This morning I failed Rye, I could beat the crap out of myself, doubt myself - and initially yes, of course, I felt a failure, I briefly wondered if home education was the right option for us.  Shake it off.
Home Education IS the best for Rye, he loves being home educated.  Today I made mistakes, learn from those mistake, set strategies in place to prevent, well hopefully, a repeat of those mistakes.

Surely, the epitome of learning?

Friday - Money, money, money.

Rye began the Singapore Math curriculum today.  He's probably on Level 4, but the advice is to start a level lower if the child isn't familiar with Singapore math methods, so I've bought the level 3 books.

Irritatingly, the parcel split and the first half of curriculum was lost, I'm still waiting on Maths No Problem to resolve this issue.  Frankly, they can chase Parcel Force for the pennies back for the shabby service, I still expect to receive the first half of the curriculum; I bought the books from them not parcel force!   So in the meantime, I've started Rye on the 2nd part of the curriculum, which is "money".  While the actual sums are a bit easy for him; it is good mental arithmetic practice, writing money in the correct numerical format, and of course reading too.    Gawd he doesn't half faff though.  I was beginning to get really irritated with the constant pencil tapping, waving, fidgeting, and telling stories that counting the various amounts of money reminded him of.
I must remember in future to ensure there is music playing, and have some manipulative available, as these things all seem to help him concentrate on the task.
The only aspect of the math work he did find difficult was remembering how to write the numbers.  I think it will be worth reviewing writing numbers in his grid math book before each math lesson.  It took an excruciatingly long time to complete the 2 pages in his work book, and it was because he couldn't remember how the numbers were written - well along with his constant faffing too.

After the break, I sent Rye to get a book from his room to read to me.  He chose "Rosie goes for a walk".  A good choice, while there were a number of word he struggled with, he made a good effort.  Definitely need to work on diagraphs with him, I'll have to think of some games to help cement the sounds in his mind.

 And finally, I read to Rye about Electricity in preparation for our Science Club on the 1st October.  This is a good little book, tells the history of Electricity, while then going on to explain what Electricity is and how it's made.  I did ask Rye to read a bit of it too, while its above his current level, there were plenty of words he could read, and again, it's another opportunity to remind him that he can use the phonemes, and introduce him to diagraphs.

Oooh and Fiddlesticks, great little game; simply use the lolly pop sticks and write sight words on on end of the sticks; and on one end of the sticks put a red dot.  The sticks go into a cup or tub with the stick (or a few sticks) with the dot on it bottom down in the tub.  Then the players take turns pulling out a stick and reading the word.  If read correctly they keep the stick - but if anyone gets the dot, then all their sticks have to go back in the pot.  After ten minutes the winner is the one with the most sticks.   Rye loves this game, because despite playing with me, the red dots give him a chance of winning too, and he loves it when I get a red dot and have to put all my sticks back, the rotter!

The rest of the day has been taken up with playing skoolbo - which has gone a bit weird, speaking too fast and the games ending before he has a chance to respond - so attempting to re-download it again.  Rye also spent some time watching cartoons - I like Netflix because it automatically puts the subtitles on, yet more exposure to the written word!
He also helped me with the clearing of a room in preparation for the work weekend.
Busy and productive day.

Scholarly Thursday.

One of the joys of home educating - doing it in one's dressing gown and a cup of coffee in one hand!

The morning began with me coaxing Rye to use the pencil grip aid - it's a simple enough wee gadget, elastic that goes over his wrist with a short loop that goes over the end of his pencil, so it encourages him to hold the pencil at the correct angle; and then there's a wee football charm that he holds in his fist with his middle, index and little fingers, the pencil itself he pincer grips between his forefinger and thumb. This alongside with reminding him to angle the paper so it was comfortable for him to write, made a massive difference to his writing.

He wrote a page of numbers, then made up his own sums and wrote those down too, followed by writing a page from the Science Encyclopedia on the Sun.

After a rewarding mouthful of chocolate, we went on to review the past lesson on Proper Nouns, and then I read a fable to Rye and he answered questions that checked his comprehension, along with many reminders to answer in a complete sentence.

The Classical Education books, are fabulous and save me a large chunk of time I would otherwise need to spend researching activities and books for literacy and language.
Anyway, that brought us nicely to break time; juice and toast for Rye and coffee and toast for me - I'd gotten dressed while he was doing his handwriting practice.

Once refreshed, Rye read about half of Thor to me.  I think though it's time to move onto some other books for a while - apparently another common dyslexic trait, is using the pictures as a visual reminder of the story; so while he can seemingly read words like "hammer", "beasts", "monsters" seen out of the context of this story, he wouldn't know what those words are.

Still he did do well, showed that he was considering the context of the sentence, and using the pictures appropriately to help him work out words, and trying to sound out words.  Mind, at one perplexing point, he started reading "had" as "did", I kept saying "try again, it begins with a "h""  but he still kept saying "did".  Rye tends to see the shape of word, again a dyslexic thing, so while it seems daft to me that he's mixing up "had" and "did" in terms of  word shape, they are similar.  So, as he had read quite a bit up to that point, I suspected reading fatigue was scrambling his brain.  We stopped at that point.  We had another chat too, about remembering to look properly at the word and the letters that make up the word - not just the shape.  Next was history.

Looking through the History Encyclopedia.

Funny isn't it, we began the Space Project because I had this idea we could incorporate, science, math, handwriting, reading, history, geography, natural studies etc all into one super project, and have lots of interrelated strands.  Rye doesn't want to work just on a space project, even when we are covering lots of different things and he has a lot of autonomy - he is a boy who does enjoy mixing the freedom a project allows with more traditional learning methods.  So, I've dug out our Story of the World Book 1, and read to him the introductory chapter that explains what an historian is and how they learn about people's pasts.








One of the activities in the history work book was to create a family tree.  I'm out of ink for my printer at the moment, so I'll have to photocopy the sheets for building up the family tree later, so instead I suggested he draw a picture of his family.

So cute, see me, with my colourful dreads.  Rye drew his Great Granddad George, Granddad Graham, Rosemary, his dad and me, oh, and of course himself.  Took him a while to get his head around the task, but once he got past being harsh about his drawing skills, he really enjoyed the task.

He worked hard, and he knows he accomplished a lot today, and felt really good about himself.
I had planned to do some maths, but as it was already lunch time, I decided that was enough for now, and he did kinda set himself sums during his handwriting practice.

The afternoon was spent on lego, a video game, and playing with his house friends.  During dinner I read the next chapter of the "Goblet of Fire".  Thursdays is also house meeting night, so after settling him with a screen, to the meeting I went.

This coming weekend is a work weekend for the Co-op, working on the windows to ensure they have a long life, and maintaining the access ramp to the garden.  It does mean I need to do some preparatory work tomorrow.  This is the beauty of home ed, and sometimes the difficultly, juggling various life needs and commitments.   The vague plan I have in my head at the moment is for some math work in the morning for 30mins to an hour, depending on how Rye responds to the tasks, then he can help me with the work I need to do in preparation for the work weekend.  And if not too shattered from that, maybe a game of fiddlesticks - it's a reading game, I'll explain more tomorrow.

Now, its bedtime!