Well its the middle of May and we are so ready for a vacation! It's a struggle every year to finish strong and complete as closely as we can, our goals that we made at the beginning of the year. [or adjusted goals back in January or March!] So when we do meet a goal it is a good reason to celebrate. Today Lillian completed List I4 in SWR by adding her sentence at the bottom. As the youngest of 7 with many years between them she's had the cynical view of school way younger than her siblings ever did. She's got college and adult siblings that moan about annoying professors, unreasonable papers or projects and those dreaded finals. Not a happy picture of school really. I wish I had never called our time together 'school', but instead called it one-on-one time or mommy and me time- something she wouldn't associate with her worldly knowledge of that word. Because of this she's had an ornery attitude from pretty much the beginning of our very loose, fun, relaxed introduction to the basics. For some reason, she loves math, so no problems there, but spelling and phonograms? Not so willing. Since she is young and I've had a few later readers, I decided to take the nonchalant approach. So I am very satisfied that we completed the suggested K grade track for her first official year with the program. Next year I will let her know she's expected to do more with less attitude, but for now, we'll celebrate!
The plus side; she's well on her way to automaticity in reading. My summer goal is to simply read, read, read together; preferably in a hammock under a tree.
I really appreciated Janet Spitler's post on the IEW website on finishing the year well. I agree with her whole heartily and plan to use all three habits here during our last week or two of formal schooling.
A postscript: One thing that was in the back of my mind was the possibility she might need vision therapy. We have had two kids that needed it, so I don't think it a bad idea to have the next child tested to rule it out. She was exhibiting some symptoms. The negative attitude could at least partially be caused by eye trouble. her short attention span, [not so short for math or other activities] knowing a lot of the tools but not being able to put it together after a 'normal' [for our family'] period of time, and some other things. It turns out that she does have 4 areas of developmental delay. So our doctor recommended about 4 months of therapy, 2x a week! The therapies are quite fun activities so I know she'll enjoy them. And I'm hopeful our Language Arts time will be happier now. [we'll have homework and some therapy helps] If you feel like your child is struggling and they shouldn't [and they don't just need break or a slow down] rule out physical problems early: visiontherapy.org
ReplyDelete