We are back in full swing after the school holidays and my mother's funeral. Amy did not seem keen to start school work again, but once we got going, she was fine. Her sums were disappointing. I had planned on doing adding with ones and tens, but she was not too sure of her bonds , so new work had to be put on ice for a while. She made many mistakes with last week's homework. (I think she did it in front of the television!) We have to do a lot of revision again, but I am confident that she will quickly pick it up again and then we can go on. I believe math's should always be easy and fun.
Reading was good, but what especially made my day, was the way she responded to verbal questions - both when we discussed what she did this weekend and also when I asked her questions about the story we read. She definitely listens better to what is asked and seems to understand when and why better. She also attempted to ask me questions and I helped her to formulate them properly. She loved "catching me out." We still have a long way to go as far as comprehension is concerned, but there has been promising progress! We do a lot of comprehension homework i.e. the filling in of missing words from the text and answering simple questions.
Both Amy and I were rather disappointed that she gained nearly 4 kg during the school holiday. However today she had lost 1 kg again and 1 cm around her waist. Tomorrow we plan to go for a long walk again. She needs the exercise and it is a good time to talk. We need to talk and talk and talk - at this stage it seems the most pressing need.
For fun, and improved understanding, we searched for horse farms in the Blue Ridge mountains on the internet. Amy's book, My Secret Unicorn is about a family on a farm near the Blue Ridge mountains. She loved finding the pictures on the internet. We still have to find Carolina etc. on Google Earth.
Teaching one special child is great! What a priviledged teacher I am.
A walk to the stables
Tamerin at the horses: we walked there on Thursday and talked rugby nearly all the way!
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2 comments:
School breaks are much needed, but it is hard for both student and teacher. It seems there are always set backs, especially in children who have special learning needs. Breaks are always hard on Jacob, he tends to lose some of his previous knowledge.
I wanted to agree with you on a comment you made in the e-mail you sent me. I found early on (before I realized Jacob had dyselxia) that pushing Jacob was the worst thing I could do. The more I pushed and insisted, the more locked up his brain became. We are doing much better in that area. I do, however, require a certain amount of work that he must accomplish every day. Otherwise he would spend his day playing and we would never learn any academics!
It's tough to maintain the right balance isn't it? Thanks for the e-mail!
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