After what seemed like a long holiday it was back to work today! I hate starting back after Christmas holidays! After all the fun, cosyness, chilling out and family time of Christmas it's always a thought to get back into the routine. I feel so so sorry for the kids going back to school! I don't know if that says more about how I used to feel going back to school or how they feel! Anyway, whatever the feelings were we all had to face up to the new term today!
On Saturday I spent a couple of hours looking to the week ahead and was amazed at how quickly I'd forgotten just how much time it takes me to plan the lessons for S! I felt quite daunted at the prospect and the responsibility once again of teaching him and how to ensure I was covering everything I should! At the same time though I feel quite motivated this term to get into a routine and quite excited to see S progress. It has been fantastic to hear folks comments on S (family mainly) on the change they see in S since taking him out of school! I'm quite amazed that in such a short space of time there are noticeable improvements and changes! I so quickly get caught up with the daily challenges and difficulties that I lose perspective of the bigger picture and the reasons for doing what we are doing.
So today started. To add a bit excitement into the mix we are moving house this week! Normally to have all the kids starting back at school would have been great timing for us to get moved. This time however is definitely a different experience - to try to move house (which we are doing ourselves), home school one child and get the other 3 to school all equipped - is quite a challenge! I will be so relieved to get to this time next week with my eyes still open and my legs still able to support me!!! It's hopefully just a temporary move and we will be back "home" in a few months but we still have to move pretty much everything! With all that in mind I am hoping that S will work in the mornings and that in the afternoons we will make the most of the time and ferry things up to the new house.
So what have we started this term. In Maths I have introduced this term "warm up Maths" where S will do 10 minutes of quick mental arithmetic. We then started "Shape". Today we looked at "polygons" (I tell you - I'm learning a lot too!!!) and named the main polygons. We discussed right angles and parallel lines. I'm pretty sure he's done this before but was quite clearly not that clued up about it so we will develop all this during this week. I left him to do a couple of maths tasks on his own which he did which was great. Following this we went on to our reading and then introduced a new idea. Last term I'd hoped he would have done a news report on a Monday morning. This bomb dived though and I don't really think he is quite ready for it. Instead we are now going to look at a match report from the weekend's football. (S is football daft now!). I'd hoped to find all the verbs in the report today but I realised pretty quickly that that was far too hard. Instead today we picked out all the "wow" words. S loved it! He objected to ALL the tasks we did today apart from that! Once we'd done that I got him to look at the short piece of writing I'd asked him to do today and pick out the "wow" words he'd written. He'd not done many at all and it was great to see him immediately realise the difference! Hopefully we can build on this and I fully intend to exploit his football obsession in as many areas as I can!
All in all we didn't work for long today (in length of time) but he actually did achieve a lot! Following today he can definitely spell "favourite" and "present" which he couldn't this morning and hopefully can discuss a bit of shape and "wow" words. His lack of co-operation returned with a vengeance and I will struggle with that big time if I can't get a handle on it soon!
So much to say but I must go (well done if you've persevered this far!!). Sleep is calling.
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