Fight for progress

We got a lot done in our first official week back on routine. I stuck to the morning routine of breakfast, dressed, prayers, calendar, and then work assignments. We covered several subjects this week and made progress in all of them. However, it was a fight the whole week to get Theo to do anything from finding his shoes to writing his name. I hope this is just the inevitable result of 4 weeks of "holiday" and not some 5 year-old behavioural trend. But really, for a "routine" week we had a lot of outings and disruptions.

Monday was our usual outing to sushi and tea with a friend--also known as Mama's constitutional, sanity-saving walk. Theo had hurt his knee somehow over the weekend so I let him do a fair amount of sitting in the stroller and reading that day-- especially with icy roads. But the morning was a shouting match and it took over 2 hours to get him to do a spelling test, 8 words of word building and 3 pages of phonics. Not to mention the 15 minute argument I had with him over getting dressed, the 20 minutes it took for him to fill out the calendar, and the ridiculous fight over getting his coat and boots on to leave. Our whole week was like that.

Tuesday I had an early appointment with the midwife, adding major pressure to our morning's work. I chose not to get anything but the usual prayers and calendar done before we left. We were still late and getting there and back was a fight the whole way. However, we did get a lot done that afternoon. We started on our Montessori classes of animals work: a project which is leading towards a trip to the aquarium on January 31st. We talked about vertebrates and invertebrates and the 5 classes of vertebrate animals: reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, and mammals. Then we learned about and made a booklet indicating the parts of the turtle (our reptile) and read 3 books about turtles which I had selected form the library especially. He also made a Parts of the Turtle chart which he labelled correctly and when he lost his printed "eyes" label he made one up of his own in his own hand writing. Then I showed him how to use his Draw Then Write book to find how to draw a turtle and he used it to draw a picture on the front cover of his booklet. This week we will try to cover frogs and fish. I was pleased to see that he was keen to try his Draw Then Write book for other exercises and will try to make sure he gets a day to use it once a week.


Wednesday we had planned to do Math but still hadn't gotten ahold of the new book so we took the morning to go pick it up-- a complicated bus trip, but successful. We then spent the afternoon at the library with a friend and partly to return a selection of overdue books. We got very little work done that day--just plenty of reading. However, Thursday we managed to make up for it with 6 lessons of Math from the new book. The first 2 lessons were a real fight--especially with Georgie being as distracting as possible--but after that he got focused and had to be pried away from it. We also managed to finish up the thank-you card project which we worked on all week really. Theo wrote 4 thank-you notes last week and 8 in total for their Christmas gifts. Georgie helped him with the stickers and such, but he did all the writing.

Friday morning was the final struggle. Of course he wanted to continue with Math, but the day's work was journal and it was a fight the whole way--not helped by the pressure of needing to leave early enough to get a rather large pile of groceries before Strong Start. Having said that, I think I need to revise the journal exercise. It's really hard for him to think of what to write about on his own so I will have to come up with some kind of formula for him to follow to make it easier. His day at Grandma's was fairly successful though, with a lovely (if cold) walk in the woods, more Math, and learning about different animal footprints. Grandma had a book about animal tracks--not a kid's book, but Theo read whole sections of it aloud with very little help. They were trying to figure out if they had spotted dog or coyote prints in the park. Then they compared dog prints to cat prints (cat prints don't show claws) and other animal prints like mountain lion, shrew, bear, wolverine, etc. Fascinating really.

He spent the weekend doing Math every opportunity he got and reading as much as he could. Impressive really since our weekend included a trip to Vancouver to get his hair cut, church, a birthday party, and then a very large unplanned-for party at our house which included the company of about 6 other little kids (not counting babies or his sister).

Things are still a bit of a struggle this morning--not surprising after such a busy Sunday and such a late night, but as we have no plans to meet up with our usual friend, the pressure to leave by a certain time has not been a factor. Also, mummy needed to sleep in. He got through the day's Language Arts exercises with some struggle, but less than last week, and I'm happy to say he is beginning to embrace drawing pictures as they are regularly a part of his Language Arts work now. Hopefully this week will go a little more smoothly than last and be just as productive.