It's Sunday

That means tomorrow is Monday.

I'm smart, ain't I? ;)

With Monday, we are finally going to start something regular for school. I feel now that I'm ready to begin, the kids are ready to begin and I see so clearly now how things fell through before because I was trying to force things when we weren't ready.

I'm very ready to start! Summer's taking too long. lol.

Dd (8) and I had a talk yesterday. What it resulted in is me learning her desire to do more work with me instead of me showing her something quickly and expecting her to do more on her own. I never knew how much that stressed her, but it does. She's a perfectionist and panics. I mistakenly thought that because she was capable, I could just have her do it on her own. I see now how shaken her confidence is and that it will have to be built up before I can expect her to do some things on her own.

So, we decided together to start school tomorrow. We'll do one thing in the morning before my niece and nephew arrive. I'll hopefully be able to do some letter work with ds before they arrive, too, because he does really want to learn his letters. It will be a nice way to make our way to the official school year.

It's interesting, though--I think our conversation must have released 'something' in dd. She began writing a story last night. She hasn't sat down to write in weeks. Writing (in English) is something she has a certain amount of confidence in. Although I could never tell her to just go off and write something. Silly me expecting her to be able to do that with other areas.

Sunday seems like a good day to plan the week. [A huge pause occurred. Nothing is coming to me. lol.] What shall we do this week? I could start dd on math--place value. Or perhaps start showing her different ways to work on math facts. I want to hold off on the French phonics because I'd really like to double her up with the 15yo and I don't have notebooks yet for her to do the writing in. What else could I do with her? I could check out social studies topics and maybe start one of those with her. Or maybe play some games with our Canada puzzle map.

OH! I remember she had wanted to learn the months of the year. It's something we've never really looked at. That sounds like a great thing to work on this week. She already knows the first three so only nine others to learn. I'll make some month cards and we can work on the circular layout I learned about from a Montessori teacher. You place the cards like in a circular formation so that the child learns to think of December as being before January. You then play games to put them in order or try to recite them from memory or ask things like, "Which month is after May? Which month is two months before September?" Things like that. The goal is not just plain recitation but a genuine understanding and knowledge of the year. If I had twelfths for my fraction circles, that would be another way to work on it. But I don't. So why'd I bring that up? Who knows!