"Progress, not perfection" is FlyLady's motto. It's become mine, as well.
I'm still having issues with Bob, but he did progress a small bit this week, so I guess I need to focus on that. Monday went fairly well--more work done than usual. Tuesday... He was resisting doing pre-algebra work, basically feeling like he was entitled to say he would never learn it because he didn't want to--he didn't like working with the x's. I told him his sister spends about 90% of her math time working with those x's and that it sounds like the real problem is he doesn't feel capable, but to be capable means doing the work. He just kind of sat there. I got fed up and said, "You know, if you don't learn this stuff, you won't get a diploma. And if this resistance, which you've been giving a lot of lately, is what you're going to do for high school, I can't keep you here." He begrudgingly gave in. But did well and even asked to do some on Wed., but it didn't end up happening because I was feeling off and not concentrated enough. Yesterday, he had a really bad headache, finally managed to fall asleep and woke up just before lunch!
Dd watched a multiplication section of a Math Tutor DVD that I took out from the library. She really liked his explanation of 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication and asked to do some yesterday. She got all hung up on one mistake and let it sour her mood. :( They all have a tendency to treat mistakes as though they are evils, or confusion as being the same as stupid. Not sure where they get this from! The two oldest came to me that way, the one girl I used to homeschool was sooooo bad about it, you could say she had eraser-phobia until enough of me saying, "They put erasers on just about every pencil because everybody makes mistakes." I need to maybe have 2 posters up:
Progress, not perfection.
and
Confusion does not mean stupidity.
Having a conversation about why we get confused might be a good thing!
The 16yo (she's almost 17! omg! I feel old! lol) has made some nice progress this week. She's struggling with some health stuff at the moment but still managed to get a fair amount done and has had a more positive attitude. It's great to see!
Ds has spent probably a couple of hours each day playing his guitar, enjoys the Geomags and has started playing "basketball" in the house with a bus-tent and just a regular ball (like the big beach balls, but small size). We've only read once this week. But he told me yesterday he wanted to read and do math with me this morning (we were talking about how work needed to get done before we go off to the rec. centre this afternoon). Sounds good to me!
2 comments:
I have faced resistance a lot lately. I also faced some confusion this week when I offered Tessa a large-number subtraction problem. Tessa was comfortable performing this sort of calculation a while ago but it turns out she can't now remember how to do it. I'm sure a quick presentation with the materials would bring it all back to her but Tessa has announced that she doesn't like subtraction and that she won't do it! I'll wait a couple of weeks then try again differently. In the meantime, I'm trying Marva Collins' technique: telling Tessa she's a maths whiz, reminding her of times she's mastered maths concepts easily.
Resistance I find wearying; it gets me down. I'm impressed by how cheerfully you deal with resistance, Daisy.
I'm not always so cheerful about the resistance. :D Right now, I'm just very driven to make things work better!
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