Acquara Independent School

Avery had his last day of ECSE today until July 9th. He brought home this:

These are cool when done with an eye-dropper. Looks like he used the sponge bottle paint, though. (Am I too cruel to that place? It’s BEEYOOOTIFUL! How’s that?)

Big kids:

• We worked on one of the Writing Strands activities surrounding adjectives and categorizing adjectives. I think I may make them write a short essay about their topic.
• They did the workbook for Ch.13 Lesson 6 in MIF. Naim gets the word problems where they compare the difference between two amounts mixed up. (Like Sam has 22 apples. Ann has 15. How many more apples does Sam have than Ann?) He thinks if it says “more” that always means add and if it says “fewer” that always means subtract, so for this example he would say Sam has 37 more apples than Ann. We got out blocks and played roles and everything. But I don’t know how well it worked. But we just have to move on from this chapter and get on with it for now. We will come back to this later.
• They both did 2pp. Sylvan
• While Naim was with Erika, Aaron did Lesson 3 worksheets in HOP
• He also finished his HWT book. He did 8,9,10, a numbers practice page and the final assessment thing. He wanted to finish a book because he knew that Naim was going to finish reading today.
• Naim spent time with Erika where, according to Naim, Erika thinks he is stressed about school (or could it be that she comes right when he has finished math so that is what he talks about and she thinks it is a bigger deal than it is? I am hardpressed to ever hear Naim talking about school in stressful terms.) So her big idea was that he should use different colored blocks for tens and ones. Now, I am getting all this from Naim, so who knows if this was really a grand conclusion or just an off-handed suggestion that Naim took as Gospel. But I would like to show her the Montessori tiles of different colored tens and ones we have, or the base-10 blocks we have, or the other billion math manipulatives that we use every day. It is kind of like a) if I wanted a tutor, I would have hired a tutor. And b) It isn’t that her suggestions are bed, its just that I have not heard even one that isn’t something that we weren’t already doing. She wanted Naim to use a pictoral cookbook to cook. I showed Naim the kid cookbooks we already have been using and he rejected them as “not being right.” So I asked her if she had one in mind. No. So she brings this second-hand cookbook. I mean, that is nice of her, but it was actually more text heavy than the child pictoral cookbooks that I already have. And then she works with him using measuring cups as if we have NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE. I mean, it is fine and I get that it is more interesting for him when someone else is doing it who is not his mom. But again…I did not hire her to be his tutor and I don’t think he has a HUGE amount of anxiety over schoolwork or his slow reading pace most of the time. He seems to worry about it AFTER she has seen him, not before. Power of suggestion, man. Power of suggestion. Is this some grand plan I don’t understand like she is trying to busy him with real-kidlike worries instead of his usual stuff like death and the destruction of the sun? Okaaaay. I just don’t get it. And whenever I ask him about it he gets all defensive, so I let it go. 
• After she left, he finished HOP Kindergarten. Halej-fuckin-lujeah! Man we worked a long time on that level. He was very happy although I don’t think he gets how far he has come. I mean, he is reading now. Every word is not torture any more (just every third word.) This kid spent over four years on just letter names and sounds, so we are actually slightly accelerating. The second level went much quicker than the first.  Ok, so looking back, it looks like we started Kindergarten HOP in January of 2012. A year and a half ago. We were also still doing ZigZat (discoveries in early reading) and Sylvan Letter names/sounds back then. So, progress!

Victory!

Filed under: Aaron, Avery, Class/Camp, Early Intervention, Handwriting, Home, Language Arts, Math, Naim, Social Skills | Tagged: ECSE, HOP, HWT, Math in Focus, Writing Strands |