Modifying Our Day's Plan.

Monday 17th February 2014

I had decided last week, to change things slightly.

I was going through one of those moments when I thought I wasn't teaching her enough.

You know that panic that slowly creeps up you, until you go OMG!, what if I fail.

I don't have those moments very often, and hadn't had one for a while. But for some reason I was thinking about her getting older and feeling doubtful about being able to keep extending on her in a way that is like school.

Then I have to remind myself - THIS IS NOT SCHOOL! STOP COMPARING!

Any way Miss Personality had a late start as usual, but with an added attitude that comes from staying at grandma's for the weekend. We all went to grandma's for the weekend and she had got to spend time with her big sister, big brother, his girlfriend and their gorgeous little baby girl. The excitement of staying at grandma and grandad's as well as being unsettled in a bed and house that wasn't what she was use to. Added up to a little girl that didn't go to sleep till 11pm every night we were there. But that's okay, doesn't happen very often and now we are home, we can get back into our own kind of routine :)

By the time she had breakfast, done her personal jobs and was ready to start her day of learning, it was about 11am. 

She read off the list of planned activities and chose to start off with English. I have divided her activities up in to some of the key learning areas of the curriculum, so that I feel reassured she is doing enough :)

I have found she likes to have a planned day to a certain degree, but she gets to chose when she feels like doing it. We both win :)

She did some literacy on the website - Study Ladder. She chose to do some reading and comprehension, by reading a short piece on 'The Legend of Santa'. It stated where Santa's office was, so Miss Personality had to find it on the world map on the wall. After she read the short piece she then had 10 questions to answer.

She went on to do some spelling and vocabulary exercises on word families 'ick and eck'. Grammar on nouns and then did a list of words related to her butterfly unit study on the website - Spelling City.

Miss Personality moved on to Geography. On the website - Study Ladder they have a section on languages and culture and then another section on maps. For languages and culture, she got introduced to Spanish and counted up to 10, then had to match the word with the number. Then for maps she had to study a map that was given, that had the name of each country and the capital. Then it asked 10 random questions. Miss Personality found this hard to memorise every country. So we modified this activity. For each country she was asked to identify the capital, we used google maps to find the country and then found it on our wall map. Then she used google maps to find the capital and then identify it out of the 4 options she was given, and chose the right one. She enjoyed this process so much that she wanted to do the 10 questions twice, as each time they asked a different 10 questions.

Miss Personality then moved on to Maths, but after she started realised it was lunch time, so we stopped for lunch.

She then did Study Ladder - Maths and did some practice on the 3 times tables. She got bored from this and moved on to Science - Butterfly Unit Study. She had to answer the questions, how many different kind of butterflies in the world, then how many different kinds in New Zealand. She chose to put these into a word document. Then she had some small maps of different countries that I had printed out, and she had to match the pictures of the butterflies from those countries, after looking at the website I have found this information from.

I noticed she started losing enthusiasm for this, as to her she had HEAPS to cut out. I have noticed if visually she notices something, like too many pages or too many words, she starts telling herself that she can't do it. I tried to keep encouraging her to finish cutting the pictures out. Then she went on to the websites and started matching the butterfly pictures to the maps. She was really waning now. Asking if she could do it tomorrow. I tried to keep her motivation going. But after she had slowly sorted 3 maps out, in transferring them to another table, she dropped them on the floor, getting them all mixed up again. That really tested her motivation and she was very disheartened. I got her to pick them up and then she kicked the same little toe on the same foot that she has kicked so many times in the last week. She lost it then, ending up in my arms crying with despair.

I took this for the signal that it was, and that was she was still tired from the weekend. After she had her cuddles I suggested she finish her apple she had been eating, in bed, with her feet up and watch a dvd in her bed.

As much as we have a plan (kind of), there is always room for change, as there is no point pressing on if the momentum is lost.

Tomorrow is a new day :)