Reading & Writing Basics

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Whoo hoo, the school day is over! In 2 hours the babysitter will be here. In that time I have to shower, get dressed (very warmly as we have to brave the teens. Even after 4 years in Syracuse I don’t like it when it’s below 20. I’ll happily take the snow, but keep the teens and single digit temps, kthnx), make dinner, replace the cat litter, put away three loads of laundry, log in the schoolwork we did today, and vacuum Rocket Boy’s room and the living room. Phew.

Date night here we come!

Today Rocket Boy and I stuck to the basics of reading and math. Rocket Boy was definitely not himself – seeming tired and rubbing his eyes a lot. It was a good day to cuddle on the couch and read lots of stories. He even asked for some rest time! We read three It was a Dark and Silly Night stories from the Little Lit collection, Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats, and an all-time favorite Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. I have to say I am a bit annoyed at Lyle, maybe it’s because we’ve also been reading a lot of Madeline lately and I am more than a bit over reading about over privledged people. At least Lyle and most of the characters in the book are not entitled snobs. We did all your basic reading comprehension questions and did a bit of artwork based on Lyle. The crocodile is trying to win over a skittish cat by giving her his most toothsome smile, which only terrifies her. Rocket Boy did a drawing of what the cat perceived when Lyle smiled – all teeth. I had him read to me as much as he could – about 6 pages before he got whiny and started rubbing his eyes again. Not bad since there is a decent amount of text on each page. We also used Lyle for the basis of adding more words to our word box – 14 more today. Rocket Boy is still getting frustrated at writing, but he’s so excited about new words that it keeps him on track. We turned words into math by creating a line graph so we can chart how many words he earns each day. So far he has 44 in his box.

Since the writing really tried him, we took a break to play letter go fish – I have deck that has upper and lower case letters to match. We then used the deck to do a word family exercise. One of today’s words is cat, I pulled out the “a” and the “t” then we went through the rest of the deck adding new letters in front. Each time we made a real word, Rocket Boy wrote it in his notebook and drew a picture. Then we made up a cute little story about a fat cat mistaking a rat for a mat and sitting on him. Writing was still hard for him, but since the “a” and the “t” were consistent with each word, it did go easier than yesterday with the 26 completely different words. I have to find new ways to bring more writing into the day and to make it more fun. If I can inject it in fun small doses, he’ll build the confidence he’s lacking.

We ended the day with some math – counting by 5s and by 10s – including playing the Schoolhouse Rock 5 song over and over again. It will take a while for him to get the 5s, but we’re on our way. I’d reinforce the lesson with nickles, but we turned them all in to the bank the other day.