Ho hum…

So, this week: B was at sixer and seconder training camp on the weekend, and I successfully convinced her to write up a report on it for her portfolio this afternoon. Needs editing and expanding a bit but we nutted out the process of writing quite well, I thought. She’s on the “I can’t write” and “I’m hopeless with words” negative self-talk, and I encouraged her to tell me about it, and then think about what she’d want to include from that conversation, then give it a bit of structure. She wrote the first paragraph then I took dictation after she started panicking and losing focus, as I figured I’d rather she worked through her inhibitions around the process of composition without worrying about typing and spelling as well.

We stayed home yesterday as I couldn’t get organised enough to get out the door for pottery plus ew started out grumpy and snarling at each other, and it went downhill from there. Sigh. Today was much nicer. Since B has a cold from a camping weekend in rain and snow, she didn’t go riding yesterday or swimming today, but K went swimming with Nannie and B pottered about and snuggled with me and H. We had declared a screentime moratorium for the week, so we’ve actually been forced to interact, quelle horreur!

She’s reading more, and has gotten three chapters into The Far Side of the Mountain: the sequel to My Side of the Mountain. We had a chat this morning about the process of reading, and she was saying that when she doesn’t understand a word she reads on and works it out from context – yay! She’s got it at last! We also chatted about the way vocabulary expands from reading because of the context and the motivation, whereas vocabulary workbooks are a waste of time because they provide an artificial context and no intrinsic motivation. She probably just tuned me out, though… 😉

I’ve been reading aloud more – a book on dreams which K keeps asking me to reread, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats for B, and Winnie the Pooh for both of them. Plus random books for K, stories as well as those “first words” type picture books which I’ve been having fun with by talking complete gibberish with a straight face, and watching her pick up on my gambit, then start playing it herself. She’s getting into telling jokes and watching her work out the idea of humour is absolutely fascinating. B is getting in on the act by reading aloud from her joke book as well. Lots of awful howlers!

Last week – we forgot Scouts on Wednesday but she did make it to Cubs on Friday. She did pottery, German, swimming and horse riding as per the usual timetable. Apparently she now has her Pets badge at Cubs. I’m sure we did lots of other stuff but I’m too brainburned to remember them, will come back and fill this post in if I remember anything of note…