Learning that: self satisfaction in a job well done is a valuable possession

So another week is going. Today is Veterans Day and I have decided to proceed with class.  It is my belief that those who have served and who serve do so to maintain our freedoms and safety.  I will honor them in part by proceeding with instruction.  When the girls are older we will include in our Veterans Day lessons community service on this day rather than lessons.

One plan for today is to tell the oral history of their family. It will tell of many who are Veterans from the Revolutionary War forward.  It will eventually tell of those veterans who fought before the USA was formed. 

In the meantime we continue to make progress in our lap-book project. It is a multi-study project that compliments each section. To begin with the thankfulness list, Native Americans culture, the First Thanksgiving.  Of course it is a lot on one plate but it is the introduction of this material that they will then be able to build on as the get older and begin to learn more detail about early settlements.  The girls look forward to this project each day.  It has provided me with the leverage to get moving on their other studies.

I have halted progression in the math book for F.  We clearly are far ahead of schedule as when we turned the page for the next section it had pictures of Mary, Joseph and Bethlehem.  BESIDES, I did an evaluation of her understandingand she really needs to recognize the higher numbers by sight better before we move on. So the next several weeks we will work on recognizing numbers to 100.  If she does not progress then we will sit her comfortably until she does. After all, I remind myself that she does not have to do any of this.  BIG progress in blending sounds but she has a hard time with the short i and e differentiation when I say it. She does well when she says it.  This week she read the words.....fat, cat, mat, pat, rat, cap, map, with her blending skills.  I decided to focus on one short sound at a time as we blend, which is not the A Beka book lesson but it works for us. 

I find F to be disrupting G when I am giving 1:1 attention for instruction.  She will be doing well in a lesson that she can do independently but will deliberately make huge errors to get my attention back to her.  Trying to decide how I want to handle this as it must be something I am willing to do consistently and not a punishment.  I also am looking to build independent learners in the future, of course I have several years for that but the beginning is also important for future expectations.

G is also at a stop point in her math until I feel she has mastered some facts better. Yesterday she showed some great progress to that.  This week she finally reached the letter "G" within her cursive work. Now she can sign her name. It was a excitingday for her.  We have reached compound words and preparing to enter the world of "ed,ing" in Language.  She really dislikes this class and thinks it is so funny that the cover of the book as a skunk on it. She thinks that Language stinks.  Phonics is beginning to break the rules she has come to rely on.  It is making it hard to recall it all.  As always if I let her read all day long for class she would be thrilled.

As always the girls are a joy in my life and it is a blessing to be doing this with them.  They are so bright and eager to learn.  They both want me to be proud of what they do, I am trying to turn that inward so that they feel proud of themselves and self satisfaction in a job well done is a valuable possession.