Back in the game

I have noticed whenever we take a break or miss a few days in a row from lessons the girls come back with a hunger to work. Today was no exception.

The stars of today's lesson were supposed to be geometric solids and matching but we got other unexpected things accomplished as well.

Here is Delores doing a little mirror cleaning after she noticed touching the mirror left handprints preventing her from seeing her new hair accessories.



Then Lydia noticed the container of poms behind the couch in my boxes of supplies and begged to do something with them. I set out a dip tray and gave them the container and they just went at it.



When we finally got around to doing activities on the shelf Lydia did her matching objects (socks) to pictures and did great. It was her first time matching to pictures but she had no problem picking right up on it.


Then she wanted to put on the socks. It was the first time she put on a sock all by her self! She has been struggling with this for months, but today she got it. I got all excited of course and she looked at me like "what mom? Geez." Very humble and funny girl.

She moved on to her open and close boxes and actually got the lids on this time.



Delores worked on her favorite activity, the large button frame. She worked on Lydia's matching activity, the beginning sounds "F," activity, Lydia's early counting tray and then moved on to the geometric solids.

Now, I have a love-hate relationship with the geometric solids. I love the concept; learning the names of 3D shapes by feel, by name, and helping the child develop the ability to see the shapes in their world. But, those shapes have hard, long names and it is not easy for my girls to learn them. After many months of trying to teach them both either two or three at a time with a three period lesson neither one of them could recall any of the names. So I gave up for about a month. Now I've redirected my attention from the names to just matching. Wooden shapes to real life objects, shapes to pictures of the shapes, shapes to pictures of real life objects, just any kind of matching to get their minds to at least recognize the shapes in their everyday environment. I know one day it will click, but for now I'm not going to stress out about it because then they become stressed and loose their passion for trying.



Guess what? She actually remembered the ovoid, the rectangular prism and the triangular prism. I still didn't try to teach her the rest of the names, but it goes to show, not rushing the child and trusting your instincts really work.

And just a couple of funny moments:

Working on a letter "F," worksheet.


Peeling wrappers off crayons. Her absolute favorite thing to do.

So we are back in the routine and now that we have gotten started again the bug is back and my itch and passion to teach and guide and plan and craft together activities and lessons is back in full swing. Funny how that works, isn't it?