Go!

We kicked off our school year Tuesday and it has been an interesting week. As I mentioned in previous posts Delores is using a new curriculum, Moving Beyond the Page, and Lydia is still doing Montessori activities. 

The first 2 days we had a rocky start. I realized I had not specifically told Delores that she didn't have to do anything on the shelf that holds Lydia's work so she spent almost all morning doing Montessori activities and didn't leave time for much else.  She seemed happy with that though and Lydia did really well too, but I ended up doing some of Delores' work in her new playset after her nap. Which, was a little strained. 

The next day I may have focused too much on catching up with Delores' work and Lydia didn't get any work done because she was so absorbed in what we were doing. I realized she was feeling overlooked or left out because that evening she was a very clingy and cranky girl.

See, Lydia is no where to be found.

So, obviously I was going to have to find a balance somewhere. I had tried getting Lydia started first but she was too interested in what we were doing to do her own stuff. I had tried to get Delores involved with her stuff first but by the time I got to an activity Delores could do without my assistance Lydia had lost interest. I really didn't know how I was going to teach 2 different curriculums successfully.

Then, all of a sudden Thursday morning I had an idea.  No one told me I couldn't teach both of them Delores' curriculum.  Yes, there would be a lot of things Lydia would not understand,  but she is happier being involved than she is being by herself.  So, that's what I did. She did some of the same activities Delores was doing and she did some Montessori activities when there was something she couldn't participate in. It worked out really well.

Friday we had an appointment we had to attend so we skip lessons that morning. We did some review that afternoon with a combination of Montessori, using the wet, dry, try method on the chalkboard and then we used some worksheets from the new curriculum to practice the lowercase "a."

Everyday I've had to make adjustments and work out the kinks. I knew I was going to have to change my teaching style with this new curriculum. I just didn't know how much I would learn in this first short week. Here is what I discovered:

1. I have to teach them the same thing at the same time or one child suffers.

2. I have to let them know what is expected of them the night before and the morning of.

3. We have to take frequent breaks.

4. I have to teach when the opportunity arises, not on a schedule. Even if that means 10 minutes before bath time.

5. I will not get housework done like I would like so I have to get use to a messy house.

6. I need to drop my expectations and listen to my children and give them only what they can handle at one time, not what a book tells me they should be able to accomplish in one day.

7. I have to make time for play.

8. I can't look ahead in the curriculum or I get overwhelmed. 

All in all Delores has learned much more than I would have expected she would learn in four days. She can write capital and lowercase letter "a's" and knows the difference between the two. She learned about an artic animal and their characteristics.  She knows alphabetical order, letter sounds, numbers 1-20, she can read the word "you," and is actually enjoying our lessons. I can't even imagine what we will all learn next week.

Ps: my new non-iPhone phone has many quirks so blogging exclusively from my palm is very difficult. Please bear with me as I adjust my writing to this setback.