We are not a sports family.
Wander was out of town and I took the girls out for lunch on Sunday.
There was a game on the tv in the restaurant, and the girls started watching it. Out of curiousity, I asked Sparkle is she knew what game it was. "Um, football?" she speculated. Um no. It was a college basketball game. I felt embarrased that my children are so culturally illiterate that they don't recognize two such common sports. At least Sparkle was able to tell that that there were two teams and they wore different colors.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Glitter and handwriting
I bragged on both my girls earlier, so I guess it's time to temper it a bit. I already did my post on how I made Sparkle hate math. Now it's Glitter's turn.
I was teaching Glitter how to write in cursive. She finally learned enough letters to write her entire name in cursive, and she proudly did so on the dry-erase board at home. So I figured that Glitter could now write her name in cursive. Silly me.
At dance class yesterday we finally get the forms to sign up for the spring recital. Glitter has been waiting for this form for weeks and was thrilled to finally be old enough to go on "real stage." On the form there is a separate line for the student's signature. I fill out the rest of the form and show Glitter the line for her signature. I tell her that signatures are usually done in cursive. At first Glitter is excited and grabs the pen. She writes her first name in cursive. She has lots of practice writing her first name in cursive and she writes it effortlessly, although not neatly. Then she writes the first letter of her last name. Then she totally looses it. She throws down the pen and almost bursts into tears. I don't know what's going on. I think she's forgotten how to spell her last name or how to form the letters, so I offer to write it for her to copy. That doesn't help. She asks if she can still be in the show even if she doesn't sign the form. Reassuring her that she can still be in the show doesn't help her. She asks if I can sign her name for her and I say no, it's supposed to be the student's signature. I remind her that what she's written so far is good enough. I don't know what to do and I'm embarrassed. She doesn't want to go off and play and she doesn't want to try writing her name either. Eventually, she decides to copy her name and then goes off to play, so I can turn in the form and pay the $$$.
The next day when Glitter does handwriting, she looks at the dry-erase board and somehow I understand that her difficulty yesterday was the lack of the dotted midline and top line on the signature line of the form. Sigh. She could write her name on the dry-erase board because it had the familiar lines, but without those lines she was lost and overwhelmed. Poor girl.
I was teaching Glitter how to write in cursive. She finally learned enough letters to write her entire name in cursive, and she proudly did so on the dry-erase board at home. So I figured that Glitter could now write her name in cursive. Silly me.
At dance class yesterday we finally get the forms to sign up for the spring recital. Glitter has been waiting for this form for weeks and was thrilled to finally be old enough to go on "real stage." On the form there is a separate line for the student's signature. I fill out the rest of the form and show Glitter the line for her signature. I tell her that signatures are usually done in cursive. At first Glitter is excited and grabs the pen. She writes her first name in cursive. She has lots of practice writing her first name in cursive and she writes it effortlessly, although not neatly. Then she writes the first letter of her last name. Then she totally looses it. She throws down the pen and almost bursts into tears. I don't know what's going on. I think she's forgotten how to spell her last name or how to form the letters, so I offer to write it for her to copy. That doesn't help. She asks if she can still be in the show even if she doesn't sign the form. Reassuring her that she can still be in the show doesn't help her. She asks if I can sign her name for her and I say no, it's supposed to be the student's signature. I remind her that what she's written so far is good enough. I don't know what to do and I'm embarrassed. She doesn't want to go off and play and she doesn't want to try writing her name either. Eventually, she decides to copy her name and then goes off to play, so I can turn in the form and pay the $$$.
The next day when Glitter does handwriting, she looks at the dry-erase board and somehow I understand that her difficulty yesterday was the lack of the dotted midline and top line on the signature line of the form. Sigh. She could write her name on the dry-erase board because it had the familiar lines, but without those lines she was lost and overwhelmed. Poor girl.
Sparkle hates math
When teaching elementary math, I discovered that I like arithmetic. Unfortunately, arithmetic makes so much sense to me that I have a hard time relating to Sparkle when she doesn't understand it. If I were a better teacher I'd be able to coach her so that she doesn't hate math. Unfortunately, as an inexperienced teacher, in addition (pun!) to teaching Sparkle arithmetic, I also ended up teaching Sparkle to hate math.
Sparkle looks for patterns when it doesn't make sense to look for them. For example, I shuffle a deck of flashcards so they should be in random order. She looks for patterns from one card to the next.
On the other hand, she doesn't see patterns when they would be amazingly helpful. For example, there was a column of math problems today. She dug through each problem in isolation. She eventually plowed her way through, but it would have been so much easier if she realized (or let me point out) that she could use the answer from the previous problem to easily find out the answer to the next problem.
Sparkle looks for patterns when it doesn't make sense to look for them. For example, I shuffle a deck of flashcards so they should be in random order. She looks for patterns from one card to the next.
On the other hand, she doesn't see patterns when they would be amazingly helpful. For example, there was a column of math problems today. She dug through each problem in isolation. She eventually plowed her way through, but it would have been so much easier if she realized (or let me point out) that she could use the answer from the previous problem to easily find out the answer to the next problem.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
More language arts bragging
I stopped taking pictures because I never got around to taking the pictures off my camera. But I want to brag on my kids a bit.
I didn't want to drop the routine of school over the holidays since I find restarting school is horrible if I let the kids do whatever they want for two weeks. Instead we got a very pared down version of school. We started at 8:30 instead of 8:00, cut out almost all of our regular school activities, and instead did some more fun stuff.
Glitter wanted to learn cursive, so I decided to teach her over the break. Sparkle was in second grade when I taught her, and it took about two weeks. Glitter was far more motivated than Sparkle. So motivated that she was begging me for lessons and practiced on her own. She always wanted me to teach her more letters so that she could write more words. She was thrilled that the first few letters I taught were "a" and "d" so that she could write "dad." She got mad at me when I explained I wouldn't teach her the letter "o" until the end, because she wanted to be able to write "mommy." Glitter did so well with the lessons that I figured it would be shame to stop without completing the alphabet, so I'm still teaching her cursive now that break is over.
Anyway, here we are, and she has only two more letters to learn: v and w. I'll teach them to her tomorrow. This girl does an amazing amount of writing. She writes in her journal or log book every day, which is usually at least a sentence. She does her spelling, which is a couple more sentences. Plus, she is currently doing cursive, which is almost the entire alphabet twice plus several more words.
I think that I'm strange in that when I teach handwriting I have my kid write the alphabet. I don't have her do copywork or write anything else for handwriting instruction. Just the alphabet until she can form all the letters without having to think about it. Glitter did try to do her spelling in cursive today, which was a bit tricky because I couldn't tell if some errors were handwriting errors or spelling errors. A side benefit from Glitter's interest in cursive is that Sparkle has started writing in cursive again too.
For Sparkle I found another writing breakthrough. Postits. I got dragged into using Postits from Brave Writer. When I first read about having to use Post Its for their product I was extremely resistant. After using the Post-its with Glitter a few times I saw the potential. I still hated using Post-its with Glitter, but I found great potential for Sparkle. I had her make lists, with each item on a different post-it. Then I had her sort the post-its. The post-its make a huge change in how we approach pre-writing. Instead of trying to make a graphic organizer, compose sentences, or some such, Sparkle could focus on coming up with ideas and organizing those ideas as two separate tasks. The post-its are too short for a whole sentence, so it's easier to put a single phrase or idea on one post-it. The post-its are easy to move around, yet stay where put, so that it's easy to try out and evaluate different arrangements, not re-writing involved. Plus, writing on a post-in is just less intimidating than a blank piece of paper. Oh, and I just throw out the post-its when we're done.
I didn't want to drop the routine of school over the holidays since I find restarting school is horrible if I let the kids do whatever they want for two weeks. Instead we got a very pared down version of school. We started at 8:30 instead of 8:00, cut out almost all of our regular school activities, and instead did some more fun stuff.
Glitter wanted to learn cursive, so I decided to teach her over the break. Sparkle was in second grade when I taught her, and it took about two weeks. Glitter was far more motivated than Sparkle. So motivated that she was begging me for lessons and practiced on her own. She always wanted me to teach her more letters so that she could write more words. She was thrilled that the first few letters I taught were "a" and "d" so that she could write "dad." She got mad at me when I explained I wouldn't teach her the letter "o" until the end, because she wanted to be able to write "mommy." Glitter did so well with the lessons that I figured it would be shame to stop without completing the alphabet, so I'm still teaching her cursive now that break is over.
Anyway, here we are, and she has only two more letters to learn: v and w. I'll teach them to her tomorrow. This girl does an amazing amount of writing. She writes in her journal or log book every day, which is usually at least a sentence. She does her spelling, which is a couple more sentences. Plus, she is currently doing cursive, which is almost the entire alphabet twice plus several more words.
I think that I'm strange in that when I teach handwriting I have my kid write the alphabet. I don't have her do copywork or write anything else for handwriting instruction. Just the alphabet until she can form all the letters without having to think about it. Glitter did try to do her spelling in cursive today, which was a bit tricky because I couldn't tell if some errors were handwriting errors or spelling errors. A side benefit from Glitter's interest in cursive is that Sparkle has started writing in cursive again too.
For Sparkle I found another writing breakthrough. Postits. I got dragged into using Postits from Brave Writer. When I first read about having to use Post Its for their product I was extremely resistant. After using the Post-its with Glitter a few times I saw the potential. I still hated using Post-its with Glitter, but I found great potential for Sparkle. I had her make lists, with each item on a different post-it. Then I had her sort the post-its. The post-its make a huge change in how we approach pre-writing. Instead of trying to make a graphic organizer, compose sentences, or some such, Sparkle could focus on coming up with ideas and organizing those ideas as two separate tasks. The post-its are too short for a whole sentence, so it's easier to put a single phrase or idea on one post-it. The post-its are easy to move around, yet stay where put, so that it's easy to try out and evaluate different arrangements, not re-writing involved. Plus, writing on a post-in is just less intimidating than a blank piece of paper. Oh, and I just throw out the post-its when we're done.
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