Paper Plate People

I have a stubborn child. She's been struggling to learn to read, and I get easily frustrated with her. I hate feeling frustrated at her when she won't try but I have to help her to learn to read this summer. She got a bit behind her reading lessons in school this year, and her teacher sent home a big stack of lessons for us to work on every day. Well, it hasn't been every day. Partly because of the frustrations we both feel when she isn't getting anything out of it.

Enter the paper plate people. One day, Lacy decided to draw faces on a bunch of paper plates. Then it was time for summer school. She decided to have the paper plate people read all her lessons for her. And do you know what? She actually learned! She read! I didn't get frustrated with her! She didn't get frustrated trying to read! It was a miracle! So now, every time we do school, the paper plate people come out and read for Lacy.

But today, Lacy admitted something to me. "Mom, it's not really the paper plate people who are reading. It's me. I just make different voices and pretend that it is the paper plate people who are reading." Well, what a revelation, Lacy! I'm glad it's helping, even if it's not real.

Summer School

I'm trying my hardest to work with my children this summer on school work. Especially Lacy. She needs to review several reading units from kindergarten so she can be prepared for first grade. She's struggling a little with it. She has some attention problems and she gets burnt out really fast. As much as I would love to homeschool her (and as much as she would benefit from it), it is really challenging for me to be consistent with her schooling every day and to be patient with her. We really can only do 15 minutes at a time, tops. I think I need to learn some unschooling methods so I can figure out a method that works better for her.

As far as Rose goes, she's just turned 4 and can't sing the alphabet song yet. She's a little slower with learning to speak than Lacy, but she's been evaluated and is within a normal range for her age, but they actually are concerned about her fine motor skills. She just started drawing recognizable people within the last couple of months. Maybe it's because she's small and still speaks babyish, but I haven't really worried about what she knows yet. But it dawned on me- she's supposed to start kindergarten in a year! I don't know if she'll be even close to ready for kindergarten. If I don't work with her, she for sure won't be ready. So we have these alphabet strips that Lacy made in kindergarten, and we get them out and point at all the letters and sing the alphabet song each day. My friend Emily also got her a beginning tracing book, which is really cute. She likes to draw in that every day. Hopefully that helps her fine motor development.

We're also busily reading every day. Lacy and I just finished On The Banks of Plumb Creek, from the Little House series, and we have just started Twig. which we're enjoying so far. We attend story time each week (it only runs in July in the summer) and pick out a selection of books each week to read with Rose. She has several favorites, including Blueberries for Sal (which we own, thanks to my sister Leslie), Belinda Begins Ballet, and Claire and the Unicorn.

Hopefully my allergies will finally go away in a few days so I can really get down to business- I feel like they've been weighing me down all last month and into this month, and I haven't been a very good mom. But with our new air conditioner, perhaps I'll be able to do better!