The routine of our life has been interrupted by the beginning of school for Porter and meetings for the older boys. Hopefully that will die down but that almost never seems to happen!
After his tutoring with Marmi which William took him to for the first Frazer and I spent part of the morning at BAPP letting Porter get to know his environment and play. Frazer commented afterwards how controlled he had been. I had noticed that he wanted to play with the legos or get to paint. Interesting he noticed his own control. I offered lots of praise there although frankly he was quiet and easy to be around the entire time.
When we got home, I went to fix lunch. I asked him to get ready for school by writing the date both ways and doing the calendar and signing in. WOW! HE did it and while he initially noted 14-14-09, when he was showing me the board he corrected it himself. When I asked him if he remembered that September and the number 9 had the same value, he said he did not but had used the chart I made Saturday. So, I guess some of that explicit cutting and pasting which drives me nuts is fruitful for him.
The time was disjointed. We worked through the book Get Up and Go trying to figure how much time had elapsed from the character’s alarm clock going off until she left for school. Frazer did a nice job using the number when (when I could move Porter the cut and glue boy) out of the way. Frazer used the one centimeter graph paper to record the times and the number line to add to each previous time. He used the number lines the book used to check his work. He still does not get my question of “What time is it five minutes from now?” without really thinking or just throwing out an answer which is not related immediately to question.
Tutoring Tony cut off our momentum but I gave him an assignment to go map out our house on our street. He came into me twice and each time I could see that he was getting carried away with his piece of art and not working on depicting the big picture. He also started using tape to join some paper together which took the project an entirely different direction. The good news is that he had fun. The other good news is that after Tony left and I drove carpool and started boiling the water for the pasta, I was able to sit with him and dismantle what he did not need. We then discussed the importance of breaking down the steps I give him if he does not understand instead of creating his own project. I felt slightly scandalous saying that but he does need to adhere to explicit instructions and learn to ask for help should he need it. We talked about how great project time is and how he has plenty of time built into his day to have fun. I told him that he was so good and developing his ideas and using material to enhance his project. Then he makes when of those typical and endearing Frazer gestures opening his arms and circling saying something like “I can do all that but I need to learn this new thing. Okay.” It’s too much! Just when I was feeling rotten for voicing his need to follow my idea, he grasps my point and sees the value.
We spent time going through Me on the Map putting the work he has done in the book on the similar page. We then looked at how the street map was laid out and how different his was from that. Then we were onto google maps. Wow that and the satellite totally brought the idea of starting small and going out to look at big picture into focus for him. He was excited and we tried printing off some of what we saw but…printer stinks! It definitely gave him the visual he needed.
We ended the day with him doing some unifix estimations. He was constantly guessing the same number and not really applying good guess strategies. When I suggested he hold the unifx up and make a guess based on what he saw, he got closer. He was only ever 1-5 off (three times 2 off). We ended the day at 5:30 with me running upstairs to finish dinner and feed Houlder before swim practice. He worked through some workbook pages.
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