English 4 & 5, Maths 1

Jonty had a bad night last night with terrible earache and woke up this morning with a raging fever. So weak he could not even walk. So I did not send him to school, but rather to the doctor. He now has a vast array of medications, poor kid.

But it was, ironically, a really good homeschooling day!

Once the medication kicked in we had our first proper maths lesson ever. Lesson 1, week 1, Term 2. It was so much fun. Jonty had a ball. And because it was not "assessment" or "test" or "check-up" I did not feel worried or stressed when he asked what words meant. We got through everything and I don't think he even realised he'd had a lesson.

I have made "Monster Maths" scary posters for all the different ways of expressing "plus", "minus" and "equals". Jonty did not think they were very scary but he liked them and referred to them.

Then we did an English lesson which was great. He takes great pride in his work.

I was not planning to do anymore teaching today, but because he'd slept so much during the day today - feeling so grim, poor boy - at 7pm bedtime, he could not sleep. So he begged me to do another English lesson. We thus completed the week's English programme! Great news as tomorrow we can catch up with the Maths a bit.

He had read his book five times already, now he had a "creative writing" exercise to tell the story from the perspective of one of the characters in the book. Initially he thought it would be fun to tell it from Floppy's point of view, but later settled on Chip as a simpler option. Here it is:

STORy to tell (by Chip)
I went to a New house. I looked at quite a lot of room's. kipper pulled the wallpaper. I liked the house. I liked the Big Bedroom. there was a treehouse. the house was a grate house. I hope we moov into the house. the end.

Apparently spelling and handwriting are not too important, the idea is to get him to express his own ideas and gain confidence in writing. He does write confidently - he likes me to sit with him and checks spelling with me from time to time, but mostly he's correct. I love the apostrophe in "room's".

He could not spell out "there" phonetically, so I helped him with that word. He looked up "house" and "wallpaper" in the book. He spelled out "grate" and "moov" phonetically - and I was very proud of myself for just sitting by and not correcting him. Takes soooo much effort.

When he'd finished he wanted me to read it to him, then he read it. He was so pleased with himself.

Then he went to bed as it was 8pm and way past his bedtime.

I hope his infection clears up soon because he's really in pain, but man, he does his work well when he's sick.