English: Lessons 1 & 2

Lesson 1.

I did not have the workbook, so things MAY have been different if I'd had it. As it was the lesson took about 10 minutes...

My job was to introduce the book and the characters: "House for Sale" with Biff, Chip, Floppy, Mum, Dad, and Kipper all featuring. The book was really appropriate - we've just moved house and our "new" house was also in a state of disrepair like the one in the book ... yet we all liked it.

Jonty liked the house. Mum liked it too. Emily liked the house. Nina liked the house. Everyone liked the house. Domino and Daisy liked it too.

Then Jonty read the book. Perfectly. Fluently. Then he wanted wanted to read books 2 through to 6. And then the extra stories provided too. Then our 10 minutes were up. No, no, no, I exaggerate, he actually read all the other stories while I was off with Emily doing ballet and music (Emily does it, not me!).

Lesson 2:

He read the book again. Very confident. Lots of expression. Good pauses at the full stops. Good reader!

Then he made had to draw and write up an advertisement for a house. The boy does not know what an advertisement is!!!!!!! why is that? probably because (1) we don't really have magazines and newspapers lying around and (2) what advertising he does see in terms of fliers, billboards, etc, he probably has not realised are adverts. So, before anything else I had to explain what they are. I found one of Nick's Runners' World magazines and we looked at some adverts for running shoes, arnica, etc.. then looked at Time and Newsweek and found adverts for Rolex and laptops.

Then the lights when on.

"Oh", says my little boy, "So an advert is when people lie to you to get you to buy something!"

That figured out, he created a wonderful advert for an imaginary house which had 3 basements, a beatufiul garden and was painted green and yellow. Going for 60 baht! what a salesman. He was nervous about writing it up, said he'd rather draw and talk about it, but once he got going he enjoyed the task tremendously.

Nina then tore up his work, so he had to re-do it which he did with a great deal of enthusiasm. This time, though, the house was going for 600 baht. Inflation you know...

he needed help with some words e.g. garden and basement, but he sounded them out and got them. He spelled out 'beautiful' perfectly, but then lost his confidence when he came to writing it and asked me to help.

He is a bit confused about the different scripts. At school he writes the "Thai" way, but has noticed that the script is different. He kind of mixes them at the moment. I am trying to be relaxed about that, but I do freak out a bit when he forms his o's the wrong way round, and writes his i's upwards not downwards. I know that's how they get taught at school, but its going to make it difficult to write cursive one day.

Anyway, we played some word games for reinforcement, but it was actually just for fun as he knew the words and did not really need the reinforcement. But it was fun, and that's always good.

he's so excited about it and so keen. Lovely student. My very best one.