My kids day yesterday...

I particularly wanted to mention how Aaron and Melody did yesterday with schoolwork and Jess in the afternoon.

Aaron had a "bit of an issue" about not "quite telling me the truth" yesterday morning, so he ended up being on restriction for the rest of the day. In fact, I don't really think the restriction would have made any difference because he had so much schoolwork left to do in the afternoon that we were doing it until about 6:30 pm!! That isn't what I wanted to mention though...

We were working on his math -- he was struggling with the concept of "long division." When they had first introduced division in his PACEs, he thought it was a breeze, then they introduced Long Division and he choked on it. He's had trouble with it sinse. It just didn't make sense to him and he couldn't remember the steps! Well, yesterday, I decided to have him stop trying and approach this from a different angle. I picked the easiest problem on the page which was 34 divided by 2. I had him get out 34 beads. I then had him make them into piles of tens and a pile of four. Then I showed him his problem... he had 3 tens and 4 units as his number he was dividing into. After that, I had him make his piles in to piles of 2s, then he counted how many there were: 17. I showed him his problem again: 34/2=17. Then, with that knowledge, we worked the problem together Long Division way. He asked, "Am I going to have to make piles of beads for all my problems??" I told him No, I had just done that so he could see what was going on. He said, "OH!!" It was so cool to see those lights all going off in his head!! Major Math Victory :)

Melody also had a victory -- she read one of her stories by herself. She can read, but is still lacking confidence and guesses a lot rather than reading like she actually CAN. All kids seem to go through this phase -- at least mine have! Anyway, yesterday, I was doing something and she said, "Mommy, if you want to keep doing what you are doing, I can read my story myself." And she did just that! Mind you, she wasn't able to do it twice in a row, but, Hey, it's a start!!

Jess was just a seriously MAJOR helper yesterday. I'm currently down with a very badly sprained back and can't stand for longer than to brush my teeth. I can only sit in my special chairs. Really makes cooking, etc., very difficult, so Jess and my husband have really had to step-up what they do around here. Yesterday, she wanted to bake a dessert -- so cool, she's discovered she can read recipes!! -- but there were some Household Items that needed to be made: Salad dressing and seasoning salt. She put her own desires aside and did a very fine job of making those items. She's such a sweet girl :)

Have a great day!!

Blessings,
Sharron