Tot-school | Week 17 | Letter RFebruary 11, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…was rather enjoyable.
I’ll admit it, I was looking forward to the letter R appearing, rockets and robots and rainbows are all such beautiful and bold things to work with. I must have mentally checked off 20 odd activities to do and yet when I came to plan I reined in the chaos and forced myself into a simplicity that gave the week a lovely balance. Having a beautiful rainbow to brighten the blustery transition into spring helped too.
With hindsight I’d recognised that Adam only really uses the uppercase resources. When we’ve introduce lowercase he ignores it or gets confused. This week the lowercase bits were the rocket, rather than adapt I decided they could be used next time round. I’ve also recognised that the guided letters in the letter tracing mats focuses his lines really well and so this week I made him a second one for his unsupervised table. He usually begins from the base of the page rather than the number prompts but at this stage that really doesn’t matter to me.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
Co-operative crafts. I knew the rainbow craft was far too difficult so we worked together, Adam choosing bits, pushing pieces down and passing them to Mummy. It’s a lovely way to do crafts and while independence is great this teaches co-working skills that he is still mastering.
I think the biggest flop I had was actually before we began when I realised printing all the lowercase stuff would just be a waste of paper.
Nope. We loved R and learning a new word ‘rhino’ and trying to remember the word ‘reindeer’ from Christmas, but existing words really do work best. The word ‘Queen’ hasn’t stuck with him so I’m glad we jumped a week.
The goggle boxFebruary 8, 2017
I’ve noticed a pattern, it’s a sad one and one I’d vowed I’d never fall prey to, but alas I have a kid that totally over-consumes on screen time. In some senses it’s not really surprising. We have more screens per room in this place than we had in the whole house during my childhood. I’ve got the 2 year old who can exit a kids app and happily navigate youtube alone if unchecked. It’s something we are clamping down on.
I’ve always been terrible with screens myself, I feel them suck me in like a huge vortex and all other activity fades. I apparently goggle quite badly and can’t multitask while they are blaring, even silent screens will result in lost conversations. I’m not sure why they are quite so potent to me but it’s not surprising that Adam seems to suffer similarly.
Screens are like the prayer life I’d love to have. That all adsorbing focus, irrespective of time or distraction. It’s been too long since I got ‘lost’ in prayer. I found myself time wasting the other day as I waited for sleep to claim the little man on the other side of the room. I read correspondence, saw the headlines and peered down the rabbit hole of social media until I found my eyes close from frustration and the thought of prayer came. The shame came too, for prayer shouldn’t be a last response for the bored, the forgotten task you left unchecked on your list.
There have been times in the past when prayer was a delight, a refuge and a divine embrace when life seemed too huge. But not lately. Recently my prayer life has been like a long distance phone call, a mix of highlights and pleads, frustrations and forgotten thanks. And really that’s not all bad, sometimes we don’t need a God who is our BFF, prep talk, and crutch. Sometimes. Other times we need to feel that almost tangible hug, that connection you only get after you’ve got past all the small talk, past all the niggles and fleeting affairs, onto the deep stuff. While my prayer life of late has not been absent, it’s not been celebrated or treasured either.
One way I’m combating this is to restart my love affair with the pray as you go daily recordings. I discovered these when I first came to Serbia and they have been ebbing and flowing since, arriving gently and slipping off silently when other activities drown them out. I’ve also discovered that I’m best praying for others, praying over situations conveyed through the webs of murmur and sighs of help. While it’s great to finally be the friend who genuinely prays when she exclaims she will, it’s also not so healthy for my own relationship with the divine to be always turning up with an outside agenda. So I’m going to start writing to God again, pick up my pen and scribble lines, correspondence that is never as one way as it first appears. Hopefully I’ll fill you in on the journey.
Photo Source : Unsplash – Pawel Kadysz
Tot-school | Week 16 | Letter PFebruary 5, 2017
This past week’s tot-school…
…was perfectly crafty.
February rolled in with snow still one the ground, it was -6 outside on Sunday and it felt cooler, I write this the following Sunday in the balm of +12. The sudden shift combined with a few other bits means I spent just about all week in my PJ’s getting dosed up and feeling rubbish. Tot-school got creative as I struggled to concentrate and opted for role play and craft over paperwork.
As is often the case children pick up on their parents loves and all the crafting did Adam no harm. It also helped that I had tuned into a couple of his loves, Postman pat and Bing bunny (specifically the character Pando). Their presence dwarfed most other tasks and some activities were almost abandoned when their faces appeared. As P is for play as well as pencils it was a lovely mix of light activities that lead well back into creative play.
The pack I’ve made is available for download at the end of the post.
This weeks read more questions:
The letter basket was really well received and hanging up our crafts at the end of the week felt like a big achievement even though the week was quite light on activities.
The postman pat roll play really didn’t get going sadly. Also, not a flop but a sadness : We never actually got round to covering the standard letter pages or the do a dot sheets that would have involved more conversations on pigs and penguins.
The short answer is no. Next week will be the letter R. Adam can not identify a queen from a king, and there are precious few other options. Q does not exist in Serbian and as this is our first time through I don’t think any harm will come from skipping.