Thursday, November 1, 2012

Tests, Fun and Art

Yesterday, Selena had to finish her first booklet of her curriculum in History with a 4 page test. Not that there was a lot of work on each page, but she was tired of writing the same words throughout the booklet. I encouraged her to keep going, she moaned, she complained, but yes, she finished, well not before I showed her the second booklet so she could see that she would be learning new words. She was very proud of her accomplishment and enjoyed seeing me sign off on the booklet. We might see this struggle as we near the end of each booklet, but we will push through, since it is not a lot of repetitiveness and after all Selena does have to learn that some repetitiveness is expected.

Now math was even a little trickier to keep her engaged. She knows her math facts, and so to see three pages of math facts was very unappealing to her. I thought about it, and after taking her learning style into consideration, I decided to help her make her math a little more fun.

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I allowed her to use her pattern blocks to work each problem on the page. Even though she had the answer to the problem before she started laying it out with the blocks, this broke up the repetitiveness of just writing the answers. I hear many ask how to keep their child engaged, or how to make them finish their work, my answer is just make it fun.

When all our school work was done, I decided it was time for some fun art. Selena didn’t want to bake cookies, so I went into the art supplies and we had fun painting.

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This was also a great time to work on following directions. I covered the table with plastic, then took a square piece of plastic and taped it down. I explained to Selena that the tape was like her frame, and no paint could end up on the outside of the tape.

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Selena listened enthusiastically as I gave her the rest of the instructions.

  1. She was not to blend the colors.
  2. She could only use her finger tips.
  3. Have fun and be creative.

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After a little bit of thought Selena started in. She had a lot of fun. By the end she finally was allowed to blend some colors, and add a little texture to her art work.

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Her finished art work. When it dries we will hang it in the window, since it is on plastic, I have a feeling that the colors will look really pretty with the light shining through it.

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2 comments:

  1. Fun art project! Anna gets quite a bit of math homework every week, but she doesn't seem to complain much about repetition, she just powers through her pages. I guess she is used to this routine by now. I still want to talk to her teacher about more meaningful homework.

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