Since school has been out I have worked a lot with her. She had weekly spelling words and tests, she had math she continued to work on from school and math I gave her as well, and reading from books she had already read from. I ordered several books from Amazon that are the same ones they used in 1st grade. I had her pick out a story a week and if she did very well then we moved to another one. I also had her working on Explode the Code books. She wasn't a big fan of those. I had handwriting tied into those books and with spelling. I would have her write sentences using her spelling words. I had 3 different 3-ring binder full of work plus more.
During our time at the grandparents we did not work as much as I wanted. Really we did almost nothing. The beginning of the Summer we started off strong and now at the end of Summer I would say not so strong.
Today Sam was having a friend over. She was going to be over at 1:00. Sam asked me all morning, "How much longer?" and "How many more minutes?" I finally told her to go see what time it was and figure it out. I knew it was somewhere around 12 or after. She came back and said, "it's 11:17 or 11:18." First I'm thinking, really, she could even read the clock? So I asked her which clock she read. It was a digital one and yes it does have the right time. I have no idea how she came up with 11 anything! I went along with it and asked her how much longer. She lost interest.
I few minutes later I came in from watering my plants and it was 12:30. I told Sam it was 12:30 and asked how much longer until 1:00. She had no idea. We got the clock out that she made at school (you know a paper plate with 'hands' on it). I had her put 12:30 on the clock and try to figure out how much longer.
She almost acted like she had no idea how to use a clock. (yes, we worked on time during the summer but it has been a few weeks) After she guessed 1 hour and 7 minutes I gave her the simple rules of time. It took her over 15 minutes to figure this out. Oh My Gosh! Does she really not know--has she forgotten this already? Or does she just not care? She was doing pretty well with time before. Same with money. It's been a few weeks and I have a hunch she will be clueless again when I make her work on that later.
I do think she has improved in Math. She is stuck right now at a certain level of "Rocket Math" but I know she can get past it. Spelling is so-so. Basically the same as what she did at school. She can remember them short term. But later on she will miss them again. This week her spelling words are 10 of the color words (blue, purple, red, etc..). She is working very hard on them because there is a new zhu zhu pet just waiting to be played with. This new little pet came out last night to sit and 'play' with her other one but she was not allowed to play with it yet. She took about 5 or 6 test yesterday trying to get a 100% The best she got was 70%.
Here is something interesting though. Yesterday Sam had a friend over (different friend). All her friends are almost a year older than her. Remember Sam is the youngest in her class. This friend was telling me she got a new bike- a 2 wheeled bike. She just learned to ride it. Sam had that mastered before 1st grade and is now riding a bike with gears. This same friend also said she just learned to tie her shoes. Sam did that during the first few weeks/months of Kindergarten. I know several of her friends that are just now (or very recently) learning to do both of those things. So Sam might be behind academically but in other areas she has been well past them. I of course acted excited for the friend that was telling me the new things she learned. On a side note, Max can't do either of those. I try to always get him velcro shoes so he can have independence.
I hope it all just 'clicks' for Sam and she gets this stuff figured out. And if not, I hope she can get help at school, one-on-one. One reason I dread school this year, besides having to wake up so early, is all the stinkin' homework. Sam had SO much work last year. I am so hoping this year is better. It's hard to add extra stuff (to either introduce it or reinforce it) when she works on homework ALL evening.
One more week from today....
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