Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Day 3 & a lesson in Self-Control

So today is day 3 of our homeschooling journey. I asked Dylan today if he wanted to do school & he said "school!" all excited & tried to climb in his booster seat at the table. Apparently he likes doing school, too.

We started our day a little late because my Avon shipment came in & I wanted to get it all sorted before it overtook the living room. We only got Bible & one book read this morning, but we took care of everything else this afternoon.

We read Genesis 2:18-25 for our Bible time this morning. Dylan did a lot better today & I am glad. I want him to understand the importance of reading God's Word daily (something I still struggle with), so I love that time with him. After our prayer time, we read a book called Air Show. He liked it & even wanted me to read it a second time.

After that, we got ready for the day & did some running. We had some Avon books to drop off (look, another "A" word - Avon!) & stopped by my mom's work. We then came home, ate lunch & Dylan took a nap. After that, we hit the ground running with our school for today.

For LA today, we wrote the letter "A." It's really adorable to see Dylan trying to write & then saying, "Help, help," so I will help him write the letter. I can tell he is really enjoying all of the special activities & attention. He then colored a picture of "Aa" (I had already printed it before I decided to not do lower case letters yet). His coloring is much improved since Monday. He kept asking me to help today, so part of the picture was colored by me, but he was so excited that I was coloring with him!

Today our sign of the day was alligator. It was supposed to be airplane, but when I looked up the sign, I figured out it would be way too hard for him to do, so I switched it to alligator. He already knows it from storytime at the library, so this was really just reinforcement for him. We also practiced "A" & "apple." He seems to get it, but doesn't always want to cooperate - imagine that.

We then counted the crayons & colors as we put them away. After that, Dylan played with play-doh. That went well, until he tried to eat it - gross! Then play-doh time was over.

Finally, we did our science Apatosaurus reading. I was going to save it until Derrick got home, but between dinner & church tonight, I didn't think we'd have time to get it done. We read about the Apatosaurus' tail today. It is so fun to see Dylan learning about things I never would have thought of without actually writing out some lesson plans.

So, regarding self-control: we have been having some issues with tantrums with Dylan. He can communicate pretty well, but he often yells & whines with no real words, so we have no idea what he is talking about. It's annoying & quite frankly, it needed to be dealt with. We took a class at our church called "Growing Kid's God's Way." One of the suggestions they made was that when your toddler is having a tantrum, tell them to get self-control & fold their hands. It took some work, but we are making progress! Dylan will now fold his hands & calm down. It's awesome because we can then talk to him & figure out what the problem is instead of everyone getting frustrated. He still struggles once in a while & will sometimes be sent to his bed for not calming down, but he's 2...even I don't have self-control all the time! It is so nice to have him calm down & then talk to us about what the problem really is or what he is upset about (or at least we can distract him from whatever the problem is). I would suggest this method of dealing with tantrums to anyone!

Tonight is all about fun! We are going to church to get ready for youth group, then Dylan, my parents & I are going trick or treating at the nursing home (Dylan is going as Batman). After we're done I'll go back to church to help Derrick with the youth & Dylan will go home with Grandma. That's his favorite!

Hope everyone is having an awesome day!

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