Combating a fussy attitude with a to-do list

The other day, I attempted to have Johnny switch gears from coloring a picture to doing our math lesson for the day. Instant resistance.

My motivation to do math at that moment: the baby was happily occupied playing with toys nearby and I thought ooh, we can do math now.

Johnny's motivation: he wanted to work on another drawing. He didn't want to switch gears. Hence, protest.

At the time, I didn't quite understand the issue since he wasn't communicating what he actually wanted to do. He was making it sound as if he didn't like math, period.

So...after a time-out for an attitude adjustment, some chatting with my husband to see if he had any insight, and the sort, we were able to sort it out. My husband even did the next math lesson with Johnny so he could see what he was learning and so we could both observe him doing the work. It went well. We saw that the math program is continuing to be age-appropriate, interesting and educational.

The problem was attitude.

I've been suspecting our days would go more smoothly if Johnny knew what was expected of him in terms of our school work. I recently made a morning to-do list for him, and he so enjoyed going through each item and checking it off.

So, I asked if he would like a checklist for his school work. He loved that idea, so I made one real quick the night before.

After bible and his reading lesson, I had on his list to do 10 jumping jacks. Next was his choice, and I listed a few options. He chose to make a drawing taken from the vantage point on the moon, American flag on it, looking out and seeing the sun, the Earth and a comet going by).

While he was doing this, I gave Vivienne some one-on-one time. I selected a Lauri puzzle, the one with kid shapes doing all sorts of different poses. I asked her to put the pieces in piles based on color; do an AB pattern with them; lay out 3 green pieces and then add 2 more and tell me what she had, etc. Next was I think her favorite: I asked her to stand in the pose of each piece before putting them back on the puzzle. Some poses were extra-fun (standing on her head, doing a squat, running, etc).

Next, Johnny told me it was math time. How 'bout that? So we did lesson #23 and it went really well. No complaining. Asking to do one task again for practice (!). Win.

Next was handwriting, then I had him do some practice with scissors, and his last task on the to-do list was do a headstand. Hah!

It went swimmingly.

I think I could do a similar thing with a workbox, but I think it will take me less time to do a to-do list for him. He seems to get satisfaction out of checking items off (don't we all)? and there's the added benefit of him reading what I wrote. He sees what his school day will include and he knows when he will be done.

We finished and they had some quiet time in their rooms while I prepared lunch. The weather is gross today, so they are inside and watching a video. Amelia is sleeping now (on me, of course...whatever).

When she wakes up, we will read some library books. This week, we are reading about insects and pioneers (separately, lol!). I'll have them choose some puzzles or something else from our educational toy/game selection. I'd like to keep afternoons a little more light. If we can do our 3Rs in the morning, I think that goes more smoothly for us.

It has taken us more than a month to find our rhythm with kindergarten stuff, but I think we are getting there. Yay!

Our preschool day on Monday, August 26

Note: I found this still in my drafts. Thought I'd hit publish. I have no idea what we did the rest of that day, so I can't finish the post. Heh.

This morning, I quickly threw together some activity cards for the kids to do and we got to work.

I pulled out the Lauri uppercase and lowercase puzzles first. The MFWK set came with I think the lowercase? But I also bought an uppercase, since we could make good use of it and if I had one puzzle set for each child that would go waaaay better.

They played with the letters, matched them to the pictures underneath the puzzle, and put them back. I had Johnny count to see how many letters there were in the alphabet. He can count to 100, but sometimes he skips #13. Does he think he's a hotel with a 13th floor or something?

Next up, workbooks. Did two pages in Developing The Early Learner (a simple trace-maze thing and a match an item to the big picture thing). That page showed a picture of a lit match, and then a picture of a campfire and a picture of trees. He was supposed to color the picture of the thing the match went along with. Instead, I had him circle it. We were going to do more coloring in a minute.

Next up, we read the Adam and Eve story in our Bible Pictures to Color/Read books. This time, I read the story while they colored. I'm not really sure if it's an approach I want to take too often -- not sure how much Johnny was listening but many kids *do* listen better while coloring, so who knows. We had some discussion after I read the story.

Vivie didn't want to color that page in her coloring book. She just kind of wants to do her own thing with it, and really I'm going to let her I think. Mainly I want to keep her entertained and occupied, rather than "color this correctly."

I grabbed another workbook for her to flip through and do. She likes doing "paths" (mazes) so she sorta did a few, and colored some things.

I had Johnny do two pages in the Counting With Numbers book. We're on number 4, and he just isn't interested in the repetitive nature of writing a bunch of 4s. Didn't push it. Not that big of a deal. So he did the next page which had him count and label objects with the appropriate number. We'll hit handwriting again with his kindergarten, so at this point it's just exposure and if he will form the letters and numbers correctly, that's great.

Following that, Johnny asked if he could do a craft. Sure! I asked which supplies he wanted me to grab, and he wanted a paper plate, some googly eyes and his markers and glue.

A peek at our week

We're battling yet another head cold, so we've been mostly trying to rest/avoid total boredom from not being able to do a lot. It's a fine line.

Wanting to get back in the groove of things and back on the preschool track after a little hiatus, I tried to be more intentional with some of our activities this week.

On Monday, we opened up Johnny's new science kit (gift from the grandparents!). I previewed the contents and instructions by myself the night before, and I was disappointed at the "70 activities" the box advertised. Some of the activities are nothing at all. Many of them build upon the prior.

We used fizzy tablets to make the 3 primary colors in test tubes, mixed the colors, used pipettes to move water around, and added some sort of polymer crystals to the colored water. The crystals swelled up and turned into a jelly-like blob. Kinda fun!

Wednesday, Vivie threw a fit while at Hobby Lobby, so we had to leave before buying anything (big sad! Arg! but ya gotta do it). We came home and she took herself a little nap.

She doesn't nap much anymore, and I'm not sure what this will do to her bedtime, but Johnny and I took the opportunity to have some one-on-one time.

I practiced my fine motor skills (hee!) while cutting out some more felt figures from our new Betty Lukens Through the Bible in Felt package. This is gunna take me awhile.

Johnny did a few pages in his Kumon books -- a coloring page (just coloring in the white circles), a folding page (made a zebra), and several pages in his maze book. Two or three pages to go, and he'll complete the maze book.

It seemed like we should have stopped a few pages back, because he started getting discouraged when his crayon crossed the black line, or if he couldn't immediately see how to get through the maze.

Next activity: We opened up his new Mighty Mind game (gift from the grandparents for Christmas, yay!). It's a tangram activity and he did a good job trying to get the pieces where they should go in the little plastic tray thing. Again though, he got discouraged and said "it's too hard," and that's when I showed him the diagram, and we finished it together.

This "it's too hard" thing is new and I'm not sure where it came from. I'm going to try to keep my attitude positive. I'm definitely not pushing him too hard, so I'm wondering if he just didn't want to do it?

I think we'll put Mighty Mind away for a little while though, so next time will be fresh.

p.s. can someone comment? I don't know if commenting on these posts is easy or if you have to jump through hoops. I don't want it to be hard.

Such a fun day -- can we do it again sometime?

Yesterday, December 31, was such a fun day. It was just a regular day at home, and yet the kids were mostly cooperative and I was inspired. I want to record some more details of the day so I can look back and smile at how much fun this age is.

We started the morning with me in a grumpy mood due to little sleep (both of them ended up in my bed!). I realized that attitude was helping no one, and turned on my iPod to view the Bible verse of the day to get my heart on straight.

We made blueberry muffins (from a mix, whatever!) and Vivie had three time-outs in a row for not sharing/not listening. We're in that stage right now, but hey, she's 2 and she's learning. The muffins were delicious and messy.

I checked the weather and saw we were due for more snow in a few hours, and the temperature was a balmy 32. So, we bundled up and went in the backyard to try some sledding.

Unfortunately, with more than a foot of snow, it's hard to sled until you pack it way down, and we tried -- but it would have been easier if I still had an inner tube instead of a small seat-sled.

It was fun anyway, and the kids liked marching around, digging around in the snow and just being outside.

Normally, I am anti-snow and anti-winter. But sharing the wonders of the season with my kids makes it a lot more fun for all of us. Snow really is pretty neat, even if it makes roads a hazard.

After playing outside, we warmed up and had some lunch. We read some library books:

• You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum

• I Am an Artist

And Johnny's new book, the Bearenstain Bears' Big Book of Science and Nature. I preordered this and with a promo code got a good deal. This is a three-in-one book and I think I have the Nature Guide book from when I was a kid.

I am on the fence about how I feel about regular books in the Bearenstain Bears series, but this book doesn't follow that same story structure. It's meant as a science and nature guide!

I was amused that the first book in the volume (an almanac) started on New Year's Day. How about that timing?

We only read a few pages (it's a huge book. It's also in the Sonlight curriculum for I think the 4/5 age set?).

We made a craft thanks to our first Kiwi Crate. I saw a friend share a Black Friday deal and thought it looked fun. It was absolutely worth the $8ish it was with promo code. Next month it will be $19.95 and I plan to order one more before deciding whether to continue.

Will write more about Kiwi Crate to come. We did the oil pastel/watercolor postcard activity.

We did some free play with their new toys (Vivie can't get enough of her Playmobil123 farm!) and they were so wound up around dinnertime, I couldn't prepare the meal.

So, I went to the garage and retrieved their ride-on train and trike and let them do laps around the house while I prepared our New Year's Eve dinner of appetizers and snacks. Heh. It worked! I don't think I'll do that often but it was fun to let them get the wiggles out.

Overall, nothing particularly exciting happened that day, but it was a nice one and I also appreciated how Johnny treated Vivie all day. He is usually so great with her, but he really stepped it up a notch. We have been talking about what to do when Vivie isn't sharing or isn't being nice to him, and how if he treats her as he wants to be treated it goes so much better. Imagine that!

I love watching them get along and being friends. Doesn't get much better than that!

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