This Week's Wrap-Up

This has been a rough week for A. I think she's just running late hitting the "5 1/2 angst" that L started into a few months ago. And much as I'm not enjoying it AGAIN, I'm thankful they staggered it, for the most part LOL. Most of A's angst centers around not wanting to do the phonics worksheets. And while, I would have been more than happy to not start learning reading for a good long time, it seems overall counter-productive to just drop things when they're doing so well, just because we have FINALLY hit a point in the phonics worksheets where she has to take a couple seconds and THINK instead of breezing through it in no time flat. If she were truely struggling, I would be open to working with her on a way to change things up. And I DID decrease from 2 pages per day to one. But in reality, it takes her 5-10 min (at most) to do the worksheet when she finally does it. Several days this week it took her over an hour of screaming to actually DO the worksheet however, sigh . . . Other meltdowns have centered around doing chores and, well . . . pretty much everything.

To make things more challenging, whereas L does lots of yelling and screaming and such, A is much more inclined to lash out physically, hitting, throwing things, etc. So it's been a fun week . . . NOT!

Interestingly enough the thing that "snapped her out of it" yesterday was, of all things, doing chores LOL. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been reading Manager of Their Chores from Titus2.com. I decided to go ahead & impliment the system on Friday, and had explained it to them, w/ the understanding that we would start using it at lunchtime (having them help w/ lunch prep) that day. THEN, A had her huge meltdown over doing homework. Quite frankly, if I hadn't already told them when we would start there's no way I would have even considered starting a new chore system right then. A was still on the sofa refusing to talk to me, though the screaming had at least decreased to a non-ear-splitting level by then. But since we'd already talked about it & I knew that they had been excited to try it out (and I was guessing L still was) I decided to give it a try. So, I told L to go get her chore "badge" (the basis of this system is to use little clip-on plastic envelopes (like nametags are put in at conventions & such) and put cards, one chore per card, for that part of the day in the envelope so they can keep their "list" with them and just move the finished ones to the back, for lack of a better word, I called the plastic thingy a "badge") so we could start getting ready to lunch. When I said that, A got quiet, so I asked if she wanted to do her chores too, she somewhat grudgingly said "I guess" and when I asked if that meant she was ready to talk, and she climbed up onto my lap to talk w/o any more trouble. Sheproceeded to do chores along with us and overall be cooperative the rest of the day, even including cleaning out the car, which I had decided would be a good weekly chore (girls are bad (and so is mommy) about leaving stuff in the car when we get home & then we get ready to go on a trip or something & the car has to be "unloaded" before we can load it. ANY time we've done this in the past, it's included much complaining on the kids' part (and all I ask them to do is carry their own toys in & put them away). Yesterday they even helped me carry in the non-toy stuff, and took stuff to the trashcan & such! All w/o complaining!! (I, on the other hand, was beyond exhausted when it was all done LOL).

Anyway . . . other than all that, we're continuing to enjoy learning about the American Revolution. As already mentioned, the Felicity books on tape were a big hit.

We used our December Book-It coupons this week, so I'm hopeful that the incentive of a new book chart will encourage A to get back into reading. She continues to do well, but seems to have lost her "motivation" and I hate to have her lose the momentum now.

A continues to enjoy knitting. She's doing better, though she still seems to add a stitch every couple of rows (not sure what she's doing, sometimes I can tell she's wrapped the yarn around an extra time, but other times they all look like "real" stitches, so I'm not sure how she's managing that, shrug. She's making progress and is happy though (and IS getting better) so I'm not going to stress about the lack of perfection as long as she isn't. She isn't going to have enough yarn (w/ what came in the kit) to have a scarf, which is her goal, so we stopped at AC Moore this week and she chose blue as a 4th color to go with the red yellow & green. She continues to excitedly talk about all the other things she wants to knit and all the people she's going to teach to knit "once I'm good enough" :)

L is enjoying her weaving thingy too. The bag of loops she got for Christmas only lasted for 2 potholders (a LOT of the loops were too short, sigh). When I went to get more AC Moore was out & all I could find at Walmart was nylon (or something, NOT cotton or wool LOL) loops. I went ahead & got them, but figured they wouldn't work well for a potholder (I was afraid whatever the fabric is, it would MELT w/ heat LOL) so I suggested she make a purse. She finished the 2nd side of it yesterday, so now I need to find some ribbon and sew it into a purse for her LOL. And then I'm back to figuring out what kind of loops to get. Based on what I've found so far, I think even w/ only being able to use half of them, the AC Moore packs (especially w/ a 40% or 50% coupon) are still the best bet. I did find instructions online for making your own but by the time we bought a bunch of different colors of t-shirt knit (or t-shirts) and then the time of cutting them out, I'm not sure it would be cost effective. I'm toying w/ the idea of "building" a small loom (seems like just nails in a sq of wood would work? anyone think of a reason it wouldn't?) so she can use the "too small" loops and make coasters that way . . .

We took down the Christmas stuff on Thurs, though dh is working non-stop (year-end & all) so the boxes are still piled about the house waiting for him to carry them up to storage for me.