I have stopped working with Graham on schooling, other than a few special projects and a little un-schooling. This has seemed to relieve some of the pressure and is allowing him to shine. Happily he is now copying the letters that are in his name and working on their order. He has memorized his birthday and today, I brought him into a math lesson with Noah. We were doing weight measuring and estimating weights of items found in our house with small blocks. We measured four objects and tracked on paper how many blocks each item would weigh. We first guessed how many blocks we thought it would weigh and then recorded the actual weight. We then used our data to see which object we collected weighed the most and which object weighed the least. To my delight, Graham was the best estimator! He could easily guess just by feeling the objects in his hands and looking at them how many blocks he would need. He also remembered which item weighed the least! He was very proud of himself that he knew something Noah did not. Noah is very factual and only used the numbers to make educated guesses, Graham relied on his very developed common sense to figure it out; making him a much better estimator! I love it when he is able to do projects that allow hi abilities to shine. I am realizing that when things matter to him he can answer very quickly. A few weeks ago we were drilling him on numbers and letters and seemed like he didn't even know the difference between the two, however, today he was watching soccer on TV and when the score popped up he was able to tell us very quickly that the score was 4/1.
I am working on a new unit study to start with him in September, he will be 6 and will need to be learning to read. I am a little nervous to start this process and I am trying to begin with something that gets him excited. So, the unit study is called Gidee Up Round up. It is an entire study about the Wild West, using western books like, The Three Little Javalinas and Jalapeno Hal. I hope that this will help him to realize that letters make words, and words make stories and stories are fun...
