November 20, 2020

There are days, although few, which we don’t begin by studying together. Today was such a day. I shopped for groceries then rushed to make lunch. It seemed I was late with all my chores. Luckily, Amanda took Robert for a walk.  When they came back I was still preoccupied  with hundreds small tasks. After dinner, I sat in front of TV to watch the last half of the old movie, Charade, when Robert approached me, smiled, and said, “Work, work”. That was his way od reminding me that we hadn’t studied yet. 

Robert words, “Work, work” have a magical effect on me. I leave everything, follow Robert to our overused dining table, and help him learn.

1. Today Robert practiced dividing fractions with a page of problems from Spectrum Math. Robert had problems with division when divider was a mixed number. He wanted immediately flip over just fraction part. Thus we practiced changing mixed number into improper fraction BERFORE replacing division with the multiplication and replacing improper fraction with its reciprocal.
2. I have two workbooks Skill Sharpener Geography. One for grade 4 and one for grade 5. I wanted to start with the higher grade as the first lesson in it was about using GPS. From time to time, while we are traveling, one of us attempts to demonstrate to Robert how the GPS locates our destination and tells us  how to get there.  I should start with that, but, for reason I don’t completely understand we began with reviewing parallels and meridians. Oh well.
3. We are almost finishing No Glamour Grammar – the last worksheets in the book are devoted to additional reviews of previous concept. However, no grammatical concept or rule in this book was new to Robert. He loved that it was easy.  I loved that it was easy. today, he was finding adverbs in sentences.
4. Still pronunciation. Still page from old Weber book. Today, Robert practiced “cl” and “gl” in words or phrases.  However, I found pages of short but frequently used phrases among the materials Robert must had gotten from his school speech pathologist. So useful! So easy! Most importantly, Robert liked practicing them much more than words, phrases or sentences from Weber. I don’t understand why I didn’t use them before.
5. I stopped using exercises from No Glamour Following Directions.  Robert still has difficulties with one step directions given in this book, so there was no point of going further toward two and three step directions. Instead every day, I give him from 2 to 10 directions. I start with two but if he is not answering correctly, I quickly make additional exercises emphasizing just one concept but mixing it with other. If Robert has problem with “draw a circle AROUND” I ask him to draw a circle around or square around  something different. I add a few other directions, but the one Robert already knows well.
6. In the past Robert drew people following instruction from Usborne I can draw people.  We returned to the same book, but this time Robert is drawing scenes with two or more people.
7. For the last couple days we were also completing pages from Banking Math, old PCI publication. After reading the short text Robert had to do a simple calculation and then either write a check, pay by his ATM or withdrew appropriate amount of money from the machine to pay by cash. The hardest part of each assignment was to decide which numbers provided in the text relate to his calculations as they were many additional information. Over all, he was doing pretty well.  Maybe because each month, Robert pays by check for one of our monthly utilities.
8. Web Sudoku! It is getting better and better. Robert very quickly (before I notice) find first 10 -15 numbers, He is also very quick in finding last 10-15 numbers. He also quickly notices when something is wrong on the grid. We are working on noticing that the number must be in a given row or column and writing it besides the edges of the frame. Most importantly – Robert loves it.