English or Maths?

I sometimes get the feeling I am going about this Early Learning thing all backwards.

Almost everyone focuses on reading. It is easy and most of the people who teach their child before school enjoy reading themselves. I love reading. I also love Maths. It has always been more important to me that Nikki love maths, because it is so easy not to.

Fortunately, Nikki is a Maths-y child. He has always loved numbers and counting. Encouragement is really not necessary - he begs me for his lessons! So our main educational focus has become Maths.

Unlike most early learners, Nikki can't read. He sounds out CVC words (which I have to remind myself is more than most children his age can do) but has shown no interest in memorizing sight words. Thus, if you give him a book he won't even try to read it.

This frustrates me, since I have done a lot of sight-word reading flashcards (primarily using LR) and he never shows any memory of words that I know he's seen HUNDREDS of times! (Unlike all the other children who read books at 2) So we're doing occasional Reading Bear and going through the motions of Little Reader and I'm planning lessons around a more traditional reading primer with the hope that it will make a difference.

So, for now, Maths is Nikki's choice. He is progressing easily through Saxon K and at this rate will be finished with the elementary textbooks before he starts school!

All I can do is pray that he'll be reading sentences by then, too!

Back at Last!!!

I can't believe it has been nearly 2 months since I last posted.

Oops.

Nikki has been having some serious behaviour issues which I have been focusing on rather than teaching, so I guess I let the blog go a bit.

Unfortunately, when his father visits we have behaviour meltdowns. Nikki's dad seriously believes that if you never discipline a child and give them everything they want then they will be perfectly well behaved. In fact, the opposite happens and he becomes a little menace.

His father refuses to listen when I try to explain that there is a difference between punishment and discipline and that when he hits you round the head or spends ten minutes shouting the f word he needs to understand that it is not good. That doesn't mean you have to beat him, but acknowledging that the behaviour is not right (and that he is, in fact, responsible for his own actions) would be a start.

Two visits in two months, followed by Christmas, and we are now nearly back to normal (though I still can't get him to completely forget about that f word) so I thought it was high time to get back on track with totschool and blogging and all that jazz.