I am giving my children this opportunity and I am willing them to embrace it. We haven't done any maths workbooks for a while, we've done Living Maths. I spent a whole evening printing out some maths board games. What I didn't count on when I presented these to my offspring was the viscous competitive streak that they inherited from their fathers gene pool to rear it's ugly head.
Twice, Eb fled the table in tears because Od had won. Once, Mb punched Eb because he had "jokingly" cheated (how do you jokingly cheat? This still remains a mystery) and twice the games, counters and pencils were flung off the table in a heap on the floor in temper. After one hour of this, Eb fixed me with a no-nonsense look and growled "Where's my workbook?"
Shrek feels my pain.
3 comments:
Well, speaking for myself (and being one of those whose children have never been to anything that even looks like a school), I can say that my son (8 years old) is aware of "Learning".
He knows that it's important to me (as the Mama) that we keep active - that we explore, imagine, create, discover, run, leap, uncover, investigate, study (paleontology and Mario mostly for him), etc.
Maddie takes off on her own - but Trev is more like me, and gets settled into something he loves very quickly and steadfast, so I'm there to nudge and remind us to breathe and play, and keep us from getting stuck.
I don't think you're alone in how you feel. Sorry your day didn't go as you expected. I guess you got some learning in yourself about maths games and competition. I would try and see it as a learning experience. The further you get from it perhaps this will happen. I know I would be frustrated.
Finding something that works for your little ones and doing it over and over again works well for the times when they need to swallow the bitter pill.
We don't homeschool but do do a lot of play activities at home. My boys love unstructured time and I learned that their learning style was just different to mine. I learned through trial, error and gritted teeth.
Maybe today was a bad day and this was just a vent, in which case, ignore all.
I felt better having read some boy books about how they learn like Minds of boys ( Gurian) and learning styles Ready to learn ( Goldberg)to give me some new ideas. ( You can blame the book then- j/k)
Just wanted to say-I just realized we would have finally bumped into each other on Wed! We pulled out of the visit because I found a very local guitar teacher for Kieran-who will do day times! We will meet yet!
As to the fighting with games, I dread games because my siblings and I couldn't end a game without a fight. It amazes me when my two laugh while playing a game. They actually enjoy them! But I think that's down to Hazel not really caring if she loses or not, nor does she mind terribly when Kieran 'accidentally' cheats. ;)
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