Update for week of 1/20/2014

This is a long overdue update.  As typical I have trouble getting back into blogging after Christmas.  We continue to move along with MTMM.  I think both of us have a bit of the winter blahs so our enthusiasm for school is a little lacking at times, but overall N. continues to keep a pretty good attitude.  It helps if I keep a positive attitude.

In history he has been studying WWII.  He is interested in this time period and yet he is such a sensitive boy that it also really bothers him.  In storytime we are reading "In the Shadow of His Hand".  This book is very good, but hard for a Mom to read out loud.  It is also the one book this year where he has begged me to continue reading so he can find out what happens. 

He is showing great progress with his written narrations and they have gotten to be very long.  This one pictured  I think was over 225 word and the one he wrote this week was around 325 words.

The oral narrations where I type them are slowly improving, but still an area of stress for him.  He still really wants to look back in the book to find the key words that he is supposed to include.  This is not a terrible thing, but then he ends up reading from the book as part of his oral narrations.  I think his short term memory issues really come in to play here.

We have made one minor change to the schedule and that is we have moved the science experiment to the weekend to do with Dad.  N. can't do them independently because of his tremors and his Dad really likes being involved in these and I am very happy to let him do these.

N. continues to enjoy the nature journaling although he struggles when he has to do things with markers.  He doesn't usually get the results he is looking for, but he keeps working at it.  This is one of his more enjoyable parts of his day.

Math is his other frustration each day.  He is doing Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1 and he does great with it,, but he doesn't like that it takes an hour or more to do each day.  I did feel like it was weak in the area of word problems so 1 day a week we are doing a book from the Critical Thinking Company called Algebra 1 World problems.

Now something slightly off topic from HOD. Something I have found with N. is that he really needs a certain amount of exercise each day  in order to have a good attitude about things.  This is tough to do when it is as snowy and cold as this winter has been.  He and his Dad decided to build a vault that is now residing in our living room.  Yes you read that right, the living room.  I figure for N. it is physical therapy as well as helps him emotionally and with his school work, so it is worth giving up that room.