Today was French class day. Started off with me working on substitute cards for Trivial Pursuit, then trying to clean the house a bit while getting ready for the day. I got a call quite early, asking if my nephew could come today since he wasn't feeling great, and I said sure. I made ds do the math he didn't get done yesterday and then let him go and do things with his cousin.
Dd kept going with the binomial multiplications, plus tried to label a blank map of the United States. She got about half of them, which isn't bad because we've never formally looked at them--she's just used a large floor map that we have. She also did a page of French and was very proud of her work. She likes to feel like she's accomplishing something!
She'd already been working for 45 minutes by the time the 16yo arrived--there had been an accident at a nearby intersection and it was holding him up to be able to get to my place. He got about an hour and a half of work done, not shabby for him--although he really needs to do more to get everything done. We are still having issues with the math, but I didn't get a chance to make anything hands-on. Except I did grab the Multiplication Bead Board to demonstrate squared numbers and their roots. When he sees it like that, no hesitation; going more abstract... I almost feel like I just have to have him memorize the individual roots rather than having him do the traditional thinking of "What times itself gives [whatever perfect square number you are looking at]?" It does not click. He is definitely not your typical thinker. I'll have to see about some supplementary math programs known to work well for LD kids.
The house seemed perpetually a mess today, and every time I wanted to work at cleaning it, the littlest one would be clingy and I couldn't get much done. In between those times, the kids would make more mess. Then there was the constant trying to negotiate with me, which is not typical. "Can we...?" "No." "But yadda yadda." "No," slightly firmer. "More yadda yadda," to which I reply again, "I said No." Goodness. And it wasn't just from one of them. Then there was me having to ask the boys *3* times to stop doing what they were doing. They kept restarting. The third time, I was sufficiently annoyed enough that they stopped. I did lay on the 16yo a bit, too--"You are 16 and are supposed to be showing them things. Actually, you are showing them things--you are showing them to keep doing what I've asked them not to do." I hate doing the lecture thing and probably shouldn't have, but things finally calmed down after that.
Time to go sit and properly journal, I think, and figure out some plans for tomorrow.
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