End of the ‘typical’ week
So, there you have it, a ‘typical’ week. Of course it’s only typical in that no two days were the same and a lot of it just happened. Sundays are usually a stay at home day, and the beach trip was only because the weather was gorgeous and the tides right, and, well you get the picture.
When I started recording this week I promised myself that I would resist the urge to push for any activities to tick school type boxes, and so looking back we have a whole week with no apparent maths and no more writing than the capitals needed to identify the C Position notes on the grand stave. There’s been reading TO, but no reading BY so we’d probably get a fail on literacy as well as maths. Of course we kicked butt on science, nobody could say we didn’t do science and it wasn’t all dinosaurs either! Music, tick. Modern language, tick. Even some Arts & Crafts and a dash of History.
So why, you might ask, do I seem so blithely unconcerned about maths and literacy, the sacred 3Rs? Why do I nag for piano practice every day but not a spot of writing or a few sums? A few months back Audrey had a passion for workbooks, actually asked to do them, a couple of times even before breakfast! She burned through the Year 1 Maths and English ones in a few weeks, I think we ended up about two thirds of the way through Enjoyable English and just started the Toady Times Tables (Yr2) before the enthusiasm dried up so I figure we’re well ahead of the game. This was the second workbook jag so I’m comfortable that it’ll happen again eventually. To be fair writing practice does happen without workbooks, but it has to have a purpose and we can go weeks at a time without it happening.
Talking to other parents this sort of thing seems to be entirely normal for a child getting a largely autonomous education. Apparently nothing for weeks and then a sudden burst of activity which leaves you wondering where it came from and how on Earth they learnt what magnetic materials are anyway because you’re sure you never discussed it.
And the music? Daily practice = mummy keeps paying for music lessons = Audrey gets the clarinet she wants when her teacher says she’s ready, but she is five and needs to be reminded of this deal on a more or less daily basis which means some nagging.