A proud day

 I have decided to ignore handwriting for a while as Oscar gets so incredibly frustrated with it. Instead we are just going to find lots of things do do that work on his fine motor skills.

So today started with colouring.

Oscar loves language and playing with words and has been asking to learn French and Spanish. I'm not really up for paying for a language tutor right now but we have a couple of posters with colours and numbers in English, French and Spanish and I found this French children's video for sale at the library for 50p so while he was colouring he watched the video, he really enjoyed it and has been saying bonjour to people all afternoon.

When Oscars video had finished went out and took some donations to the charity shop and to get Oscar a hair cut. When we got to the barbers I discovered that lots of the schools have an inset day today and there were 7 other little boys waiting to get their hair cut and only one person doing the cutting so no hair cut for Oscar today.

After lunch Oscar had his first go on the mathletics website and loved it. He worked on his measuring skills, telling time, shape, order, and size.

Then it was off to Taekwondo where Oscar was awarded with his new belt and a certificate. He was also given a new patch for his uniform as his new rank means that he will be leaving the tiger cubs class and moving into the juniors.

Oscar was very proud to receive his green belt and the academy always make a big fuss about presentations with a buffet afterwards so the kids get to have a real celebration in acknowledgement of all their hard work in progressing to the next rank.

Now that Oscar is a green belt he is able to start sparing so today I bought him the protective pads he will need for that. When we got home Oscar enjoyed trying them on a posing in them.

I know that lots f people will be horrified that I send my 5 year old son off to lessons where he gets to learn how to hit people effectively and is actually encouraged to fight and I was sceptical about it at first but Taekwondo has been a really good thing for Oscar.

The first thing Oscar learnt were the tenets of Taekwondo.

Honor, courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self control, courage and community.

These seem to me to be pretty good principles for life and they are the basis of everything he learns.

Taekwondo has also helped improve Oscars co ordination and concentration, he understands that what he learns is only to be used whilst at his lessons. He has gained confidence and as far as home ed goes he has really learnt and understands the importance of perseverance. Oscar loves his lessons and always tries his best, he has alot of respect for his instructors and is always very proud and excited when he learns something new.

So as much as I dislike the idea of Oscar sparing for us the benefits are worth it.