Today was a good day. I think it's important that Oscar learns to work without me sitting next to him all the time so this morning I gave him some sums to do on his own. Oscar doesn't generally like it when I do this as he doesn't like maths because he believes he isn't very good at it. I on the other hand think Oscar is pretty good at maths and has the potential to be very good at it I just think he lacks confidence.
Generally if I leave Oscar to work on his own it can take him literally hours to complete a few tasks that should be doable in about 20 minutes and because his mind wanders he often ends up making mistakes so today I did something that will probably horrify a lot of people, I set a timer for him. It's just a basic digital kitchen timer and I gave him 20 minutes to finish 6 sums. He finished them in 15 minutes and had 5 of them right. He was really pleased with himself and I gave him huge congratulations and lots and lots of praise. I asked if he had finished them so quickly because he wanted to beat the timer and he said yes and asked if we can use it every time he does his sums. I just hope the novelty doesn't wear off too soon.
Next we looked together at his maths workbook and after doing so well with his sums he started with a much more positive attitude than usual which was lovely and he did really well using graphs to collate, read and compare data. He found tally charts a little tricky to get his head round at first so we had some extra practice on a piece of paper and he soon got the hang of it.
Then after a little break we read together.
After lunch Oscar coloured in some more of his space colouring book before playing some maths and literacy games on education city.
Before going to bed today he told me he thought the best thing about today was doing his sums!
The more I read the more like Jack, Oscar sounds.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest someone mixed up Sam and Oscar as babies apart from the fact Sam was probably conceived about the time Oscar was born, as Sam is so different.
The independence does come though. What I do for Jack is we have a particular time to 'start work' and everyday I write in one of those to-do list books from Wilkinson what he has to do and then I leave him to manage it. It has only come together in the last 6 months really and we do have the odd bad day. But it does stop him taking an hour over something that should take 10 mins.
Lots and lots of praise helped too as he also lacked confidence. Might have gone too far with that now as he's a right cocky little so-and-so.