Well, I've let time get away from me, and now I'm three months behind on our report. I'm going to do a brief catch up here, then I'll just have to do better from now on.
October: This month we focused on the joy of goal striving, priorities and order. I struggled to teach this one as well, but we did make some headway. We learned about goals and dreams and about achieving them. At first Helen and I set a goal for her to poop in the potty every day (since that is one of her great struggles), but it didn't go very well. I think it was because it was more my idea than hers. Then she wanted to try to learn how to sew. So we decided on some steps, and started forward. She learned to thread cardboard shapes, and then, thanks to Grandma Raty, we started learning needlepoint. We're still working on that one, and, unfortunately, we didn't continue to be diligent about it after October. But it's not over yet. She'll learn to sew yet!
We also talked about the difference between order and mess and why it's important. Helen learned how to wipe down the bathroom sink, and she and Eric have helped vacuum their room every week since. So we made a little headway in that department.
November: This month was the joy of trust and the confidence to try. Someone had offered to teach one-on-one preschool swim lessons at an indoor pool, and so we were going to try that for the first two weeks of November. But unfortunately it fell through. I did find some excellent books at the library. One was called Be Confident, and the other was called Be Positive. They were both by Cheri Meiners. We also learned about a spider that kept trying to climb up his thread even when he fell down over and over. And we learned that mistakes were OK if we keep trying and just learn from them.
December: This month I kind of bombed it. A lot of things came up and we didn't do much preschool. We were supposed to focus on the joy of family identity, security and pride. But we did have some family gatherings, including a funeral for Great-Grandma Kitchen. And Grandma Raty gave us an awesome family portrait for Christmas! We also started an ancestor book, where we are writing down family stories. I'm pretty excited about that. So, despite the craziness, or because of some of it, we had some good family experiences.
Until next time ... which should be the end of January ... I hope ...
