Thoughts...

"School" was perfect today. Calm. No conflicts with time. No arguments about content. Cadence only said, "I don't get it," six times instead of sixty. I didn't lose my patience one time. Rare, but I can still appreciate how wonderful it could be, if every day were like this.

I struggle with Riley's schoolwork. Through the normal parenting stuff (singing songs, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, "look, radishes! See the sign says 'radishes'." etc.), my youngest child has learned all her letters, numbers, shapes and colors. Essentially, she's mastered preschool content without ever attending preschool. She knows several letter sounds and can sound out a lot of small words. She writes letters to people, asking the spelling of Every. Single. Word. BUT, she is not ready for Kindergarten work. Adding she can do, but put the numbers on paper and she's lost. She lacks the motor skills needed to write "right", and knows it (and it seems she's another perfectionist - great!), so she often refuses to practice writing letters and numbers. Sequencing is easy for her as long as it's a pictorial 3-step easy thing, like a whole apple, an apple with a bite out of it, and a well-eaten core. Anything beyond that and she's frustrated and refuses to do it.

Now before you get the wrong idea, I want it to be clear that I have never, EVER asked her to do any of this directly. She's four. There's no way I'm pushing her at all. Chad and Cadence start their schoolwork and Riley starts begging. "I want schoolwork too!" She loves workbooks, but has declared the preschool workbooks "baby books". When I give her the harder stuff, she refuses to do it, and of course I say, "You don't have to if you don't want to." But she DOES want to do SOMETHING, just not that. There have been a few workbooks she really likes, but I actually take those away from her after a few pages, afraid she'll finish the book and have nothing to do tomorrow.. and then have a huge fit because I don't have anything for her to do. *Sigh*