Back to catered meetings….

Back with new ideas… Helena has come up a new scheme using points, she does stuff – especially “school work” like stuff and gets points that add up to “goals” where we do stuff together or I support her to do stuff with her friends.

I have said it’s your scheme you do it how you want. Helena decides the point value of an activity based on how much she wants to do something, how hard she thinks it is and sometimes it is assigned by an independent official – in this case she has decided she wants to know more about ‘verbs and stuff’ so I’ve given her a grammar book which is activity based and says how many points you get per question. So far she’s earnt 50 points so she could go to the dairy with her friend and 2$…
There she is cramming in those last few points with her friend watching and waiting. I guess she is normalising ‘book work’.
We are back to Helena setting her self many strange tasks..
Back to reading and listening for pleasure, although she has read heaps she has included spending nearly a whole day on reading egg whatsit having comprehension tests.
Back to having so many one to one discussions around spelling as she is writing and back to no spelling lists… I don’t think this interest has to do with school just (like her reading) that some developmental penny has dropped. It also helps that her desire to write has overcome her worries about being correct with spelling and letter formation.

So like her reading she has started late but is taking massive steps because she is doing it, she WANTS to … she is NOT behind, there are not “gaps” it’s just that genuine interest is more like a river than a straight line, it meanders, makes little pools, plunges off cliffs but always gets to the sea.