Life with Sophie

Sophie’s schooling has undergone some serious transitions this year.  We tried doing the Enki-Method, and I think it failed due to us getting the wrong grade level.  I tend to underestimate Sophie’s academic abilities and so opted for her to start with the K level when she should’ve gone to the G1.  She has been completely bored and resistant to pretty much anything from the Enki materials.  We’ve tried modifying to meet her needs, but the truth is, it just doesn’t work for us.  I was tempted to try the G1 curriculum, but it’s so dang expensive, that I’d hate to blow another couple $100 on something we’re not going to like using.

So we’ve gone back to “unschooling” as that has worked the best for us in the past.  By “unschooling” I mean that we allow her to follow her interests (currently dinosaurs) but she still does modified workbook work and things.  I’ve had the hardest time explaining how we do math with Sophie.  She only gets it from a practical standpoint.  Like why would you need to know that 3+9=12?  But she has no problem with me asking her how many more eggs does she need to fill the carton if I have 3 in my hand.  She can do that without even thinking… well at least some of the time.  She gets ill with me when I go over the top trying to come up with subtle ways to integrate her academics into her everyday life.  Some days I’m really good and she doesn’t actually realize that she’s been doing school for 4 hours.  Other days I get about 10 mins into my subterfuge and she’s on to me and her desire to cooperate totally evaporates.

I’ve had to really back up with a few things with Sophie.  I’ve had to go back to some K level things to try to work on her hand dexterity as she’s very awkward with her pencil and that makes her writing very difficult.  I tried explaining that to somebody recently, and they countered that Sophie paints and draws so she should have good dexterity, but the thing is when Sophie paints and draws she’s doing her own thing and doesn’t have to stay within the bounds of handwriting or even coloring in the lines.  So basically now she’s learning control, or more accurately, fine control.

Last night she and I did a coloring book page from her dinosaur coloring book.  Sophie’s required a lot of trail and error for me and I finally realized part of our problem with coloring books was simply that there are too many options when you open the book.  Most coloring books have at least 30 pages so think about all those options.  Sophie couldn’t focus on the page she was coloring for wanting to go to the next page, and the page after that and so on.  So, I’ve taken to deconstructing her coloring books and storing them in a manila envelope.  That was I can take out one page and she can color it without being distracted. 

So anyway, we were coloring last night and I noticed that she was becoming overwhelmed by the options on the page.  Should she color the big dinosaur or the little one?  what about the ground?  and that bush?  and the log?  and the sky???  what to do?  So I backed up and handed her the box of crayons and said “you color the big one and I’ll color the little one so what color is this dinosaur” and she handed me a color for each of the dinosaurs.  So then I noticed that she was getting overwhelmed again by the options on the dinosaur.  Should she color it’s head? its tail? its feet? its back??  So again I suggested “why don’t we just color in the tail?” and so we did and she was happy, then she noticed the head and started coloring it and when she finished that she stopped and said it was my turn so I colored in my dino’s head.  This continued all along the page with us moving from one little step to another until the picture was done.  I was very proud of her and she was very proud of herself!  I let her pic out a couple stickers and she picked ones just like the dinos in our picture and stuck them next to them on the page.  That little masterpiece is now proudly being displayed on our refridgerator!   I know it’s a small step, but it is a step and that’s a good thing!

I let her do the flip side of that coloring page too and she started getting bored with it about half way through… plus she was arguing with me over whether the picture was of a dinosaur or just of a fish.  She felt that it wasn’t a proper dinosaur and thus didn’t have to be done correctly.  After locking horns on it a couple times she did finish it carefully… I was glad to see that she reeled in her attitude and actually did finish the assigned work, even though she disagreed with it.  We’ve had issues in the past with Sophie making an effort to compromise… so seeing her compromise just this little bit was refreshing.