Tuesday 22 March 2016

Little Monkey





I finished work early today, so I was able to sit outside Felix's classroom and wait for him to finish. A couple of his classmates came outside to get their school bags and stopped to chat with me. The first one said, "Felix was naughty today, he was cutting things he shouldn't have been!" The second interjected with, "He was drinking out of everybody's drink bottles!"  I had to have a bit of a giggle. Our little monkey isn't going to be able to get away with much without someone letting me know!!



Much as I don't like it when he misbehaves, it does make me reflect on how far he has come. It has taken him a really long time to learn how to cut things successfully. He obviously did it quite well today, despite the fact that he was cutting something he shouldn't have been cutting. I have to be quietly proud about his newly acquired skill. As for the drink bottle...until December last year, Felix was only able to drink from a straw. We worked really hard with him over the Christmas holidays to teach him to drink from an "age appropriate" drink bottle, and in mid-January, just before he started school, we had success. He hasn't looked back! Drinking from other people's drink bottles while again, not acceptable, is his way of showing off something he has recently learnt how to do. Hopefully, over the coming months, he will learn to use these skills at more suitable times!





Felix has a few different things to do for his homework each night. He has a reader, which gets changed regularly (when I remember). He has sight words which he has to be able to read 100% correctly before he moves up to the next level. He is currently on list 6 of the Oxford word list, and absolutely loves practicing them each night. He also has some spelling words, and phonogram sounds to practice. He has a packet of laminated alphabet letters to spell out the words as I read them to him. Tonight I asked him to find the letters to spell "hen". He seemed to be taking a long time and, when I looked, all he had was the "e" and the "n". He's usually really quick to find the correct letters, so I was a bit surprised but, when I looked for the "h" I couldn't find it either. I asked him to check in his bag, and within a minute or so, I heard his little voice say "here it is!" No big deal for most people, but it's not often he strings three words together so I always get a bit excited! After his homework tonight, he had a bath. I started to wash him and he said, "No Mum, stop!" Two sentences within an hour or so... very cool, and very typical of a boy who would rather be dirty than clean!





2 comments:

  1. I love that you understand Felix so well.

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    1. You really look at everything with a completely different perspective when a child has a learning difficulty, don't you? You learn to read between the lines and look for understanding in their behaviour or gestures. It's been a great learning experience for me and , I hope, has made me a much more intuitive person. I'm very thankful for this little guy!

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