Jen Desmarais

This second week was much better for both Pegasus and I. We have come to an agreement that he is not allowed to say “I can’t”, because he is capable of more than he realizes. He is allowed to ask for help or for a break, obviously. I am more than happy to allow him those. We have discovered that the mouse we have currently is too big for his hands, and we are going to try one of the smaller mice next week.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.

Music

This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. We have one this time around, and it’s a wonderful activity to distract him with because he enjoys it.

I continued working with him on the names of the keys. We practised both forward and backward.

Crochet

We didn’t work on his shawl this week because I was working on Comiccon projects all week. We’ll pick this up again next week.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). For the first few weeks, I’m just letting him listen and passively absorb the information. He attempted singing both songs this week, and needed a lot of assistance, which is a little earlier than I thought he’d want to try.

Printing words

The pencil grip is helping immensely. He didn’t struggle with the printing words and I’m very proud of him for trying so hard.

Counting objects/math-type activities

The colours printed well! Using a pencil to cover up the lines that he hadn’t gotten to yet worked well again. I’ll see if next week, he’s willing to try moving the pencil himself.

He’s very good at writing 4’s.

Storytime

Not much French read this week, as it was such a short week (holiday Monday and comic con on Friday).

Activity

Baking – cookies. Pegasus made multi-chip cookies, with Papa supervising. He did a great job and they taste delicious.

Painting – free-style with Crayola washable paint on paper. We did this outside on possibly the hottest day imaginable and I hated every second of it lol!

Make a paper lantern – need paper bag, stencil (in download material), cardboard, paper towel folded in fourths, and screwdriver (instructions are Number 11). Put the paper bag over the cardboard box, and slide the folded paper towel in between the box and the bag. Place the stencil overtop of the bag/paper towel. Use the screwdriver to punch holes in the stencil/paper bag. Be careful not to move the stencil, or you will mess up your design.

So we used a pushpin instead of a mini screwdriver, and it worked, but the holes are VERY TINY. I forgot the paper towel, so that might have something to do with it? He’s happy with it, and that’s all that matters, right?

We held the stencil down with clips, which worked perfectly.

Pegasus’s first week of school was… interesting. He alternated between being a focussed and attentive student and complaining that he didn’t want to learn French. He would complete half a worksheet so fast and then not want to do anything else. But I’ve learned a lot since I taught my Dragon and when he gets in a mood, I switch the activity to something else. It’s been working well so far.

Dance

I haven’t been doing much formally for this one. I’ll put music on and he’ll dance to it unprompted.

Music

This week, we’ve been focussing mostly on him practising his scales on the piano. We have one this time around, and it’s a wonderful activity to distract him with because he enjoys it.

I also worked with him on the names of the keys.

Crochet

I started the base of the project because it’s not an easy beginning to teach a child, but he made half a row or so of stitches with a lot of assistance.

Basic Information

We alternated between listening to videos for the days of the week and months of the year (M, W, F), and attempting to put them in order with the pieces of paper (days on Tuesday, months on Thursday). For the first few weeks, I’m just letting him listen and passively absorb the information. I’ll start asking him to sing along in a couple weeks and see how that goes.

Printing words

We have a pencil grip thing to help train him to hold his pencil properly (thank you to my kindergarten teacher Ms. Bertrand for dropping those off last spring!) and he seems to be doing fairly well with that. He really struggled with printing the words (tracing was fine), so I think I might skip those worksheets for the next couple weeks. (He wanted me to guide his hand for “La famille”.)

Counting objects/math-type activities

The colours didn’t print very well for this. I’m going to see if the Tangled ones print better and if not, I’ll ask Éric to look at the printer. I explained how to count logically, either side to side, top to bottom, or bottom to top, and we used a pencil to cover up the lines that he hadn’t gotten to yet.

Storytime

NGL, we mostly read English books this week. We did get one French book from the library and read that. Pegasus learned how to read the words “la”, “le”, and “de”.

Activity

Make paper flower – somehow, he managed to flip his triangle around, so that when he cut the petals, they separated into 4 pieces instead of one flower. But we taped them together and it looks great, so woo!

Make empanadas – even though I had Éric look over the recipe I selected and he approved it, after completing this recipe with Pegasus, he says that they should have made arepas instead because the empanadas are a little more complicated than he’d realized. This recipe is great for arepas: https://minimalistbaker.com/how-to-make-arepas.

Pegasus learned how to curl his fingers so that he wouldn’t cut them, he did a lot of mixing, used the food processor to chop (onions, garlic, and others), he made the balls of dough for the shell, he stirred the meat, and he did all the measuring himself (including the spice mix, which was made from scratch).

Make a paper plate toucan – we used the paint sticks (like glue sticks, but paint) to cover the plates. I helped him figure out where the middle was, explaining how to use a ruler to draw the straight line. He did the cutting and followed the line very well. He didn’t want to add the tail.