The Wellyboots Tribe Step Forth - again!!

Do you ever feel like you are on a roller coaster ride? I do! I just don't seem to be able to work out what my oldest son tick at the moment. One minute he is in fits of rage the next he is good as gold and it's so hard to find the triggers.

Maths today involved some really fun stuff. Jake had to estimate how long certain activities would take him, like eating an apple (bonus), running 100m (about 5-ish times around the yard), etc..., then actually do those things and record how long they actually took and the difference between his guess and reality. He really enjoyed doing it but when P. came to mark his work neither he nor I could make head nor tail of what J.A. had written (all squished on to the edge of the page). So we asked him to go and copy the table from the book and make a clear recording - Q. major melt down!! "I can't", (read "I don't want to"), "my ruler won't let me draw straight lines - it keeps slipping", "it won't fit", (when advised to turn the page horizontal - "It'll look silly!"), "I need to..." - anything to avoid doing what he had been asked to do. Screaming, yelling, thumping the desk and the floor, slamming doors and stairgates (at which point P. nearly lost it with him). Most of this we calmly ignored, docking priviledges one after the other in succession. When JA almost broke the stairgate Paul did tell him he couldn't go to club, but after we talked this over (P. & I) we decided to reinstate club, mainly because our thnking at the moment is that JA needs to know what punishment comes next (we have a chart with graduated punishments on) and that 'short-sharp-shock' punishments don't really work for him because, by their very nature, they are not consistent. Not only that, but they also seem to serve no purpose other than to escalate the bad behaviour even more. When we told Jake he could go to club he almost instantly calmed down - I think he realised how close to the wind he was sailing! Having calmed down we told him to put away his books (as it was lunchtime) and it would be added tohis 'own-time' work. He was not best chuffed, but did accept it.

I must confess I am not looking forward to re-presenting him with all this work that he has thrown wobblies over, so it will be broken up into 'sessions'. If he doesn't apply himself on each occassion the result will be missing out on something more fun. So his first piece of work will be set tomorrow morning and if he doesn't complete it before 10am he will miss out on going out with his Dad, brother and friend. The second & third pieces will be set tomorrow and Saturday afternoon and will mean him missing out on his free do-as-you-like time and playing the yard with E. (from upstairs) - which he hates. I am hoping that if we are consistent with all this he will eventually learn that 'rage doesn't work'!

Once all that was over the rest of the day went OK. We did another 'listening' exercise, but Joel kept repeating everything I said, so that meant Jake heard everything twice, which kind of defeated the object of the thing! SO next time I've said we'll do it in silence - not to be harsh, but so that the intention of it is met!!

We finished off Animal classification in Science - at last - Insects today, about which Jacob already knew it all as he swallows chunks of the animal encylopaedia on a regular basis!! Joel meanwhile made some lego models and some pattern pictures with our foam shapes (following picture instructions practice). Basically I was killing time with him, but he didn't know that and he enjoyed it too .

My plan for after half-term is to keep it light! I will hopefully have a new baby and I'll need to. Morning will be bare-bones Maths and English (just to round things up for the year) and a "Class TV" spot ( today's was about Egypt - very timely - thanks to CBBC digital!!). I discovered this treasure today when we got our new freeview digi-box (£35 from Aldi - bargain!!). Then we'll do project work in the afternoons. I am planning to do a 'Plants' project and involve all the children a little - even Ellie maybe . Hopefully we are not too late in the year to plant a few things as part of the hands-on bit of Science and I'd like to lap-book the work too (but with more input & ideas from the boys this time). Then other than that we'll finish off Egypt (nearly there now) and possibly looking at Ireland. I'm not planning on starting anything else new though. Our next stop for Geography will be Scotland or Wales and for History will be the Greeks, all of which involves too much research and hard work on my part to even contemplate it for this year now.

Off to eat tea now (take out Pizza) & watch 'Prince of Egypt'. Later I plan to check out our 80 new TV channels!!