I am quite disappointed that I missed yesterday’s post deadline, and thereby did not quite fulfill my promised NaBloPoMo daily posting.  But quite frankly, two posts a day has been quite a challenge and unsurprisingly it has not proved to be without troubles.

Still, on the bright side, it did take until the 23rd day of the month for me to miss a day.  I think that’s a pretty good achievement.

I had been hoping to tell you all about our newly arrived maths books yesterday, but DHL have only just managed to have them arrive in Wellington this morning. I am guessing that they don’t do Saturday deliveries since they must still be sitting at the depot instead of in my hot little hands.  Oh well, I guess that will be Monday or Tuesday’s edition of the Patch.

Something else to edutain you today instead.

Failures.

Where to begin with this one?
Many.  But really they aren’t truly failures, they’re learning experiences and adjustments.  They’re only failures if you sit down and never get back up again, or if you are inclined to not notice results and you therefore repeat the choices expecting things to change.

Failure #1: Formal instruction.

Miss Oh just doesn’t tend to like “being taught”.  She likes to do it herself.  She likes conversation.  She likes to ask questions and get answers.  She doesn’t particularly like “bookwork”.  She likes to play and tell stories and invent games.
As a traditionally schooled person, this sometimes grates on me.  It can frustrate and annoy me.  Every now and then I wander back into this mindset (it’s ingrained I tell you) and find myself with a resistant child.  So this is my number one problem, as I try to re-train myself to stick with what works.

Failure #2:  Trying to pitch too high.

While I love the idea of Classical Education, in conjunction with Failure #1, it is perhaps something that can be worked on in a more informal manner.  More in topic form with fun activities attached, rather than in the more formal written way that we tried it.  Having tried out the set out curriculum it seems to me that it is perhaps a little to high for Miss Oh at the moment.  I think that Miss Oh, while she can and does like to listen to stories, is perhaps a kinesthetic learner too.  She has always been a very physical child – lots of great physical skills from an early age.  But it’s a bit too early to tell which of the three learning styles she most leans toward.  No doubt this will store up future failures for me to tell you about.

There are more, but I’ll save them for later, as well as my own blushes.

So, what works for you and what failures have you had?  I’d like to not feel too alone on the failure front.  🙂