Trouble Concentrating

I think it has something to do with spring in the air, or maybe it's short-timers disease as we creep closer and closer to the end of the school year, but I'm really having trouble staying focused with school. I felt very frazzled today and unprepared, even though I had plenty of things for Reilly to do. I found myself really picking at her for silly things. For example, I've been having her use her spelling words in a sentence, and today I was really being critical of the length of her sentences, trying to get her to write longer sentences. And I should know that forcing her into things like that is only going to wind up in a fight.
Luckily, though, I did have the presence of mind to quit that exercise and move onto something else before it got too bad. I think the problem stemmed on her end from the fact that she heard me on the phone, inviting her friend Sophie over to play, and that got her all verklempt and excited and she couldn't concentrate. We moved onto math, but that wasn't going to well either, so we ditched everything and came back to it after Sophie left. Things were MUCH smoother later in the day...and I apologized to reilly for being such a bear. I don't know what my excuse is!


I did quite a few things with Declan today, too. He did some of his Kumon mazes and some other worksheets where he was following a path or a dotted line with his pencil. Then he did a page about red things and colored some things red. His favorite thing was making patterns with these colored linking cubes that we have. I've mainly been doing two-color patterns, just alternating between the colors. I get it started and then he builds on it. Today he was so funny because he was doing a red/yellow pattern and was showing it to me and realized that he'd left out a yellow at one point, so he had two reds in a row. Well, this just about gave him the biggest laugh of his life! THEN he started making patterns and leaving out blocks on purpose, just so he could show me and say, "OH, look at that! I left out one!" and then laugh and laugh. He's such a goof!

The week before last, since St. Patrick's Day was coming up, I got a CD of Irish kids songs from the library. I had also gotten a bunch of books about Ireland and St. Patrick's Day, so we read few of those. But it's amazed me how much Reilly loves the music! She asks for me to play it in the car, she'll play it in her room on the CD player in there, I find us singing some of the songs at random times during the day. It's so funny! I never though she'd be so taken by the music!