These Foolish Games

They can’t help it.  Boys are silly.  Not that girls aren’t silly, but boys are a special kind of silly.  A sweet and awkward and smelly kind of silly.  

Have I mentioned that they are silly?

I don’t have anything phenomenal to report today.  We’ve had a good week in spite of the fact that Dr. SmartyPants was in DC all week.  He’s on his way home right now and we’re all very excited.  Both boys were genuinely cooperative and eager to learn this week.  That’s a treat.  It seems a rare thing, indeed, for that to happen for both boys at the same time.  

I’m learning more and more about their learning styles and how far off I’ve been in assessing them.  Doodlebug has always seemed like an auditory learner, but the more I teach him, the more I’m coming to understand how very right-brained, visual and creative he is.  Today, while writing in his journal, he put his pencil down and covered his eyes.  I asked him what he was doing.

“There’s a video inside my brain that is telling me the story I want to write,” he says.

“A video?”  I ask.

“Yes.  Do you ever have videos in your brain?”  He looks a little worried.

“All the time, baby.  Constantly, really.”

“Oh.  Well.  I’m watching the video to see what happens next.”  He covers his eyes again and a moment later picks up his pencil and writes the next sentence.  Then he drew a picture to go along with it.

Junebug is very visual and right brained, also, but I knew that already.  I’m starting to see that he’s more centered in it though – comfortable with it.  Maybe he just likes watching his brain videos more that Doodlebug, I don’t know.  I do know that they both are still struggling with retaining math facts, and we’re going to start using a couple of new visual technique to try to get them to increase their retention.  I’m very hopeful that it is just the tool we’ve been searching for…