Big Dreams

Tuesday night on the way home from karate class WC began asking questions about how long he would have to take karate. "Don't you want to get your next belt?" I ask.

"Yes," he replied. "But when I am finished with my belts, will I have to do it everyday?"

Now from what I can tell, even though the black belt is the highest there seems to be an endless amount of "degrees" of the black belt. Not sure that one is ever really "done." But I'm not going into that. I tell him that only if he wants to be a karate teacher.

"No, I don't want to be a karate teacher. I'm going to be a doctor."

This isn't his first mention of becoming a doctor. He's been saying it since he was four. But I just figured since at that point in his life he'd seen so many doctors and made so many trips to Vanderbilt for chest x-rays that he didn't realize other professions existed.

"I thought for a little bit," he continued. "About working where daddy works, but I decided against it. I want to be a doctor because I like helping people."

"That's a good thing to want to become," I told him. "Becoming a doctor take a lot of hard work. You have to work really hard in school." Hey, I might as well play that up, right? I am not going to discourage him, though I want him to realize nothing comes easy.

"Mommy, will you help me become a doctor?"

"If you want to become a doctor, I will do everything that I can to help."

Yes, I know the odds of his changing his mind, several times over, are astronomical. When I was his age, I wanted to be a teacher (interesting that as a girl child in the early 80's, my dream was a teacher). Then I wanted to be a journalist and a news anchor. I became neither...well technically I'm not paid to be a teacher.

Yesterday, I located another website that contains great free printable worksheets for at least through the elementary levels- I only looked at preschool and kindergarten. http://www.tlsbooks.com/preschoolworksheets.htm offers excellent sheets about every secular, educational topic. It's totally free they request a $1 donation but it isn't required- however totally worth it. I found some great things to go along with my homemade worksheets (I'm using to gear the tutoring to the specific high-frequency words tested in his class). My goal is combine several skills in one worksheet to knock it out. For example using number word, color word and a high frequency word in the same worksheet. I plan on using our sessions as a guide to plan the next one- repeating the words or concepts he doesn't know until he does. I'm going to mix those with different crafts and coloring. Found some great ideas on using The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle book and creating different activities for reading, math & science. My goal is to do a "caterpillar day" one day this summer.

If anyone else has any great ideas or good free websites for enrichment activities for the preschool & K levels please feel free to leave a comment. I'm looking for fun and interesting ways to bring these concepts to the kiddos.

Last night we sat down for our first official tutoring session- which I told him we were playing a new "game." And the first thing I gave him was a St. Paddy's Day themed coloring activity to color say the second shamrock and draw a rectangle around the 4th.  There were about five lines of different themed pictures and he got into it. I was scared that he'd balk at my worksheets. But he played along, even with my homemade ones. I only had to pull out the inner motivational speaker once. There was the distraction of CJ, so I had to issue several reminders to keep writing his words. Although I found out that 3 worksheets was the limit...good to know for tonight. I can design our sessions around that limit in mind. I salvaged the meltdown by drawing a smiling bear face on the last completed sheet telling he did such a good job that he gets a smiling bear. He thought that was so cool and set about learning how to draw my smiling bear and the smiling faces that I drew on his other sheets. He was laughing and smiling. Ending the session on a positive note...YAY.

Last week, we had 5 days of behaving well and school- completing his seat work instead of staring off into space. And so far this week we are 3 for 3! Progress!