I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but here goes...
My 6.5 year old (in 1st grade) has book reviews due every other week. They read a children's book and have to say what they like about the book, what they don't like and one thing they would change.
These are generally a struggle. I try to stay calm, ask questions that help her think of what to write, etc, but we almost always end up butting heads.
And it isn't because she can't do them! One week, she just decided to do her book review. And she had it all done in about 20 minutes with little to no help from me.
But I've just put her to bed tonight, with both of us very frustrated. I'd thought that if we could get a start on the book review tonight, it would be easier to finish tomorrow (it's due the next day, Friday).
But she just wouldn't do it. And I don't really understand. She verbalised (following along from my questions) exactly what she would write as her second sentence (we got the first sentence down, 'This book is about a bear called Newton.'!), but then just shut down and refused to write anything.
She seemed to really be reacting to my presence, so I told her I'd be in the next room and to come get me if she needed help spelling anything.
Well, I went back after 10 minutes and she'd done nothing. And she wouldn't answer me when I asked her if she'd like me to help her with her next sentence, so I just put her to bed and told her we'd need to do the book review tomorrow.
But I am DREADING tomorrow. And I really have no idea how to approach this one with her.
Please - any suggestions would really be appreciated! I want this to be fun, but I have no clue how to make it fun (she quite happily read the book to me, and she spends loads of time writing stuff in her diary/letters to people/lists of things/etc, so writing isn't difficult for her...so I dont' think that she find the book review itself difficult to do necessarily....)
My 6.5 year old (in 1st grade) has book reviews due every other week. They read a children's book and have to say what they like about the book, what they don't like and one thing they would change.
These are generally a struggle. I try to stay calm, ask questions that help her think of what to write, etc, but we almost always end up butting heads.
And it isn't because she can't do them! One week, she just decided to do her book review. And she had it all done in about 20 minutes with little to no help from me.
But I've just put her to bed tonight, with both of us very frustrated. I'd thought that if we could get a start on the book review tonight, it would be easier to finish tomorrow (it's due the next day, Friday).
But she just wouldn't do it. And I don't really understand. She verbalised (following along from my questions) exactly what she would write as her second sentence (we got the first sentence down, 'This book is about a bear called Newton.'!), but then just shut down and refused to write anything.
She seemed to really be reacting to my presence, so I told her I'd be in the next room and to come get me if she needed help spelling anything.
Well, I went back after 10 minutes and she'd done nothing. And she wouldn't answer me when I asked her if she'd like me to help her with her next sentence, so I just put her to bed and told her we'd need to do the book review tomorrow.
But I am DREADING tomorrow. And I really have no idea how to approach this one with her.
Please - any suggestions would really be appreciated! I want this to be fun, but I have no clue how to make it fun (she quite happily read the book to me, and she spends loads of time writing stuff in her diary/letters to people/lists of things/etc, so writing isn't difficult for her...so I dont' think that she find the book review itself difficult to do necessarily....)
