Little Devils

In the mornings, we´ve been mainly helping two little boys, both in the second grade at primary school. They´re nine and can´t read or write yet. They both keep us on our toes and need our constant attention.

One child is really good at colouring in, he keeps in the lines and is extremely neat in his work, but he only wants to colour in pictures and he won´t do any of the copying or drawing exercises that will help him learn to write. He needs the constant attention to help him with his exercises. He seems to have quite a few problems with concentration and it´s his way or the highway (Lindsay - any tips would be great, as I imagine Stuart was a little like that!). From talking to the other teachers, he was left by his parents and now lives with his grandparents, but they work all hours, so he is often left to his own devices.

The other little devil has four other brothers and sisters in the Seeds scheme. For the last few days, I have mainly been helping him and with constant guidence and attention he can do his exercises, but he really needs one-to-one supervision. Even after 90 minutes, you can see the improvement, but this is needed every day to ensure that there is constant improvement. He´s also filthy and the other day a little beasty jumped off his jumper onto the desk. After hopping around a bit the beasty jumped back onto the little boy and snuggled into the warmth!

I think over the next few weeks we´ll spend more time in the mornings with these two little devils, and hopefully we´ll see even more improvements.