We are goig through a very ugly hayfever season this year. Kelly, Christian, and Lorena are all suffering pretty bad right now. Through all that, we had Tony and Martha over for dinner last night. Lorena put together a beautiful dinner of barbequed salmon, salad, white rice, and garlic bread. I ate way too much and did not do much exercise, but it was great.
One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that Christian gave the first of two oral book reports for the end of his second grade year at Fir Grove School and Mrs. McCool on Wednesday. He was VERY worried about getting up in front of the class to give the talk. Kelly is always very well prepared for that sort of thing and is a natrual when it comes to public speaking.
I told Christian that the key to this sort of things was preparation and index cards. He did not know what to write so we discussed the facts about the book and what he needed to accomplish in his talk. He wrote a bunch of those facts down on a piece of paper. Then, he prepared his speech on index cards. We did not have index cards so he just printed them out on card stock.
When I got home the afternoon after he gave his speech, before I asked him how it went, he came up to me and said “I gave my speech today.”
I asked, “How did it go?”
He said, “EXCELLENT!”
I said, “Why do you think it went so well?”
“Because I was so well prepared” was his reponse.
I think it was a super lesson. After I had gotten him going with a list of facts and talked about how the index cards would be a good aid for helping him to give his speech, Christian just took off and did the rest. I fully planned to review what he had written, but for whatever reason, I did not do that. The speech was really all his and he obviously felt quite good that he had done what was necessary to get ready for it. It reduced his fear level greatly and taught both of us a lesson.