Moving presents a challenge to children in many ways - but none so much as being in school when you're expected to know your address and phone number and you haven't had a moment to hear it let alone learn it! We, of course, ran into this problem being that we got here in just enough time to start the kids in school - our focus was not on address and phone number memorization, but rather on unpacking... uuuummmm, I wonder if our priorities were mixed up?
Needless to say we had a very upset Gabi when the class was apparently quizzed as to their phone numbers - she was, of course, the only kid in her class who didn't know hers. Ouch!!!!!! Talk about bad parenting... oh, wait, that's right, we'd only had a phone number for a few weeks and she'd never needed it and well, where was my head?!
Our very next FHE became a learn your phone number and address one. Important information... though apparently with a lot of stress. So we made it fun. We put together two songs - one for the address and one for the phone number. They are to the tunes of "I've Been Working On The Railroad" and "Pop Goes The Weasel". All the kids helped to create the songs, though they were fun and silly, and we spent that night singing them... as well as the following days. Everyone (yes, even Peter) knows both phone number and address because of the songs!
But, because it's so much fun, they go around singing those made up songs around the house and in the van just for fun! I guess reinforcement isn't a bad thing... so much for lousy parenting, I think I rank top notch for that one (even if I do say so myself)! (Okay... so it's really just catch up, I had to do something "fast")
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