wendyroo
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Posts posted by wendyroo
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My 3 year old's name is Peter. Neither DH or I (or grandparents or relatives) ever associated it with any anatomy term and no one has ever mentioned that. We live in MI.
Everyone we meet, it seems, calls him Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, but I don't mind that and figure it will taper off (or peter out) by the time he goes to college. :tongue_smilie:
Wendy
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My son is 3.5 and in the last few weeks has started reading a lot. I have been emphasizing phonics (and memorizing unphonetic sight words) and he can sound out CVC words and simple blends like bump and drip. He is reading a lot of Bob books and Fantastic Phonics readers. However, as he reads he is not doing much sounding out and I'm wondering if that should be encouraged or discouraged.
For example, while reading a book, the first time he encounters any given word he will sound it out, but after that every time he comes to it he will just say it without sounding it out. The vast majority of the time he is reading the words correctly, but that may be because he is still reading books that only have a dozen distinct words. Or could he be sounding them out in his head already even though he has only been reading for a few weeks? Sometimes when he gets to a word he does pause for a few seconds and I almost think I see his eyes moving from letter to letter and sometimes his mouth even moves a bit like he is silently making the letter sounds.
Should I be encouraging him to sound out each word (except true sight words) or is he intuitively practicing and gaining fluency? I've always covered the pictures on each page until he reads the words to try to prevent guessing. We have also been playing some games decoding and encoding nonsense words to practice pure phonics that he can't guess.
Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Seeing a problem where there is actually just a precocious reader?
Thanks,
Wendy
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I was a mothers helper at 11 - and a very good one, at that. By 12 I was babysitting, and by 13 parents were so impressed by my maturity, that several couples would go out to dinner together and leave me with all their kids - up to 6 at a time. It was very lucrative for me.
I hired a 12 year old from the neighborhood to play with my 2 year old when my second son was born. She did a great job, and it made my life a lot easier. She would play with him in the backyard or basement playroom while the baby napped. I could get some housework done or take a nap myself. It would have been even more convenient if she was homeschooled and could come during the day instead of just late in the afternoon.
Wendy
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I'm sure that some people have legitimate reasons to drive their kids house to house, but around here, I think the number of cars trolling around is ridiculous and dangerous.
Yes, it was cold, and yes it was drizzling, but that is what coats and umbrellas are made for.
We live in a subdivision that gets hundreds and hundreds of trick or treaters. The place is a madhouse. Many families drive here and park and walk the neighborhood, which I don't mind at all, but all those parked cars are already adding obstacles on the road and making it hard to see a small child who is darting out into the street. Then add to that a steady stream of parents slowly cruising along with half their attention on the road and half on their kids. It is a recipe for disaster and there are many near misses every year.
Wendy
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Fewer than normal.
Most years we get about 300, but this year it was windy, rainy and about 38 degrees. Only about 200 kids came by.
My three year old begged to go, so we tromped around for 30 minutes in the rain, but he refused to go up to any of the houses. At every house he told me he didn't want to trick or treat there because they only had two lights on or because their door was red or because he was worried they might have a pet snake. One lady actually brought her candy bowl down to the sidewalk for him, but he just hid behind me. His loss; I said trick or treat and she gave me the candy instead!
Wendy
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We live in a very Halloween-friendly neighborhood and get about 300 trick or treaters each year. I don't at all mind giving candy to teenagers (in costume) as long as they remember it is still primarily a holiday for littler kids. That means waiting patiently while little ones climb porch steps and not running around in huge gangs barreling kids down in the dark.
My pet peeve is parents who drive slowly up and down the streets while their kids run house to house. I don't mind if a family from a rural area wants to drive here to trick or treat, but for goodness sake, just park and walk around. When there are a bunch of excited kids running around in the dark, the last thing we need is a bunch of extra cars sporadically stopping and going on the streets. Lot of them even let their kids jump in if there are a few houses in a row with their lights off and they drive the kids further up the street. That is not the spirit of trick or treating!!
Wendy
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I make the liquid version with fels naptha, borax and washing soda. I find it does a great job on getting stuff clean - I have two toddlers and lots of stains. I have to occasionally pretreat grease or spit up, but other than that the detergent does fine on its own.
I have not noticed our clothes fading, and they feel nice and soft even though we do not use either liquid fabric softener or fabric softener sheets. I do use some white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser or in a downy ball.
At this point, I have made many batches of the detergent, and one time I did not have fals naptha so I decided to use Ivory - that is the only batch that did not gel and came out poorly.
One thing I did read is that fels naptha can cause cause reactions for some people. Before I made my first batch I lathered up the fels naptha a smeared some of the suds on the inside of DH and DS's arms. Ten minutes later they rinsed it off and checked to make sure their skin wasn't red at all. I did the same thing to my younger son when he was born before I threw his clothes in the wash with ours. Just something to think about.
Wendy
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My uncle calls my older son Eddie - his name is Peter.
My uncle calls my younger son Eddie II - his name is Elliot.
It annoys me and DH. It annoys my mother and father and my grandmother and most everyone on that side of the family; I assume that is why he does it. He will also talk (in front of the kids who are 1 and 3) about how their real names are bad and boring and that is why he has renamed them.
I try very hard to ignore it, because, really, what other choice do I have?
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My son is 3 and a half, and most days we do about 30 minutes of sit at the table learning time (FIAR, crafts, light reading instruction, etc). For now, this is completely optional for him. He normally loves it, but I don't try to force it is he decides he doesn't want to do any activities on a given day (very rare) or if he wants to skip a particular activity (occasional).
The other day my mom asked when the lessons would start to be mandatory and how I would make that transition. DS is my oldest, so I don't really have any experience.
When did you start requiring certain work from your kids? How did you explain to your kids why they had to do it? Did you go the route of school is their job? Did you talk about what would be required of them if they were in public school?
I'm starting to think about this now, not because I think it is time to start forcing more learning on DS - I figure that is, at least, a year away - but rather because I am noticing that DS is not a kid that is motivated by challenges or a drive for independence. He is very easily frustrated and overwhelmed and more than happy to just let me do things for him. I anticipate that this will prove challenging when it comes time for more formal schooling. Even now, he is unwilling to even try riding a trike or putting on his own coat or using the remote to turn on the TV because he says they are too hard. He is more than capable of those tasks and has watched his peers doing those things, but he has no interested in mastering the skills himself.
Thoughts? Ideas? Am I a first time mom over thinking things?
Thanks,
Wendy
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The key is that when you multiply ABCD by 4 you still end up with the same number of digits, AKA A times 4 must be less than 10 so you don't have to carry over into the ten thousands place. Also we know B can't be very big or it would carry over into the thousands place, add to A * 4 and knock the answer into the ten thousands.
So, as FLDebbie said, A has to be 1 or 2. And since D * 4 = A, A cannot equal 1 and therefore must equal 2.
Now it looks like:
2BCD
* 4
DCB2
Again, as FLDebbie said, D must equal 3 or 8 in order for D * 4 to have an answer with 2 in the ones place. Except, there is no way you could end up with a 3 as the thousands place of the answer. So D = 8.
2BC8
* 4
8CB2
Well we already knew B had to be small, and 2 is taken. If B were 3 or more, then B * 4 would carry over into the thousands and mess that up (it would not equal 8 like it needs to), so B must equal 1.
21C8
* 4
8C12
Now just work the problem and see what fits.
8*4 = 32, 2 in the ones, carry three tens. C * 4 plus those 3 carried tens has to give us a result ending in 1. 7 * 4 = 28 + 3 = 31.
Keep going to check work.
The 1 of 31 goes in the tens place, carry 3 hundreds. 4 * 1 = 4 + the 3 carried tens = 7. Good.
Hope that helps.
Wendy
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Oh, I forgot to mention. I looked up the PROMPT therapy. Unfortunately, the nearest certified therapist is about 4 hours away. There is a Bridging therapist just over an hour away. I will have to call and see about bringing Peter in to be evaluated.
Wendy
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OhElizabeth,
Thank you for this info.
Peter hasn't been with the same therapist for the full two years. He started with Early Intervention at 18 months when he was only saying "da." That "early interventionist" did seem to help (or he just coincidentally hit a speech explosion) because after seeing her for about 6 months Peter was saying about 50 words. The EI said that his intelligibility was simply due to age and that he would grow to be able to make more sounds. She was a bit concerned that he could not blow bubbles, and she worked with him on it often, but he never got the hang of it.
When Peter was 2.5 years he was "saying" thousands of words. The EI said his pronunciation would get better as he got older, and she dropped back to only seeing him once a month. When he turned 3 he aged out Early Intervention.
The day after his third birthday I called the school district to get him evaluated to see if he qualified for speech therapy through special ed. It took several months before they evaluated him.
It was interesting, when we went in for the evaluation, the speech therapist spoke with Peter for a few minutes and said he may or may not qualify. After testing him she said he definitely qualified with a moderate/severe speech delay. It has become clear that he is choosing his words very carefully to avoid ones he can't say. He will always say seat instead of chair. He will say "that animal" and point rather than say cat. He also is using a lot of gestures and sound effects to get his point across and mask that many of his words sound the same.
The school district said they wouldn't start therapy until the new school year, so he has only been seeing the new therapist for a month now. I am not impressed. He seems to be having fun (they play with legos), but for therapy she is just having him say various words and encouraging him to enunciate them.
The biggest issue is that so far the therapist isn't working to help him on "hard" sounds like /g/ or /c/. Those are just written off as too hard for him right now. Instead, the therapist is trying to get him to include medial /t/ and /d/ in words. She says that once he can say the words correctly that he will. Except he has been able to include medial /t/ and /d/ in words for a year now if he focuses on it, and yet in spontaneous speech he still drops them all.
If you get his attention, have him look right at you and say Pe-ter putting emphasis on the /t/ he can repeat it back to you. Coming from him it almost sounds like two words, Pee ter, and he never manages to blend it into one word. So he goes to the therapist and she has him say "kitten" and he says, "iiiii-ten" strung out like two words and she calls that good enough even though he is completely missing the /k/. While at home, he just avoids the words cat or kitten because he doesn't want to say them. Yesterday we were talking about pets, and he mentioned that Aunt Linda has a "feyine" aka feline aka he has a HUGE vocabulary but can't say the simple word cat.
Wendy
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Thank you everyone for your replies.
My son, Peter, definitely hears the differences in words. This afternoon he built something out of blocks and said it was a tain. I said, "Oh, it's a train?" and he said, "No, a tain." I went on making guesses for a few minutes until he explained it was a "seen (machine) to yif (lift) tings." AKA a crane.
However, more and more I am wondering how much of his hearing is actually lip reading. When I say something and he isn't looking right at me he often asks, "huh" or seems to hear a garbled version of what I said. Today we were walking and he asked about a lawn service and I said, "They're cutting Renee's lawn." He asked, "What is reinslaw?" His hearing has been tested MANY times over the last few years, but I finally got his speech therapist to refer him for a more accurate speech discrimination test.
Peter does mispronounce individual words consistently: crane is always tain, Peter is always Pee-er. But, he doesn't always mispronounce sounds the same way. Sometimes an /r/ becomes a /w/ other times it just gets dropped.
I did look up apraxia and Peter did/does exhibit some of the symptoms:
- Does not coo or babble as an infant
Peter was silent as a baby and toddler. He did not even say Mama until he was 22 months.
- First words are late, and they may be missing sounds
Until 22ish months his only sound was "da" and it did not refer to anything in particular.
- Only a few different consonant and vowel sounds
Very true.
- Problems combining sounds; may show long pauses between sounds
He never pauses or has problems combining sounds - they are the wrong sounds, but he combines them fluently.
- Simplifies words by replacing difficult sounds with easier ones or by deleting difficult sounds (although all children do this, the child with apraxia of speech does so more often)
He does this a lot.
- May have problems eating
No, but at 3.5 years he can't blow a bubble or blow out a candle. He can't form his mouth into an "o" at all. He also can't spit.
- Makes inconsistent sound errors that are not the result of immaturity
His sounds errors are fairly consistent.
- Can understand language much better than he or she can talk
Yes, his receptive language consistently tests about 2-3 years beyond his age.
- Has difficulty imitating speech, but imitated speech is more clear than spontaneous speech
Yes.
- May appear to be groping when attempting to produce sounds or to coordinate the lips, tongue, and jaw for purposeful movement
No groping. Again, he speaks very confidently.
- Has more difficulty saying longer words or phrases clearly than shorter ones
No, he seems to have equal difficulty with long and short words. Long words are normally easier to understand because they are more distinct.
- Appears to have more difficulty when he or she is anxious
No, though it is harder when he is tired or slurring his words.
- Is hard to understand, especially for an unfamiliar listener
VERY HARD!! My husband and I understand about 50% and strangers only get about 10% at best.
- Sounds choppy, monotonous, or stresses the wrong syllable or word
No, he is very good at "jargoning." His speech sounds very fluid and he stresses syllables and words correctly.
Thank you for all your thougths. I have started him on the first lesson in All About Reading 1. He seems to grasp the idea of sound blending, but he still needs a lot of hand holding to smoothly combine the sounds quickly enough to figure out the word. We are just going to hang out on lesson 1 and do various fun blending activities for a few days or even weeks. I'd love to get him reading the first Bob Book for a morale boost before we move on to Lesson 2.
Thanks again,
Wendy
- Does not coo or babble as an infant
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Full disclosure, I've never done Singapore math or formally used the bar model, but I do have two degrees from MIT, so I'm pretty good at thinking about math.
To do this problem with a bar model:
In a traffic jam, you are able to drive only 1 3/4 miles in 2 1/2 hours. How many miles per hour on the average are you going?
I would start like llolly.
I made two equal length bars one over the other and labeled one 1 3/4 miles and the other 2 1/2 hours. I then split the 1 3/4 miles bar into 7 sections each 1/4 mile long. I split the 2 1/2 hour bar into 5 sections each 1/2 hour long.
At that point, I don't think you have to abandon the bar model or change to decimals. I visually decided I needed a common denominator. I further split the 1 3/4 miles bar. Each 1/4 hour got split into 5 pieces; (1/4)/5 = each piece = 1/20 mile. NOTE: I did not actually draw all those divisions, I just split one of the 1/4 mile pieces. Each 1/2 hour piece got split into 7; (1/2)/7 = 1/14 hour.
Now each full bar was divided into 35 pieces and I knew we drove 1/20 of a mile in 1/14 of an hour. How far did we drive in an hour? 1/20 * 14 = 14/20 = 7/10 miles/hour.
Wendy
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I have a bright 3.5 year old boy who is ready to learn to read, but struggles with a moderate/severe expressive speech delay.
Let me say upfront that I know he is young and that most of his time needs to be spent playing and doing art and being read to - we do a ton of that. But, we also do 20 - 30 minutes of optional learning time most mornings and I want to start spending some of that time doing beginning reading (AAR 1).
He has known all his letters for well over a year, and he "knows" all his letter sounds, but physically can't produce many of the sounds. He is missing many consonant sounds and all consonant blends. He also is missing some vowel sounds and he omits almost all medial and final consonants - even when he says his own name, Peter, he drops the t.
On the other hand, he is a whiz at rhyming and counting syllables, he can read about two dozen sight words, and he is very good at the "make a word" game where I say /s/ and then /am/ and he blends them into Sam or I say /peh/ and then /t/ and he blends them into pet. I went through the All About Reading checklist to see if he was ready for Level 1 as opposed to pre-reading and he passed with flying colors.
I am reluctant to delay reading instruction until his speech gets better, because he has been in speech therapy for 2 years already and while he is making very slow progress, he is actually falling farther behind where he should be rather than catching up. I sometimes wonder if focusing on written words and blending sounds might help his speech - even a little bit.
My question is, how would you approach reading with a child that can't say many phonemes? If I say /caa/ and /t/ he thinks cat but says "tat". And if I ask him how to spell red he carefully sounds it out as he says it: /w/ /e/ /d/.
Thank you for any ideas,
Wendy
Beginning Reader - Encourage or Discourage Sight Reading?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
Thank you for the reassurance.
I am doing All About Reading 1 with him slowly. Other than that, I will just continue to offer him lots of beginning readers.
Wendy