violamama
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Posts posted by violamama
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Blech. I'm still sick and feel like ick, but I spent pretty much all day in bed yesterday so here's my pitiful attempt at existing on this Thursday.
So far I've managed to get the bed completely stripped down, including all pillowcases, and into the wash. HOT HOT HOT water water, I add. Working on getting everything back on. Vacuumed my bedroom. I managed to rearrange the Netflix instant queue with some documentaries right at the front of it so the kids had something to watch today. Schoolwork out of a book just isn't happening today. Paid some bills and wrote down a grocery list. Later, I'll attempt to wash some dishes.
Feel better! There are some great docs on Netflix, sit back and feel no guilt.
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I'll play. I'm a west coaster so I have an advantage in that our day is only a few hours gone (we start late, around 8am).
Read Pepin the Not-Big to 6 year old son while lazing in bed first thing
Have Pan and the Mad Man read to me by same (THIS IS NEW AND AWESOME AND HE ACTUALLY LIKED IT sorry for shouting)
Also got to hear a lovely recitation of "The Caterpillar", his best so far since he completed it without interrupting himself with unrelated questions and non-sequiturs
Left 4 year old in bed with his cold/virus sadness
Threw on comfy clothes, ambled downstairs to make coffee, fed 6 year old eggs with ketchup, just like we like
Did daily writing (includes the date and some games with the day's number, a sentence of his crafting which he dictates and then copies "The hermit crabs fight for justice on the Kai One in outer space," which cracks me up)
Answered 4 work emails
Put on brown rice to cook
Ran dishwasher
Got distractinspired by these boards
Got off on a tangent in the part of his daily writing that asks "What's today's number plus 100?" and ended up pretty much doing long addition. Now he's writing as many numbers as he can fit on our page-sized dry erase. He is giggling maniacally the whole time at the power rush. We just looked up the name for a 1 with 45 zeros and decide we like the word "Septilliard".
Next up: Comfort 4 year old shivering on the couch (no fever, just feeling crummy) while reading The Horse and His Boy.
Do the rest of our LA.
Make a list for my business assistant to do today
**Leaving to teach violin (work) for 4 hours in the afternoon, mom will come watch the boys since the little one is under the weather
Tonight: Doc Martin, internetting, preparing for Advent so it's fun and not stressful (This is more of an admonition for myself than a foregone conclusion.)
**this would be the part I'd rather not do- love my students, but I'm ready for the winter break.
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I can't imagine doing first grade in an hour as somebody suggested. We are doing it in about 4 hours (including breaks and reading time) and there are still days I wish we had more time.
I work 3 afternoons a week and run a small business on the side. I'm positive these things will have to give as my kids get older because I'll need more time for school. I'm talking within the next two years.
If you're subbing, the hourly pay is not fantastic. Tutoring is far far better. If you live where the students can come to you, it's a great way to support your hs.
Several of my friends sub, and they've let the districts know they are only available on certain days. Could you work mon-weds and hs thurs-sat?
Here's hoping you can work it out in a way that suits your family.
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My kids are closer in age (6 and 4) so we have a slightly different dynamic going, but I'll chime in FWIW. Our 4 year old certainly has his days when he decides to be defiant and disruptive. We have done a lot more brief time-outs or enforced breaks lately. I find if I get squishy on responding when he's purposefully interrupting then he will escalate. He also gets nuttier if I am emotional in my responses.
He's got his own school going now, and that helps a LOT. He does tangram shape pictures, and is extremely proud that he has a math book now. He does a lot of dry erase tracing, and cutting/pasting from Kumon books and a lapbook for CC. Sometimes I'll ask him to draw pictures related to what we've read. I also ask him to encourage his brother when he has to do something more advanced. Anything I can do to make him feel he's an essential part of our school has helped. Giving him jobs to do is probably 60% of my day. Otherwise, he just wants to use his powers for evil. :-)
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Loving this thread.
We're making an advent chain to count down, and I've printed the jokes posted by Delirium to put inside them. We also live where there is wild holly growing so we'll go harvest some of that. Maybe mistletoe too if we can reach it without a ladder.
There are lots of concerts in our area and I plan to look some up on the web. Several news stations and a parenting magazine have event calendars just for slacker moms like me who tend to want to plan but not actually do it. Tons of private teachers and kid ensembles have winter concerts, many of which are free. If we can swing Nutcracker tickets, we might go for that. I play in a symphony so I'm going to see if I can get the clan to come hear/see Cirque de Noel in a few weeks.
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That's a tough question not knowing the ages or interests of any of the women.
Best thing I could come up with for that broad a category: a bookstore or Amazon gift card.
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I thought this was interesting. Funny how I find myself following the news about public school even more closely now that we homeschool. (We never did enroll.)
What say you, classical educators, about this development? (Ps I love to read Malcolm Gladwell.)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/what-should-children-read/
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Interesting. Thanks!
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Just wanted to say we had a GREAT day today. There's something about knowing there are other moms out there with wonderfully maddeningly creative kids out there driving them crazy, too.
At several points I told him I really wanted to give him time to do "X" (draw spaceships made of numbers instead of doing his math, put stickers on his piano book instead of practicing, etc.) but only AFTER the work was done. I didn't get frustrated. I didn't lecture (!!). And he did it! Duh.
Thanks again.
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Here's the Veritas readers link. The guy at our local HS bookstore (Exodus Books) says they are at their best in books 4-10.
http://www.exodusbooks.com/details.aspx?id=6663
I'm ordering those Nora Gaydos books and we do have the I Can Read! books that have several books put into one binding, which the boys look at on car trips. We aren't quite to the level of reading them independently yet, but they do like the stories & illustrations.
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I have a dreamer, which is part of the reason we decided to homeschool him.
Yes! Us, too.
I love all the ideas in the middle there- sorry can't figure out the multiquote thing quite yet. Creative School would be excellent! Teaching him to use it appropriately resonates on all kinds of levels, thank you!
Is Odyssey of the Mind similar to Destination Imagination?
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Just to clarify, thanks for the responses re: more serious issues like hearing loss or epilepsy/absence seizures. I can see how it might have sounded like those could have been possible, too.
He's all checked out and doesn't have those particular challenges. In fact, you would probably think I was nuts if you were to meet him because for most people, most of the time, he's a polite and engaged kid. It's just that as his mom and homeschool headmistress there are a few things he struggles with that I see more than others. Patterns of behavior and such that I know I need to be on top of, and I want to be sure I'm helping him improve. Otherwise we're going to drive each other nuts and worse yet he will miss out on things in life.
Thanks for all the responses & thoughts.
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Just another thing on top of things to think about - when my middle two kids are in a high sensory environment (gymnastics, swimming, etc) it can be really difficult for them to be focusing on the task at hand. You might read about sensory processing disorder and having a healthy "sensory diet." These are things I do with my middle two even though there is no diagnosis of SPD and I'm not actively seeking one. Sometimes it helps neurotypicall kids too. :)
Also, the book The Way Of Boys has been very eye-opening to me.
For my son (who's a year younger) we keep the schooling short and are heavy on the physical activity.
Some of the sensory stuff makes a lot of sense, I do need to read up on that more. When he was smaller it was easy for him to be overwhelmed. He even had a brief period around age 2 where he would bite us to let us know it was all too much for him (only specific situations and it didn't last long!). We left a dance/music class where he was just supposed to run around the room playing with scarves and things because he just stood in the middle with tears welling up in his eyes. Swimming lessons were tough at first but we do them 3 times a week and there's only one other kid in the class, so he's gotten used to it and can now focus despite being in the water. Gymnastics would probably have been okay, but there's another kid in there who for some reason has taken to going nutso and bringing my boy along with him. So, YES, it sounds like your two middle may share some traits with this boy!
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This book helped me with my inattentive little boy. http://www.amazon.co.../dp/1593854455/
I will say, however, that my boy has ADHD, and is on medication for that. However, we keep the dose low and manage a lot of symptoms with behavioral or environmental changes.
He needs protein to pay attention. Toast with peanut butter, cheese, milk, yogurt, something. If he doesn't have it for breakfast, it's not going to be a good day. Other meals and snacks need to have protein as well.
Face him away from windows to minimize distractions. Frequent changes to what we are doing. Phonics may be in three different five minute blocks throughout class time. He does better with natural light than with flourescent. Also, I have found that he doesn't have to be looking at me to be listening to me. He's capable of listening to me while he is doing something else. That was difficult for me to grasp, because I thought if he wasn't looking at me, he wasn't paying attention. Also, I have found that reminding him to do something (I told you to put your shoes away!) got a fit, where if I just asked him, (Where are your shoes supposed to be) got quick compliance.
We're seeing a lot of what you describe in terms of asking him rather than berating him when he hasn't done the jobs he should quickly enough. Protein helps, too.
I'm wondering about the executive function development book, and am definitely curious about what it has to say. I've read some studies (Nurture Shock, etc) that seem to show you can definitely help them develop this skill even though it's also dependent on frontal cortex growth.
Does everybody notice themselves doing things that don't work, like lecturing or yelling? It drives me nuts that I still fall back into that stuff from time to time. Happily I seem to do a little less each time around, but I'm definitely glad to have some good reading suggestions to get myself re-inspired.
Thanks!
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Mo Willems' books totally crack up my boys. Veritas press has a cool set of early simple progressive readers.
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We don't own a game box and probably won't until our boys (6 & 4) are much older. They do get to play iPad ed apps, though.
I worry that if we had a system and limited it, it would be like it is sometimes with sweets or TV and would make them even more focused on them. I'll admit my parenting decisions on things like these are heavily influenced by how much strife and friction I'm willing to allow into our little kingdom. It's just not worth it to me, and I know it would make me cranky.
Full disclosure: neither my husband nor I ever really got into video games ourselves.
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Our guys are in a similar boat. We let them put ONE lego thing on their lists, and then made them branch out. Seriously, I never thought we'd fill up all our lego drawers and boxes with those tiny suckers.
We put this on our list, it's a nerf-style bow and arrow:
http://www.visionforum.com/browse/product/greased-lightning-super-bow-arrows/?cid=1159
He's totally excited about this light-up ant farm:
There's also finger puppets, lego ice cube trays (which we might use to make re-melted crayons), marbles, a butterfly garden thingie (similar to the ant farm idea) and we found angry birds blankets with hoods a while back at Costco. Funny how they gravitate to that when they've played it mayyybe three times in their entire lives.
Merry merry!
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Thanks! We had allowed some earning back of privileges, and it did quickly become a slippery slope. Increased the whine factor, too.
I will check out the books you mention (Powells, amen!) for sure.
Keeping my own intensity in check with my 6 yob is my current challenge/obsession. The (admittedly fairly mild) behavior issues could easily rule our relationship and I really don't want that to happen.
Thanks again, and hey, who doesn't love brownies!
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You might mess around with larger motion knowledge of letters.
My 6 yob was not thrilled about trying to write anything other than what HE wanted to do. Still is that way to some extent.
Last year we did lots of huge letters. Letters in chalk on the driveway (I draw it with dots, he traces the dots to make the letter), letters in water on paper with his fingertip, letters in rice in a box (or salt). I tried to keep it casual since he was still pretty little.
In my experience as a violin teacher, many boys that age are just not wired up yet for interest in small motor control. Let him trace and do things BIG. Or let it drop until he's older. It's not just a maturity thing, it's also physical development. (Reminding myself of this even as I'm typing!)
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I think my opinion is similar to MyCrazyHouse above.
Most of the expectations I encounter have to do with people unfamiliar with homeschooling. They often assume we're going to be weird, which we certainly are, but not because we HS. It makes me laugh at myself because I totally remember that shifty-eyed look I would give homeschoolers three short years ago. God's hilarious.
My family tends to just be impressed with our first two years' results, though sometimes when our 6 yob acts up I imagine they might be thinking things at me. I think it's mostly imagination, though. We don't have many friends our age outside the HS community to be honest, so I don't get a lot of flack.
My MIL was a school teacher, so occasionally we get "advice" but it's good spirited and works out (and they live 600 miles away). Our piano teacher is dubious about the 6 yob's letter knowledge (we started with cursive and she was asking him to write upper case print letters), but that's more about judgment than expectation.
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This might be useful:
http://teachyourkidstoswim.com/
Our two boys have been in community center swim lessons for 2 years (they're 4 and 6 years old) and they really love it. They both improved a lot when we let them try some floaty arms on a vacation and then put them back in the pool without assitance. They also really love going for the diving rings (that would be after some skill acquisition).
Have fun!
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My 4 year old (going on 7) loves the Kumon cutting, pasting & stickering books. He also really likes their set of dry-erase number cards that have starting dots and specific tracing lines showing them how to draw them correctly. He likes to draw them and then erase them with the little eraser on the tip of the cap, so he actually gets twice the practice. You could even make those yourself if you have a laminator. They have a letters set too, but we're doing cursive so I've been meaning to make my own.
We have lacing and beading projects, he has his own little zipper pouch with scissors, colored pencils and a glue stick. I often print out paper toys he can cut and paste himself from the internet. Sometimes he needs help with the final steps on those.
Both my boys love Bingo for anything though that takes time with me (letter/number recognition is our usual topic), and color-by-numbers. We just bought a big tub of plastic math shapes (knock off Tangrams) and I printed a bunch of shape pages off and put them in page protectors so he can do them a thousand times himself. He also loves puzzles.
When we started with my older (now 6) boy we did a lot of drawing letters with sidewalk chalk on the driveway and then walking around the shapes. Pretty soon he wanted to do them himself.
Both kids are really enjoying the Singapore math books and they like playing all sorts of math Apps on my iPad, though that's not really counted as school in our minds. It's more of a diversion.
Our older worked through the BOB books, including packs of printable things we found online.
We do Classical Conversations, which both kids think is about the most fun thing ever. In conjunction with that we tried lapbooks this year and they both really enjoy that. It's our wind-down activity at the end of our studies, and we often listen to music while cutting & pasting & coloring our projects.
I see in your signature thingie (I'm new, so hopefully I've got the lingo right) that you're already doing lots of science play/nature walks and you have the language stuff covered. That's awesome, and is one of the things our kids love about being homeschoolers. I don't have all the abbreviations down so I'm probably telling you lots of stuff you already know.
One last thing that you probably already do to keep it fun: short sweet sessions. An added plus for our boys has been learning to tell time or having a timer set so they can be somewhat "in charge", and also so they remember that it is finite when they hit struggles.
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Hey there. This is my inaugural post, though I've been lurking for a while now. I just had my appendix out a few weeks ago and finally took the time to actually read WTM. It was one of those awesome "HEY, the ideas, people and curriculae I've been hoping existed really DO" moments. Glad you're all here!
So I have two awesome boys (6 & 4) and this is our second year of CC. We just added a bunch of the basics listed in WTM and we're all enjoying them.
Our six year old is a dreamer. There are lots of really excellent things about him, but let me cut to the chase. He spends roughly 93% of his time off in his own world. Some days this means he only really "obeys" 7% of the time. That 6% is even lower in a stimulating environment and with other teachers. He's a sweet kid, not a particularly rough & tumble boy, but he ends up getting lots of "time outs" at church, at gymnastics, etc. His 4 year old brother is a socially motivated people-pleaser who can be a bit of a pest, rubbing in how well HE is behaving while big brother gets in trouble.
Anybody have advice or books I can read to help him with this and more important to help me parent him well? I really love practical advice and clear plans of action. I need to re-read Love & Logic for Teachers and probably, like, the Bible. What else?
Who's going to tackle Thursday with me?
in The Chat Board
Posted
You have my admiration!