Monday, August 31, 2009

Melissa's live session

This afternoon Melissa had her live session with her teacher, and the teacher agreed that she does need to go down to phonics and lang. arts K in our curriculum. She spent about an hour in the live elluminate session, playing some letter games and doing some reading. She didn't do too bad, but still her teacher agreed that she needs to go down for some holes in her phonics skills and to help her build her confidence before we start pushing her. The paperwork has been filled out and submitted, and I should know by the end of the week if they will approve her going down a level (she said they are really good about doing that if the teacher submits paperwork for it, especially when the paperwork states that the parent came to the teacher with the concern) So, we're going to be doing phonics and lang. arts K with both girls this school year, and Melissa will move back up to 1st grade level when she is ready (hopefully around mid-year)

Sunday, August 30, 2009

weekend backyard science with daddy

Scott has really opened up to the lifestyle of teaching our kids at home I think. Usually on weekends, he sits at the computer playing T4C or at the tv playing football on his PS3. Well, today we got Dairy Queen for lunch (he's making life easy on me this weekend, I had a procedure done Friday and am still a tad sensitive and sore from it) and in the girls' kids meals were bug houses. They are just little things, about the size of a crayon box with a vented lid and a sliding magnifier on the side. Anyway, Scott took the kids out in the back yard on a bug hunt. They each caught a different bug in their houses, and they are all at the table out back, looking up their bugs in the animal encyclopedia and learning neat tidbits about them. They have been at it for an hour now, and they are LOVING this time with daddy. They got a grasshopper, a millipede, and a ladybug so far. They are even letting Jordan in on the fun, showing her the different bugs and teaching her how to say their names. lol

Melissa and phonics

Well, tomorrow Melissa has a live online session with her teacher to evaluate her to see if she needs to go back into phonics and lang. arts K instead of staying in grade 1 level. Scott thought is was silly to consider putting her back, so today I did her unit 1 assessment for phonics. She should have done the unit 2 assessment on Friday, if that tells you how much she's struggling. Anyway, he was listening to us while I did her assessment, and when he realized that she can't do the work he was livid. Not at me or her, but at our local school district. They passed her to 1st grade even though she didn't pass the K reading assessment, they told me to work with her every day through the summer. Well, watching her literally in tears today over the first sentence she had to read to me in her assessment made him so mad, I've never seen him this mad about something before. He literally wanted to go find her teacher and hit that woman, but its not the teacher's fault. Her teacher worked with her every day on her reading in school, I worked with her daily also, she just isn't getting it. Reading just isn't clicking for Melissa at all, she can painfully sound out a word like "cab" (that's actually the word that got her to tears today, she just hit her limit right there with it) and knows some sight words but she's not ready for more complicated reading beyond that.

So tomorrow at 1pm she gets a live session with her teacher, the teacher already told me that its not a sign of failure on our part if she has to go back a level, and its not a problem if she goes slower than written through K phonics for a while as long as she is making progress. Her teacher agrees with me that Melissa needs tested for learning challenges, but can't say what to test for or when they can do it until after a couple live sessions and seeing a good bit of Melissa's work. We are just being patient on this one for now, and will see what happens.

But Scott and I are both in agreement on one thing. If OHVA gives us a hard time about Melissa's reading progress (especially after this year is up if she's not done with K phonics) then we're going to be pulling her from their program and work independently with her until her reading is up to grade level. Lydia may or may not stay in OHVA if that happens, we'll decide later based on how she does with this year's work and how we feel about the program overall after the school year is up. I'm not going to let a group of people who don't work with my girls daily tell us that they aren't doing well enough in their lessons somewhere, if this happens we'll be independent homeschoolers in a flash. I will NOT be bullied by a public school district again, not after the year Melissa had in public K last year.

Friday, August 21, 2009

joyful fun with lessons

So, today ends the official first week of ohva for us. Lydia's flying through lessons, and Melissa is doing OK. She's a bit behind in phonics/LA but that's expected for her, she's been struggling in that area for a while. I had a talk with her teacher, and she wants to do a session online with Melissa to get information about how she's doing in that area to possibly move her down to K phonics/LA instead of 1st grade. Scott and I totally expected it, so we aren't objecting at all about it.

She also told us to just do the weekly assessments with Lydia in phonics/LA until we hit her place, so today we are doing the week 5 assessment with her. She's also doing a couple lessons at a time in math, but is doing really well with it. She's almost finished her first unit in math lol

Melissa really loves doing her history, science, art, and music lessons though. She thinks they are an absolute blast to do. We have some really pretty artwork already created and she's having fun reviewing what we learned in our first science lesson about measuring in centimeters vs. using your foot or handspan (or other things like that)

We also started soccer this week. Last night was Melissa's first practice, and tonight is Lydia's. Melissa has practice twice a week until the first game, then its once a week on Tuesdays. I'll get Lydia's practice schedule tonight. A dear friend of mine, her 6yo daughter and 5yo son are on my girls' teams, so if practices are the same day we have it covered lol We are playing in the local AYSO league, and I am loving it. Melissa's coach is tough but very understanding of kids who've never played before (like Melissa) and he has his assistant coach working with the new kids on basic kicking and such. I have to remember to put batteries in my camera and take it with me to the next practice so I can share a couple pics on here for you to see her in action. I'm really excited about being a soccer mom, as silly as that may sound. I know also that the girls are going to do great once they get the hang of playing. Melissa had a blast last night, although she was sooooooo tired after practice that she basically shovelled in her supper and then went to bed lol I hope tonight Lydia has fun, and actually goes out on the field to play instead of just clinging to me like she usually does. I'm going to try and get there early so that she can get used to the other kids and her coaches before practice starts, then maybe I can get her kicking her ball a little and that may help her get into the mood of playing. She's the one who needs the social outlets that I'm providing so many of, and the main reason I'm juggling 2 in soccer, 2 in girl scouts, and doing AWANA (any kid old enough will go off to their classes while I volunteer in the nursery, taking care of the ones too young to participate while their parents lead groups) I overscheduled our activities like that to try and get her some social outlet, she is the most ANTISOCIAL child I've ever seen. I think she'd rather eat spiders than interact with people, so I'm giving her opportunities (and likely wasting our money at the same time) and praying that eventually she'll come out of her shell.

Oh, and if you want to see how we spent yesterday morning, go check out my friend Tristan's blog for pictures of her "NOT back to school" gathering. It was a total blast!

Monday, August 03, 2009

our first day of ohva

Holy cow is all I can say LOL We are starting 2 weeks before the official first day purely because I want time to ease into lessons with the kids, and its a good thing I'm doing it this way. We've done about all I want to for today, but tonight we'll do art real fast after supper. So far today here's what we did:

Lydia's phonics
Lydia's lang. arts
Lydia's math (need to review tomorrow though before she can move on)
Melissa's phonics
Melissa's math (another reviewer for tomorrow)
Melissa's lang. arts started

Yep, we did that much today. I feel like it was a highly successful day, however it doesn't look really like we did a ton since math for both girls is review mainly (Lydia's managed to start with one of the few K concepts we didn't already teach her LOL) I was a bit surprised at how well today went, although Melissa had a total meltdown during lang. arts that indicated she needed a nap (which she went for an hour an a half in her bed, snoring away once she got over being hacked off at me for banishing her to bed lol) Yep, today was a very successful day, it was a great start to the new school year for us I think. It was dry and a bit boring for my taste, but its going to be a good year for us I think.

At least, we made the commitment to this school year with OHVA, and I have no intentions of leaving the program at all this year. Its going to be a rough transition for us all I think, I'm not used to teaching them FT like this and Melissa's not used to mom being her teacher, but I have a feeling it will go just fine this school year. And if we decide that we don't like it after all, we don't have to go back next school year. I flat out REFUSE to change what we are doing this year just because it may not be the easiest for me from the get-go and because its dry, I'm 100% certain that would damage the girls more than help them at this point so we'll be finishing this year no matter what we end up thinking of it. At least both girls absolutely loved having their worksheets to do, especially Lydia. They thought it was pretty cool, and working with the hands-on stuff to practice what we were working on certainly helped too.