Monday, February 23, 2009

counting to 100

I had a conference with Melissa's teachers on Friday, and got the skinny on how she's been adjusting and where I need to work with her more. She apparently can't count past 12 according to the teachers based on the initial assessment, and she only knows the sight words "a" and "I" and can't pick individual sounds out of words at all past the beginning sound. They gave me ideas on how to work with her in these areas, like using flashcards for her numbers and sight words and having her practice writing words as they sound and stuff like that. Well, I'm using flashcards for sight words, and so far she knows 9 of the 25 I made cards for. Not bad considering we've worked with them just a couple times the last 3 days. For math, I *was* going to use M&Ms and let her eat however many she can count each day (go until she can't get any more correct in a row and then work on the next 5 numbers up together for a minute or two before letting her eat the ones she counted correctly) BUT the little turd snuck into the kitchen and ate the entire big bag of candies I had hidden (well I thought I hid them really well and out of reach LOL) So, instead I'm doing something a bit different. I went to Donna Young's website and printed off some 100 charts, the page with 2 on it. I did filled in ones and blank ones both, and handed her one of each, a pen, and a yellow highlighter. She's sitting at the table with these items, saying each number before she writes it on the blank chart and then highlighting it on the filled in one. When she gets stumped, I tell her the number and she repeats it before writing and highlighting. Its a very dry method of working on her numbers, but I'm sure that after a few weeks of doing this daily she'll be able to count and write her numbers to 100, and recognize each number in isolation. That will completely catch her up with her classmates in math, and then we'll attack the sight words harder with "rainbow writing". That is a thing they do in her class, the teacher hands each kid a page with the sight word in big letters and the kids trace it with 5+ different colors and then read it out loud as a class 5 times before writing it at the bottom of the sheet 5 times. We'll do that along with flash cards daily until she learns the sight words completely, but we'll "rainbow write" only one sight word daily. She needs to know the list of 25 plus 5 from a second list of 50 words for her final assessment to pass K.

I've determined that if I can successfully get her caught up to where she needs to be to pass the assessment in the spring, then I'll be able to tackle homeschooling her again for certain. If I can pull off this, then I can do just about anything when it comes to teaching her.

Now, somebody explain to me why Melissa is giggling nonstop and telling me that this math work I gave her is so much fun. If I were to do this assignment I'd probably be bored to tears................................. lol She just finished it and is asking for MORE schoolwork...................... I guess she likes doing lessons at home again.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

rough times

Well, we decided that with all the issues with many things in our home, it would be best to send Melissa to the local public school. Now, I have issues with this anyway, but I went ahead and enrolled her. She's been in school for 3 weeks now, and its just a struggle every day she has school. This morning was especially hard, she had 5 days off because of bad weather then a 4 day weekend for inservice and a holiday, and it just collapsed under me. I had to carry her into the school while I was in my 3" heels and she was kicking my knees repeatedly and screaming in an attempt to get me to put her down. Then when I got her to where she needed to be, she chased after me thinking that if she followed maybe I'd bring her home. I take her back only to have her do it again, then when I took her back again her teacher was in the hall and saw the struggles so she jumped in and pulled her over and helped me get her in the school and stay there. This is a pretty typical day, she waits by dropoff most mornings to give me a hand with getting Melissa into school and staying put while I leave. Rips my heart out, but I'm still doing it for now.

But she won't be staying past this school year. In the fall she'll be coming back home again, no matter how difficult it is. Its just too much for me and her to go through these struggles every day just to get her to school. I can't wait until the end of this school year, and neither can she (yes we already talked about it, I needed to make sure she knows that its just temporary and was hoping that it will help with her getting off to school, I'll find out tomorrow if it did help any with that)

And totally off the topic of our educational adventures, but it will have an impact here in the future. My sweet Kimmy was at the doctor this morning, and the doctor was checking out her dry skin and doing a typical sick kid appointment (barking cough and major runny nose) Well, poor sweet Kimmy has asthma, multiple environmental allergies, and excema. The inhaler that the doctor prescribed for her is the same brand and dosage as the one I use that was prescribed to me by *my* doctor (for the record, I'm 27 and have had an asthma diagnosis for 15 years) We also have prescription allergy medication and a prescription cream that I need to dole out daily for Kimmy. But she is loving her new inhaler, when I asked her if she liked it she grinned and said "I love my new medicine, it makes me not hurt here any more (rubbing chest with both hands)" Ahhhhhhhh the simplicity of a 3 year old. She does think her allergy syrup is yucky though, and said she doesn't want to take it any more. LOL Sweet little thing.

Now why did I say that will impact us in the future? Doctor appointments, tests, and potential hospital visits come to mind right offhand. I can just see it throwing a big kink into our homeschooling starting in the fall, but I'm ok with that. That's the best part of homeschool, we can grab workbooks and take it with us no matter what we're doing. We don't need the dining room table to do our schoolwork, just a flat surface, workbooks, and pencils/crayons.