Friday, September 25, 2009

finding individual strengths

I've been thinking about this all school year. Melissa is NOT a bookish child, but she tries so hard to enjoy schoolwork and find a subject that she's good at. It bothers her so much when Lydia gets a concept that she's struggling with, so I had to split them up even with the lessons they do together. Its more work for me, but I'm fine with that as long as they learn at their pace and are confident. However, I still am on the hunt to find what each individual girl is strong in, and what she enjoys. It is important to me personally to find that one little spot where they truly shine. Here is what I've discovered so far from doing this.

Lydia is a fairly easy to teach kid. She loves history and geography, and does really well in it. Phonics and language arts is a breeze for her, and same with math. She gets a concept very quickly and has incredible retention. However, she is NOT an organized sports kind of girl, she prefers the fine arts for physical education instead (stuff like ballet is right up her alley, however she does well with almost any sport she tries)

Melissa has been a difficult child to figure out. She is not an academic child. She thrives on sports, the outdoors, and anything that gets her really moving. She has trouble with reading, and isn't very coordinated. She also is nearsighted and needs to wear glasses, as well as being left-handed. Figuring her strength out has been more difficult in the academic arena because its just not something that really is her thing. She likes doing worksheets and writing, and has wonderfully creative ideas for stories and songs and such. She's also very interested in music like I am. She is just starting violin lessons with me, and already shows great potential. However, with academics I had to look at her strengths in a different way. She is ok with history, she enjoys it but doesn't really get excited about it. She can take it or leave it. Phonics and language arts, I don't even need to explain that one I think. However, when it comes to math she not only does well, but she enjoys it as well. Right now we are working on subtracting from numbers up to 6, and she's doing great. She did two lessons within 25 minutes today, she is currently doing her test for the second lesson. She has yet to get a NOT perfect score on a math test, and I highly expect her to finish her math book by Christmas at the rate she's going.

My girls may be only 12 months apart in age, but they are so drastically different in strengths and what they enjoy. I am so happy to have this opportunity to teach them myself, and work to their strengths like I can.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

wow, this is working well

You know, I was REALLY nervous about how this school year was going to go. I had such a hard time last year, I had no freaking CLUE what to do or expect when I started last year and I got overwhelmed fast and couldn't do it as a result. That ended Melissa in public school January, halfway through her K year. So needless to say, I was just a little apprehensive about how this year would go.

Well this year is the TOTAL opposite of last school year. We are cruising nicely, getting all our assignments done, and I haven't felt this capable in a long time. Lydia is wrapping up her unit on Austrailia this week, Melissa's plugging away nicely on ancient Egypt and the early nomadic life, and both girls are making great progress in their lang. arts, phonics, and math. Science is a bit rough because I really DON'T want to do this one experiment involving melting popsicles in different areas and tracking how long it takes (I've put this one lesson off for a week and a half now) but dangit we are going to do it Saturday if I put it off again tomorrow (I'll make Scott do the actual experiment with her so that I don't have to deal with the mess, I'll teach the lesson though that's before the experiment and I'll observe him doing the experiment and help her record the results of it all but I refuse to melt perfectly good popsicles lol)

In math Melissa's working on subtraction, and Lydia's just finishing up a unit on tally marks and picture graphs. Lydia will take her test today or tomorrow, depending on how fast she moves through the last 3 lessons before it (hey the child is doing 3-6 lessons a day in math, she is soaking it up and retaining like its nothing at all, plus the majority of it so far has been review for her) Melissa last week did an addition unit (ok it was a week and a half unit, remember we do school 6 days a week so that we can take light days if we want and it will all even out in the end) and has nailed her addition up to 6 facts. We haven't memorized them yet, but she's slowly memorizing them as we review them. I'm expecting that the same will happen with our subtraction facts that we're working on now.

Phonics, well Melissa blew by Lydia in that area but she's a year older and I expected it. We are starting unit 8 with Melissa, which I expect her to do in 2 days after reading through the lessons for the unit. Lydia is in unit 7, today she's doing lesson 2. There are 5 lessons in a phonics unit by the way, so in theory we are supposed to finish one unit each week. But Melissa, I'd like her to finish phonics K by Christmas and so far its looking like she will. Lydia will move at whatever her pace is, and if she doesn't finish K phonics by Christmas then we'll just keep going her pace and finish when we do, and I'll fill in with Explode The Code or something like that to keep her skills up.

Yep, its a good year so far for us, we are having a blast doing all the work that we have. I'm REALLY glad that we stuck with OHVA for this year instead of trying to go independent. Its really helped me to stay on track to do lessons daily, given me the structure that I need to stay consistent, and its made life easy because I just have to look at the computer screen and do what it says to for each lesson to teach it instead of trying to figure it out on my own.

I do believe we found our niche in the homeschooling community, even if we aren't "real" homeschoolers because we aren't independent. I know my limits, and a virtual academy is my limit at this point. We may go independent later, as all 4 kids join in on lessons, but for now it TOTALLY works for me to do this way. We're good, lessons are good, life is good. The only downside is that I'm cycling again so I've hit a paranoid phase. Its definitely making things interesting, I hope this doesn't last long and that the depression I'm going to enter doesn't last long either (I don't usually get manic stages with my type of bipolar disorder, if your curious I'm a type II bipolar, which is much closer to some more serious diagnoses than I'd like to be)

Monday, September 21, 2009

money skills

Now I KNOW for a fact that last school year Melissa did work on coins how much they are worth and all that stuff. Well, so far this year every single time we've come across a review involving coins she goes "uhhhhhhh" and doesn't know what any of them are if they aren't a penny. I am really disgusted by this, I KNOW she came home with worksheets that she did in school about the value and names of different coins because I hung a couple on our fridge. She got good scores on those sheets too. So how is it that she has NO CLUE how to tell a dime from a quarter?

Good thing I had purchased Lydia the Kumon counting coins book to do this year, I've got Melissa doing it instead right now. She's started at the beginning, working on counting pennies. We'll be doing this for a few days or longer, however long it takes her to work through the entire book. I'm not going to keep playing around with this, being able to accurately count money out is way too important of a skill for her to fumble on it for very long.

She's definitely not liking me too much at the moment though, especially since I'm having her do ALL the pennies pages today (she already knows how to work with pennies, its the others she can't do)

Sunday, September 20, 2009

music revisited

Well, we are going to attempt to get Melissa into Suzuki violin lessons in the spring, we can't do it right now because of cost issues. We're going to save up for her lessons. However, we did go ahead yesterday after soccer and get her a violin and a book so I can start working with her on it a little bit. She's alerady in a 1/4 size violin, almost a 1/2 size but we chose to get the smaller one strictly because I can always trade up with our rental when she hits that growth spurt that requires a bigger one. So, we got the first book of the violin program I was taught with in public school, and I'm going to start working with her on the basics. Tomorrow we will start learning, and I'm going to begin with teaching her the parts of the violin. I want her to be able to name them all before Thanksgiving, which I have complte faith that she can do that if we work together on it. Her violin is freshly tuned (by me and my good ear) and sitting in my bedroom waiting (we gotta protect it from the 2 year old LOL) I am going to spend some time today searching for some printables for her on the parts of the violin, and maybe I'll attempt to do a lapbook with her on this. That would be a really fun way for her to learn them I bet.

I'm only going to focus this first week on the parts though. And we won't spend the entire lesson time working on it, I'll also work with her on how to hold the instrument for playing and begin some bowing so that she can make some squeaky noise for daddy lol There are so many things she'll need to learn with playing the violin, this lapbook is going to get HUGE I think. Maybe I'll get a binder and some more cardstock instead of doing a traditional lapbook.................. lol Although I could do it like a friend of mine did the "Finding Nemo" lapbook with her daughter last school year, we'll see how big it gets this first week of making the little minits for it.

Friday, September 18, 2009

foreign language

Yes I know, I teach a lot already to the kids with us doing soccer practices and games, studying ancient history and basic world geography, math, phonics, language arts, music, and art among other things. So why on EARTH would I choose to take on yet another subject for the girls to tackle? Its quite simple actually.

My Kimmy has a mild speech delay, and is still having trouble communicating clearly with the rest of us sometimes. Also, Jordan has hit that place in life when my girls tend to want to say more than they can actually verbalize, and it causes a great deal of frustration and leads to some fun little temper tantrums that I absolutely despise in toddlers LOL So, we teach some sign language for basic signs starting as soon as they can begin trying to flap their arms intentionally. We teach basics like "milk" and "eat" and "sleep" along with "more" and a few other basics (some you just don't need to bother with, I swear the word NO is the first one my kids seem to master with clarity and meaning LOL) Well, my older girls have been watching me work with Kimmy and JoJo on some signs to expand a little more, and have asked to learn more signs as well. SO, Scott and I discussed it and we agreed that I should go ahead. I did some looking around, and at the suggestion of a fellow homeschool mom in my church ward, I decided to purchase the "Signing Time" DVDs, or as many as we can afford. This weekend, I am planning to make this purchase for the girls. They can watch one daily to give me a few minutes to take a shower or do other chores that they usually get in the way during (like dishes lol or a phone conversation with an old friend that I've recently gotten in contact with again) Since I am *fairly* confident in my own sign language, I just need to brush up, I won't need to watch the DVDs with the girls every time, just the first one or two times to jog my memory hopefully.

Also, with my doing sign language with the kids, perhaps it will help me to regain my language problems from the stroke I had earlier this year. I'm at a place where I'm willing to try almost anything to get that back to where it was. I'm sure that it can't hurt, and it may also help with my hand function on my right side a bit so that I'm not dropping things quite so much.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

ooooops

OK for this one I need to give a bit of background. And then you can have a good hard laugh at my expense.

On labor day, Scott noticed that our front yard was soggy and that there was a big puddle on our walkway that was bubbling between the walkway cracks. Great. So we called the water department and had them come look at it, they confirmed that it was a broken water main. So, we called plumbers to get it fixed (apparently the water main is our responsibility from the street shutoff, we thought it was from the outside meter) So, on Monday the backhoe came in and dug a nice 120 ft ditch in my yard from street to house, and they shut off the water. I was prepared, they gave us a week to get ready for this. I had every bit of laundry and dishes done plus gallons of water waiting for drinking, cooking, and toilet flushing. The water was shut off Monday around 11am, and was back on at 2pm Tuesday. Not too bad I think, and we got an all new main, new meter, and replace our hot water tank lines too (we knew it needed done but Scott's been putting it off so I added that in to the repair because I got sick of waiting on him to do it LOL) So, $3,300 later we're all set and done. I have a long mound of dirt in my yard, and part of my drivewy was torn up from it, but I have running water and NO leaks. That's the important thing. lol

So, as a result of this work I have been flushing all our water lines as I need them. I did the kitchen and bathroom immediately, and then flushed my hot water tank. Well, this morning it was time to do the washer lines. So I took the drain hose out of the pipe, and one at a time I flushed my water lines for about 5min each (I wanted to be 100% sure all the junk was out) Then I put the lines back and ran a sanitize cycle since it hasn't been run in a few days (just in case something was growing). Then I went to do my dishes.

After I finished the dishes, I sat down at the computer to play a game just as the washer strated draining water. I noticed that it sure was loud, and then remembered. I didn't put the drain hose back in the pipe after flushing my lines. I effectively flooded my laundry room floor.

As a result, my laundry room floor is cleaner than its been in the 6 years my family has owned this house (especially the year that we've lived here) and its cleaner than it will ever be again as long as my family lives here.

Yes I can laugh about it now, but it was NOT funny when I first did it and had to go find my mop (which I quit using when my dad gave me a swiffer and a bunch of wet pads)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

music lessons

Well, I had a teleconference with our OHVA teacher yesterday. She got on the computer with each girl solo to see how their skills are going in math as well. Anyway, she asked me how we like things and how its all working out, especially with music (I've done ONE lesson of their curriculum, I don't care for it much as a professionally-trained musician) She listened to my thoughts on it, and then said that she thought it may benefit my family better to have music as an attendance-only subject instead of a curriculum subject (she offered to do art that way too but honestly if I don't have curriculum for art we'll never do it lol) So now I'm free to teach music lessons how *I* want to do them. So here's my take, remember I'm approaching with a very strong musical training background.

The girls are going to listen to some of the greatest classical works of our history, as exposure and to try and create a soothing background to our lessons time. We'll enjoy works like Moonlight Sonata and Beethoven's 5th, great vocals like Ave Maria and the Hallelujah Chorus. The girls will hopefully gain a beginning of a deep appreciation for these works, and others similar to it (trust me, I have quite the collection of classical music, I think I have over 100 CDs and can play many of them as well) We'll attend outdoor concerts when weather permits, to further this exposure. We will also learn tidbits here and there on different composers, just basics at this point since they are young still. Also, if our budget allows it, we may include violin lessons when soccer season is over for the fall for Melissa. I started piano at only 2 years old, so I'm a firm believer in starting to play an instrument at a young age if they are interested. Melissa wants to learn the violin, she knows I can play it fairly well and has taken quite an interest in the group Celtic Woman, particularly the solo violinist. Lydia will tag along with appreciation at this point, perhaps taking her own lessons if we can swing that as well (mommy's going to teach the violin lessons at first until soccer is over, we're going to learn the names of each part before getting the instrument and then we'll go from there with learning to hold it and make sound and then working on rhythm, I'll let the teacher we hire teach her how to play notes and she'll learn to read music later probably just because she can't read books yet, let alone music)

So, looks like this weekend Scott and I will be taking Melissa up to Martin Music here in Newark for her very first violin. They are so cute when they are the size she needs................ lol I guess I better start looking for a teacher for her, I think I'd prefer one trained in Suzuki method but any training will work if she can scratch out a squeaky "Twinkle Twinkle" after a year of lessons (that's the problem with starting young, it takes longer to learn the basics)

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

My last day with a 1 year old

Tomrrow Jordan will be 2 years old. Now, normally I have another infant by now, but this time we're not even pregnant yet. We are enjoying this time with our girls and working out other issues with my health before adding more to our family. Anyway, this is a bit of a strange moment for me. I never had this position of parenting a 2yo and not having a younger child as well, so I can spend more time working with Jordan on her temper and meeting her needs than I have with the other girls. We are enjoying this place in life right now, we are looking hopefully at the end of the diaper tunnel and we are done with the crib and highchair. But man it feels odd to know that there's not another baby in the near future here. Instead, I'm focusing on helping my little girls become young ladies, into becoming someone that I can be unendingly proud of. Now don't get me wrong, we are proud of our girls every day, but I'm talking that long term goal of making wonderful free thinkers who will not stand by and let someone stomp them down. Women who know what they want and aren't afraid to go for it, no matter the cost. THAT is what we are working toward now, and its a very slow road with a lot of difficulty.

Yep, its an interesting time in our home. Looking down the path we are taking and seeing the end result we are striving for, and seeing it just a little closer, always makes for an interesting time.