Summer library fun (not)

I have to get this out. We're participating heavily in our library's summer reading program. My girls are young, but I have high expectations for their behavior and my own and I always have.

Today, some people came to give a small performance of a musical that's going on at our local arts center. The event started at 2:30. People poured into the library and sardined themselves onto the step seating in the so-called "auditorium." They need air conditioning in there, because it felt like it was at least 80 and smelled like wet dog. We were at the top, so theoretically we should have been able to scoot back and lean against the wall. Well, no - some people got up from the ledge in front of us and decided to wedge themselves in behind us. Literally, zero room for me to even put my hand behind me and lean back - nothing. No reason whatsoever for them to do that either, except that they wanted the wall. I was already annoyed, and we moved down to where they'd vacated. I put the girls' books behind my back to avoid anyone planting themselves there again.

So the performance began, but people kept streaming in. Five or so minutes, okay. But at least fifteen minutes and more after it started, people were still coming in, walking in front of the performers (who were all in costume in this heat, not paid, and trying very hard), missing several songs. I couldn't believe it. How rude can you get? I'm surprised nobody took a phone call in the middle of someone's solo. On top of that, there were some young toddlers who started to get fussy - okay, I've had young toddlers before, but if you have a kid that's going to get loud how about sitting off to the side with them so you could quietly and discreetly slip out when they get out of control? Don't plant yourself in the middle of everyone.

And then, then behind me someone had a child with no volume control and insatiable questions. Maybe 3 or so - yes, I have had 3 year olds before. I have also had kids with a hard time keeping quiet and wanted to ask a lot of questions. But for Pete's sake, tell the kid to ZIP IT. If they won't, then see above and discreetly slip out. I couldn't hear the lyrics in several songs (which, apparently, were funny) because I had him in my ear yelling questions at his mom who didn't seem to get that he was being loud and rude.

Becca was silent and completely riveted by the performance. Sylvia was silent but kept draping herself all over me. Not good in a packed hot house.

I hate summer.

Rebecca meets Rebecca

American Girl has done me in. The new Girl is named Rebecca. Why couldn't it have been almost any other name? I would have been fine. Even if they'd spelled it differently I could have held off. But no... it's Rebecca. So I ordered the first book in the series for Becca and she is in love. She was determined to finish it today to show me that she likes it and should get the next book in the series. So she sat in her room way past her assigned "quiet reading time" and finished the book! So off we go to the bookstore tomorrow for the next in the series. The bookstore is also holding a drawing for a Rebecca doll, so we entered it. Becca's very crafty - she thinks that it's too bad they ask for the parent's name on the entry slip because if they saw that her name was Rebecca too... well, they'd naturally have to award her the doll, right? And now she's nervous that she won't win it. Santa might have to bring a doll to us this year...

"How do you pour kids?"

That one's from Sylvia. I was being silly about something and said, "You poor kids!" and we were playing with cups and water at at the time, so she took it as "pour" and asked, "How do you pour kids?" I just shook my head and laughed.

DH took the girls up to his mom's over the past weekend and he happened across a program on the History Channel (or National Geographic, I forget which) about Alexander's tomb. Becca heard "Egypt" and "Alexander" from the next room and ran in to see the show. She actually sat down and got interested in the show! Sylvia wasn't happy about losing her sister's attention so she kept trying to make noise and distract her. MIL kindly took Sylvia in the other room and painted her fingernails, reasoning that, "Any six year old who wants to watch a show about Alexander's tomb should be allowed to do it in peace!" LOL

They're loving the library's summer reading program, even though it's kind of a joke because the library doesn't actually reward reading this year. They go and sign up and get entered into a drawing for every 5 books we check out. But it's on the honor system, so who knows if the books are truly read? Of course we'll read ours, but that's not my point! We also get special activities in and out of the library, which is fun. But at least last year we got coupons at the end of the program, and my girls actually had the joy of turning in a full reading log. This year we just have a checklist, which Sylvia is filling out at an alarming rate. It's not a big deal, because summer reading is just gravy for us, but still - my girls are reading a LOT and it would be nice to let someone besides Mommy and Daddy notice it.

We started a plant experiment with our bean seedlings today. The girls got some simple blank books from the teacher supply store for Plant Books. All of our notes and pictures go straight in there - it saves me a couple of extra steps this unit (the human body unit was extra challenging!). I gave Becca some sentences to copy into her book describing the experiment and she added "hypothesis" in at the appropriate place. She almost spelled it correctly on her own too!

Where do you go when you don't know what a word means?

We were driving home from Becca's choir concert and talking about Word Girl. DH asked Becca, "If you don't know what a word means, where can you go to find out?"

I knew her response a split second before she said it.

"A computer?"

Yep... 21st century kid alright! Don't get on me, we do have and USE a dictionary, but we haven't gotten to full-on dictionary skills yet.


Becca won two silver medals (floor and balance beam) and two bronze medals (bars and trampoline/vault) at her gymnastics competition. She was great at choir, sang beautifully and had a short solo part. Sylvia had her first gymnastics exhibition and was beyond adorable. She did a great job - I was pleased with how well she did, given that this was her first semester in class!

That boring math

We're 17 lessons from the end of RightStart A. Becca was showing a little impatience with it today (it's a K level math) and I asked her if it was too easy. "Well, not too easy..." Uh huh. It's a little too easy but math sometimes freaks her out, so she likes it a little easy. I tried to gently talk to her and tell her that we were going to move on and it might get a little more challenging soon. She said she didn't want to go back to "that boring math that we used to do" (Singapore Math) and I reassured her that she'd still get to use the abacus, play card games, and have a lot of fun. She was so excited she wanted to do the remaining 17 lessons today! I guess she really hated Singapore - it moved quickly but wasn't fun enough or something. I liked it, but that was the parental perspective, and if she's not learning from it that's a moot point. She wanted to know if RightStart went up to Level Z and was worried to find out that it only went up to E and then Geometry. I assured her that they'd probably make more books as she advanced and it would probably take her to high school level math. High school seems far enough away for her to not be too worried about it. Maybe I'll try to pick up the pace for our last few RS lessons and go on into Level B. I'm just nervous about hitting a wall again like we did with Singapore.

She's also enjoying some fun math supplementation from MEP (Mathematics Enrichment Programme). This is adapted from some Hungarian model... something like that. Exotic countries have the best math, apparently. It's getting a lot of play on the WTM boards right now, so I've printed off the early sheets for Becca to play with since RS doesn't have many worksheets. Oh - MEP is free. Don't all stampede over there at once! She shows a real interest in these sheets - they help her thinking and logic skills too, and she gets to use colored pencils and draw pictures. Here's the link: http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/default.htm

It's not a science book, sweetie.

Headed to the library today to grab some African folktales for our next unit and more reading material for Sylvia. I got a ton of Anansi tales, including one retelling titled Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears. Becca helped me put the books in the bag, noticed the title, and asked to read it in the car. So I handed it to her and we drove home. The library (tiny though it is) is very close to our house. When we got home, Becca said, "This book doesn't tell us why mosquitoes really buzz in people's ears!" She was about halfway through and I had to explain that this wasn't a scientific text, but a folktale!

We made paper today (actually, we recycled it, but it's close enough) and Becca finally got to have free rein with her Ancient China box! Heaven!

"How do you say ice cream in Latin?"

That's what Sylvia asked me last night during her pre-sleep snuggle. I promised her I'd look it up and tell her tomorrow.

By the way, it's gelidum cremum. Sylvia was tickled when I told her!

Today's activities and some old ones too

We're on to ancient China, which is fascinating... okay, all of it's fascinating to me. A product of US public education, I am encountering all of this for the first time. So today we opened up our Ancient China Treasure Chest and ground an ink stick to practice a little calligraphy. Sylvia wanted to try it out too, but I was surprised by it and didn't get her in the pics.

Grinding the ink

Calligraphy - she was determined to do them ALL!


Other highlights from today:

Sylvia marching around while singing along with the Latin songs. Why does this seem so out of reach for preschoolers? I think Song School Latin, at least the songs and vocabulary, would be completely doable with a small 4 year old class. Or maybe I just don't know 4 year olds very well. One of the songs says, "If you bump into a little man and make him spill his tea, say ignosce mihi." Becca said, "But what if he doesn't speak Latin?"

Right Start math - I just got Level B and after a brief period of mild panic, I think we can do this. We - Becca and I. I could do Singapore, maybe Becca just couldn't. So far our Right Start results are promising. Becca asks to do math first almost every day. She loves the card games and really seems to be getting it. Maybe it's because we went back and are re-doing things we already covered in our Singapore experiment, or maybe RS has a better touch. All I know is that Sylvia - SYLVIE, my 4 year old - is starting to remember number pairs that make ten. Yes, "Go to the Dump" really is that great.

Speaking of Sylvia, she took a ton of books off the shelf and just started to read them. She counted them and had in the neighborhood of 22. She's starting to truly take off in her reading and become a little more fluent, less halting.

I just love the little things in homeschooling. The silly, strange moments you'd never get with any other experience.






Becca tracing her digestive system - 4 and 6 year olds find the manufacture of poop to be endlessly amusing.
Sylvia posing with her outline
"Helpful Spit" from Head to Toe Science. It would have been helpful to have unexpired iodine, which I think might have affected the outcome of this experiment. I don't know if I was able to accurately convey to Becca the role saliva plays in our digestive system, but it's all about the experience when you're five - er, six. Right?

The Golden Apple, from our studies on ancient Greece (SOTW Ch. 23). The whole thing says "For the Most Beautiful." DH presented it to me. Smart man.


Olympus Family Tree, also SOTW Ch. 23. The book that more thoroughly explains this was perpetually checked out of the library, so we just got our hands on it. We tried to put the gods and goddesses in some sort of hierarchical order, but who knows. It's the experience that counts, it's the experience that counts...


Pharos lighthouse (SOTW Ch. 25). I just couldn't buy a whole roll of yellow plastic wrap, so we just put it in the window so the sun would shine through the windows. Becca was more fascinated by the library in Alexandria - girl after my own heart!



We're almost done with our Mommy-designed human body studies and I'm making preparations for a short unit on plants. Very short, as in, how can we get this stuff in before Mommy kills all our specimens? I just killed a batch of three seedlings we were growing "just for fun." *rolls eyes at self*

Questions, questions...

A small sampling from the past few days, all Becca:

Why is the ocean blue?

Why is the sky blue?

Why is the sand yellow?

When will they make it stop raining? (we were in a rain delay at a baseball game)

When will I be in high school?

What will I learn then?

Why am I not as tall as this? (4'9" booster seat info sign - and I'm wondering why I had to go to a rest stop to see this kind of info - why isn't it at the doctor's office? Wal-Mart? Posted near any place you might buy car seats? Gas stations?)

What if I was one foot tall?

Will you give me a challenging spelling word?

Is she trying to steal my goat? (After I was explaining how Sylvia deliberately did some things to "poke" at Becca and Becca obliged her by getting upset)

What if the Gingerbread Man ate himself?


I'm exhausted just remembering all of these!

You know you have a reader in the house...

When everything remotely flat is getting used as a bookmark. DH and I were looking for a coupon the other day and Becca said, "Oh, I used it as a bookmark..." I had two small envelopes sitting on a shelf by the door, waiting to be mailed. I discovered one in a nearby book, being used as a bookmark. And I was just putting away some of Sylvia's BOB books from this morning's reading (she read 5-8 of the first set) when I noticed one missing. Where was it? You guessed... being used as a bookmark.

And it doesn't do any good to have bookmarks either. Any other reading families can attest - those things disappear. I cut a whole stack of bookmarks out of cardstock a few months ago and there's no trace of them now. I use clothing tags, yarn tags, and perfume sample cards (the real cardboard ones that come with a mini-vial).

This is my life (for you WTMers)

This is for anyone who visits here from the WTM boards - it looks so calm and quiet there because I don't have the girls in my siggy! Well, here's a little snippet of what the girls are REALLY like:





My grad-level distractor and disruptor is on the left and my six year old stretcher is on the right!

Because I can...

Becca is sitting next to me on the couch, reading Ramona the Pest. On her own.

Sylvia read two Level 1 Barbie books this morning, almost completely on her own. She kept bringing the book over to me and asking, "What's this word?" and I'd tell her, and she'd wander back to the chair, reading the sentence aloud again. I was flabbergasted, especially since this is the same Barbie book we bought Becca last year and were pleasantly surprised when she read the whole thing (3 Level 1 books and 3 Level 2 books) on her own, only needing help with proper names. And a mere year later, Sylvia can read some stories from it!

Sylvia also has been enjoying sitting in on our math lessons. We're stepping back and using Right Start level A, a K level curriculum. I want Becca to loosen up and have fun with math so she can truly master the basics. Anyway, it's all very simple and fun right now, and Sylvia likes to sit and listen and participate. She can sing all of "Yellow is the Sun," Right Start's song for remembering numbers from 6-10.

I'm pretty proud of both of my girls!

Recent Becca and Sylvie-isms

A "Becca": It was way past her usual bedtime on Saturday (Feb. 28) and I was trying to do a few things on the computer. She was supposed to be lying down on the couch and going to sleep, but she was too full of energy. The lights were out, when suddenly she says, "Is today February 28?" Close to the end of my patience, I replied, "Yes it is." She exclaimed, "Then tomorrow is MARCH 1!!" Frustrated, I gave one of those silly hyperbolic parental responses: "Yes, but if you don't go to sleep, it'll never be March! It'll stay February forever!" A little voice responded from the dark beyond the computer screen's light, "No it won't." (In case you don't already know, she's excited about March because her birthday is coming up.)


Now a "Sylvie": Becca was doing some school work and Sylvia went into the kitchen to look at the US map. I went in to throw something away and Sylvia said, "Is this Tennessee where we live?" and pointed to TN. So I said yes, and then she pointed to Georgia - "And this is Georgia where Grandpa lives?" "Yes." "So when we went to visit Grandpa we drove from Tennessee down to Georgia (and she traced it on the map)." "Yep, sweetie, that's right!" She paused for a moment and then pointed at the western part of the map: "I don't want to drive over to Nineveh!"

Math - really?

As far as I know, Spectrum workbooks are generally well-regarded and considered to be at grade level.

We were out shopping this weekend and I was browsing workbooks at a bookstore. You may remember Becca's and my recent math troubles - we kicked and fought to get 3 units into Singapore 1B before throwing in the towel. Well, I picked up a Spectrum grade 1 math workbook and flipped through it. I turned to the final test, over the whole book, and realized that Becca could do all of it. She'd complain and it might take her all day to do it, but she could do all of it right now. I was shocked - I am shocked. All my garment tearing over math, and she's actually already learned at a very advanced level.

Hmmm... maybe I can chill a little.

Baaa.

So, I was sitting in the lobby of the gym, watching Becca in her class and managing a wiggly Sylvia on my lap. I had already noticed the older woman across the room, engrossed in a book whose title I couldn't make out without my glasses. I tend to keep to myself and Sylvie's self during these classes. Something about the world of mothers in real life just repels me. I can chat online all day, but I never get beyond one or two words in person.

The woman to my right stood up and repositioned her chair to get a better look into the gym. Every parent in there furtively crowds around the meager opening, craning their necks to peek into the forbidden world beyond. After years of free range, we were suddenly relegated to a bare waiting room with flimsy plastic chairs, only a few of which afforded a glimpse of our young ones in their exertions. I heard the woman speak, directing her words to the elderly reader across from me: "Is that book...?"

"Oh, it's Edgar Sawtelle, the one about the dog."
"From..." Don't say it. Don't. "Oprah's book club!" Inwardly, I emit a pained groan. I suddenly want to stab myself in the eye with the DS stylus.

Seriously. Woo hoo, Oprah got Americans to read. Problem is, nobody seems to know what to read unless Oprah tells them. Does anyone browse the library anymore? Do a little independent research? Or do they just wait for the next episode of Oprah's book club?

And I wonder why I don't make an effort to befriend everyone in the lobby. Sometimes I think that Sylvia affords me more intelligent conversation.

My version of the "breakfast board" and how to motivate a 5+ year old

I'm spreading this all around right now. A WTM board member shared her blog and a fabulous idea called a "breakfast board." I finally got it together and made one and took pics. Do you know that this is probably the first voluntary project I've done on a trifold board? Anyway, on to the good stuff:

First off, thanks to Johanna at this blog http://stopforflowers.blogspot.com/2...for-those.html for inventing and sharing the "breakfast board." I finally decided to get my act together and put one together for the girls, so here's my version. The flash is obscuring our "weather frog." There are 2 velcro dots there to attach today's weather squares (in a bag taped to the back of the board). The purple pockets hold a couple of Latin flashcards and a couple of history review cards. I have a poem for memorization/review, a tens/ones bag, hundreds chart, coin bag, assorted shapes for Sylvia, a clock, calendar, map (for continent practice) and the yesterday/today/tomorrow strips. Oh, and a month/season spinner!



I have to say that the girls raced to get started this morning just because of this board, so I'm already impressed!


I figured I'd also take a couple of pics of my motivational system for Becca. Sylvia just gets stickers on her hand and she gets to pick a treasure whenever Becca does. Every day, after we've completed our school work, Becca gets a sticker on her handy little chart.




Once we've done a full week (five days), she turns the whole sheet in to me and gets to pick a treasure out of the treasure box (they were so excited to see it they couldn't stay out of the pic!).I found the box at Dollar Tree, and I stock it with assorted little goodies from DT or the Target dollar section.



There's puzzles, stickers, temporary tattoos, crayons, cups, lip gloss, jewelry, things like that in there. Becca was pointing out the Strawberry Shortcake lip gloss. She gets very excited about picking a treasure and likes to count how many more stickers she needs before her next prize.

I've been waiting for this!

At last, our human body studies have started! I'm so dorky excited about this - luckily Becca's excited too so at least she's not looking at me like I've lost my last marble.

I traced both girls' outlines on some giant paper last night. Becca's looks strangely alienesque - she's eager to add some hair.




Sylvia had pigtails in and I just couldn't resist tracing them too. If you know Sylvie, you know that that child has a TON of hair! The result is too cute for words:

And here's both together:

We're starting first with the five senses, but Becca's already asking when we're going to add the liver and intestines to their bodies.

Now for a little more news... Sylvia has decided that she doesn't care for preschool anymore. Nothing terrible happened, we just think that she's over the whole idea. She's always been more of a homebody than Becca and more attached to me. I think she feels like she's gotten all she can out of preschool and she'd rather be at home with Mommy and Becca. Since I have no real reason to make her go, I now have two full-time students! Actually, Sylvia's still participating at will. I encourage her to practice a few skills, but her own pace is pretty quick.