Weekly Report 6/9/2011

Very little academics got done this week, which is just fine by me!  We did manage to read a few chapters of Anne of Green Gables out loud, though.  If anyone ever wants to know what we are reading aloud, you can check the bookshelf on the right in my blog. I keep it pretty updated.

I also downloaded the Funnix Math program which is available for free right now.  I downloaded the reading program back in January and Lydia seems to like it, although most of it goes over her head.  I expect the math one to be the same.  We have been working on counting quite a bit, though, and Lydia's getting close to being able to count to ten without forgetting "2" and "3".  Every time we go down the stairs to go to the basement we count the steps.  It's a great way to practice!  Mostly, though, we've just been hanging around or swimming in the pool on the back deck.


 

As for me, I've decided to postpone my Latin studies for the time being.  It was just getting to the point where my grammar was too lacking.  So I've decided to put it aside and work on grammar instead.  I'm specifically going to work on diagramming and KISS grammar, like I mentioned in my last post.  I managed to find a few free diagramming resources that should help me along.  I think that I'll probably need to invest in a diagramming program with more examples and an extensive answer key to make sure I'm doing it right, but I'll stick with the free ones at first.  I've started one and I think that I will continue, because I'm finding it very helpful.  I'm hoping that in the next few months I'll be able to get back to studying Latin.

It's been a hectic month, so I haven't had much time to do anything formal with the girls or myself, but I thought I'd check in anyways.  Tyler finished his first year of medical school!  It feels like an accomplishment for me as well, because I played a very significant supportive role to him, as well as his practice dummy.  Right now he is doing a preceptorship for a few weeks, so we are staying with my in-laws at the moment.

In the few weeks before we left, I was spending a lot of time working on Early Intervention evaluations for Lydia.  Those of you who know us well are familiar with the struggles she's had since she was tiny.  Between moving so much in the last year, and the lengthy process of getting set up for evaluation, this is the first chance we've had to get her checked out since she was a baby.  I was worried that I was making stuff up and that she was doing just fine and I was just one of THOSE first-time parents.  It appears I wasn't making it up at all, because she qualified for 2 hours each (the maximum) of developmental, speech, and occupational therapy per week.  That's 6 hours a week!  Before I started this process, I was thinking I should sign Lydia up for a class or something to get her a little out of her comfort zone and out of the house on a regular basis, but I think 6 hours a week of therapy should be plenty of activities.  I am totally new to the area of special needs and therapies, so this will definitely be an adventure.  I have a good feeling about the company that is doing her therapies, though, and she really seems to like it there so far.  I'm looking forward to getting back home and getting her started.

For Music Study, Lydia has zero interest in Chopin.  Every time I start Chopin, she says, "Listen Baldi!, Wan to listen Baldi!"  I can see why she would prefer Vivaldi.  It's more exciting music, as opposed to Chopin that is quiet piano music for the most part.  I haven't been great about turning on Queen, but that's an album that gets listened to at our house all the time anyways, so I'm not too worried about her getting exposure to it right this minute.

As for Unit Studies, she wasn't really getting much out of it so I'm not doing them anymore for the moment.  She already knows all her letters and their sounds, and is learning her numbers through daily activities, like counting the stairs and her cars.  She doesn't really care about crafts at all at this point, either.  She enjoys scribbling with crayons, but that's about it.  The one part that was very successful was getting her a few books with a theme and reading them over and over again.  She especially enjoyed the penguin books and the kitten books.  She still recites The Three Little Kittens and Kitten's First Full Moon to herself while she plays.  I think I'll continue to get several books about the same basic theme, because she enjoys it.

Grandma's house has two back decks, each with a porch swing.  Lydia LOVES the swings.  She is almost always happy to go sit on it and swing with you for a long period of time.  I've been using this time to do read alouds.  Right now we're working on Anne of Green Gables, one of my personal favorites.  Both Lydia and Ellie will sit with me on the swing for a few chapters.  I'm most impressed with Ellie, who will just go limp and listen until I'm done reading, up to 45 minutes or more.  That's a pretty good attention span for an eight month old.

Ellie is getting bigger every day and is starting to want to be involved in things.  She follows Lydia or myself around everywhere.  She can pull herself up to her knees and sit up by herself now, as well as crawl and get into things.  She's fun and I look forward to getting to know her better as she gets older.

As for my studies, I'm still plugging along at Latin and Khan Academy.  I just finished Lesson 11 in Latin for Beginners this morning and have completed 49 exercises areas on Khan Academy for a total of 170,011 energy points!  In math, that puts me in simple geometry and pre-algebra.  It's all coming back to me and I'm finding it fun. I'm thinking that I should probably add in some formal grammar, specifically diagramming.  My grammar knowledge is all intuitive, and I would like to know it better formally.  I plan on having a heavy diagramming emphasis in grammar when I teach my daughters, so I think this would be a good place for me to start considering I did diagramming for all of 2 weeks in school.  I was thinking I might do KISS Grammar all the way through, but I've since found out that they don't do diagramming.  Maybe I'll just get a book on diagramming and do KISS?  KISS comes very highly recommended and it's free, so I'll probably at least try it.  Finally, I'm trying to get caught up in my history, so I've been reading History of the Ancient World, by Susan Wise Bauer.  I really enjoy Ms. Bauer and plan on using her other book, The Well-Trained Mind, as my guide through educating my children.  HOAW is the first of four books that she will eventually finish (only two are out yet) that will chronicle the history of the whole world.  It's very dense, but I enjoy her style and find her way of viewing history to be both entertaining and informative.  I'm learning so much just by reading it, and I can't wait to do history with my girls.

Easter Egg Hunt

Last week, some ladies from church decided to have an Easter egg hunt at the neat playground at Pinnacle Mountain with all the preschoolers.  Once we arrived there, however, we discovered that there were several hundred children from a school there, and the playground was packed.  We then moved our little party to a neighborhood playground a few miles away.  This turned out to be a great move because there was no one else there.  Lydia did pretty well with the Easter egg hunt.  She didn't quite seem to understand and would just go around picking up eggs and dumping out their contents, but she looked like she was having fun.  Here are some pictures my friend Lisa took:

Lydia was the first child to venture into the mud puddle.

Notice that Lydia is heading the opposite direction of all the other children.  That is so Lydia.

Ellie and Me!

Music Study for the Second Quarter of 2011 (Chopin and Queen)

Vivaldi last quarter was wildly successful.  Lydia completely loved it and asks to listen to it every day.  After a few months of Vivaldi every day, though, I was going to go nuts.  I was much relieved to be able to start our new unit of Chopin!  Like I've mentioned before, we're following Ambleside's recommendations for Classical music study, although they take the summers off, so I'll probably add an extra unit a year because of that.  Here's a link to what they recommend for Chopin, and here's a link to my playlist on on Grooveshark.  So far every time I turn on Chopin, Lydia just asks to listen to Vivaldi, so she doesn't seem to love it as much, and that sort of makes sense.  Chopin is mostly quiet piano music, and Vivaldi was more exciting orchestra music, and I could see how that would appeal to a toddler more.  As a result we're still listening to quite a bit of Vivaldi as well.

For our modern music study, my husband chose Queen for this quarter.  I was glad because I enjoy Queen very much, I mean, who doesn't?  Their music is so bombastic and silly that even kids can enjoy it.  Lydia hasn't really shown much preference towards it yet, but that's ok.  She has a lifetime to learn to enjoy Queen!  Tyler chose to have us listen to Queen's Greatest Hits Volume 1, plus the song "Under Pressure".

Weekly Report

Yeah, with Tyler's Spring Break last week, we didn't get a thing done.  It was a wonderful week of doing fun things, though.  I got a brand new double stroller that I've been wanting for years and we took it for a spin at Pinnacle Mountain.  We also went to the Tubes and the park and shopping.  It was a good week, but no "official" school got done, although all the outdoor and social time was very good for Lydia and Ellie.

And then this week was spent recovering from last week as I had neglected the dishes and laundry and general cleaning.  Luckily I'm caught up on all of those necessities, so we will be doing more schooley stuff soon.  I'm still planning on doing the file folder activity and I have all the materials I need, so I'll be posting that soon.  We did go to the Tubes and the park this week as well, so Lydia is certainly getting in the social time that she needs.   We also spent a lot of time playing Starfall and reading together.  We finished Nesbit's version of Merchant of Venice.  Although Lydia enjoys Starfall quite a bit, I think she has all the games that she is capable of doing memorized, so I'm going to be on the lookout for something on the computer that she can do to help her.  Funnix is pretty much over her head at this point, but she loves the "make a word" game on Starfall where you find the first letter of a word.

I didn't get much farther in Latin because I didn't do any last week during Spring Break and the chapter I'm on is tricky, so I'm working through it a little slowly.  I'm still going, though, and still loving it!  And I now have 74,677 energy points on Khan Academy and am finding that it is a nice review.  It was pretty embarrassing having my husband watch me and find out that I never learned my 6, 7, or 8 times tables.  And I was ashamed at how many tries it took me to complete Multiplication 3 without making a mistake on 10 problems in a row, but I did it!

Music Study is still going great.  Lydia asks to listen to "Baldi" several times a day, and we listen to Bob Dylan almost every day.  Because this is the last day of March, though, I'm working on our playlists for the next 3 months, but I'll have another post about that soon.

Weekly Report

This week was mostly uneventful.  We didn't have a theme for the week and mostly just read books, colored, and did "letters," which consists of Funnix and Starfall.  She is on lesson 11 in Funnix.  Lydia loves to do anything involved with letters or numbers, although her grasp on them is pretty weak so far (Mom: "Hey Lydia, can you count to 9?" Lydia: "1,4,5,6,7,8,9!") That's just fine, though.  She's only 2 and a half, and we have a lot of fun where she is.

This week she listened to all of Winnie the Pooh and The House on Pooh Corner at least on and a half times on audio book during her quiet/nap times.  They are her favorites and asks for them every day.  We also read the story of Macbeth in Edith Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.  We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Go Dog Go countless times as well as several other stories and a healthy dose of Sandra Boynton.  We also went to a few parks and the tubes this week, which is very good for Lydia as she has a very hard time with other children.  I'm going out of my way lately to try to get her to have social experiences to help her learn to deal with them, so that is also taking a lot of our time. 

Lately in family scripture study, which we do right before the girls go to bed, we've been noticing that Lydia is paying more attention.  Usually we do it in the girl's room and Lydia and I sit in the rocking chair while Tyler sits on the floor and reads out loud to us (Ellie is usually in her crib already).  We've been doing this since Lydia was a year old and it is what works for us.  Lately, though, she's started talking a lot while Tyler reads.  Only recently we realized that she was repeating the words he was saying.  She'll take a key word or maybe one he emphasizes and she'll say it too.  She'll say words like Nephites, Korihor, blessings, battle, etc.  It's been fun realizing that she isn't just sitting there daydreaming, but that she's actually listening to Tyler.  It definitely makes me more resolved to make sure we continue.

Oh, and Ellie made a breakthrough this week.  She learned to sit up!  I'm not sure she really likes it though, because every time I sit her down like that she doesn't seem to know what to do with herself and starts crying after a few minutes.  But she can do it!  She'll be joining in with us in no time.

This week I got to lesson 10 in Latin for Beginners.  I'm still enjoying it very much.  In fact, my hard copy of the book arrived this week.  The picture above is of my new textbook and my Latin notebook.  The textbook is an original and I'm pretty sure it was used at a military high school back in 1911 or so.

Here's an example of my Latin translations. I just started on the second declension this week and moving along nicely!  I'm also going to start Khan Academy math.  I've been wanting to review my math skills, and this looks like a fun and free way to do it.  I'm starting at the very beginning, with addition and then graduating as I go.  I'll post more on it later if it turns out that I'm going to stick with it.  I already have 34,955 energy points, and I think it's going to go nicely.

Next week, we're going to do a unit study again.  This time on "Kittens."  I think that will be my pattern: one week I'll do a unit study, the next I'll take it more easy, then unit study and so on.  It works for us right now.  I even found a preschooler-appropriate lapbook to go with our topic next week, so that should be interesting.  I've never done a lapbook before!  I will, of course, post pictures when we do it.

Next week is Tyler's Spring Break, so I may have to see about getting Dad involved!  That would be interesting for sure.

Weekly Report

This week was  a pretty good one, school-wise.  Lydia and I did a unit on the jungle.  Most days we talked about the jungle, our vocab word of the week, "vine," and read our books about the jungle.  The latter was her favorite part.  Lydia would be read to all day long if I was willing.  Her favorite two were Jungle Drums and Bedtime in the Jungle.  We also did a few lessons in Funnix and we did Starfall a few times.  Lydia is now up to lesson 10 in Funnix, although I'm not sure how much is sticking for her.  She asks to do it every day, though, so I figure why not?  Other than that, Lydia has made great strides in counting in the last week or so.  She can count to ten on her own except that she usually forgets three.  But still, given she could only count to two last week, that's pretty good.

Yesterday, we had a fun day at the Tubes at Rock Creek Church, which, as another mom was there put it, are like a McDonald's play place on steroids.  I think the service they do the moms of this community by providing such a fun place to play for free is fantastic.  Lydia still won't climb them, but she did actually go play with everything on the ground level without having to be coerced, which is progress for her.  And she has a very difficult time being social with other children, so it was good to have her around so many for a while.

For the last few days Lydia has been grounded from all books that aren't board books because she's been ripping them on purpose.  We're trying to figure out how to stop that, because she's always been very trustworthy with books before, even when she was very very young.  And she loves books a lot and it is a shame to not let her read them when she wants to.  It broke my heart yesterday when I heard her recite all of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to herself while playing in her room, followed by Go Dog Go.  They are her two favorite books and they were put away where she couldn't have them.  Tyler and I agreed to give her another chance today, though, so we'll see how that goes.

The music study is still going great.  Lydia asks to listen to "Baldy" several times a day, and often asks for Bob Dylan as well.  When the Four Seasons starts, she gets so excited and runs and jumps on the couch.  It's good to see her enthusiastic about classical music!

Other than that, my week has been eventful because I started my study of Latin.  It is going great and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  I didn't expect to enjoy it so much, but I'm glad that I am.  I'm working on lesson 7 of Latin for Beginners and it is all sticking very well.  I do need to memorize the endings though, and as memorization is my weakness, I've got to figure out a way to do that well.  Does anyone have any recommendations for that?