Summer

We take time to smell the flowers...

...play in the water...

...and even go fishing!

I have a picture of the girls painting, but I took their shirts off to save the clothes... so those pictures aren't blog appropriate :)
I heard on the news today that children lose a large amount of academic knowledge over the summer break that has to be refreshed and retaught when the new school year begins. We really strive to continue our learning regardless of the calender. We do spend lots of time playing and having fun, but still make time for academics. The girls are always curious about letters and we continue to take the time to identify letters and 'read' words where ever we find them... menus, signs, etc. This evening Alex asked to do homework. When I asked her what she would like to do she said, "Play a game. Pizza game." I bought a great game for $3 at Walmart a few months ago and the girls love it. It is mainly for the purpose of listening skills. Each of the girls have a cardboard pizza and 15 or 20 cardboard coins with toppings (few of which are actual pizza toppings) on them. I place my order for my pizza, with two or three items, and the girls find the correct coins and make my pizza. This is also great for finding a single object in a group. Tonight I made sure to choose 'toppings' that started with the same letter. "I would like 'pepperoni' and a 'pretzel' on my pizza please." Pointing out what letter the toppings begin with and emphasizing the sound.
Then we played CandyLand. We do fine with taking turns, so this game is good for colors (Emma specifically). For Alex, identifying the color isn't difficult, but she wants to skip to any (blue) square as opposed to the next (blue) square... so we worked on that. I am finding that any of these games that require the simplest fine motor skills are becoming quite difficult. Even picking a card from the pile is now hard for Alex because two fingers on her left hand (the good hand) are now drawn up. We keep practicing though.

Good morning

What's this? I am remembering to blog? I found a note that my Aunt Linda sent to me last summer. She has home schooled her four children from the beginning and I value her advice. She says that at this point the most important thing to focus on is reading. Once they can read, the rest will come so much easier. Of course, have fun with math and science, but don't fret over it just yet. Her other advice is to remember that kids Alex and Emma's age can only be expected to sit and focus for 15-30 minutes at a time. This is something I have learned on my own over the last year and a half. We started out doing good to sit and work for 10 minutes, not we can spend half an hour working before we really need a break.
Yesterday Alex found the Hooked on Phonics workbooks. We haven't worked with them in a while, so that is what we used this morning. We started with hooked on Phonics a year and a half ago, but haven't stuck strictly to the program... just used it as a guide and aid. So this morning we reviewed the pre-reading letter book. The girls did great. We are oh so close to 100% letter recognition for both girls. Our hang ups are b/d, V/Y, l/I. Then we moved on to a few pages of letter sounds. We went through and said each letter, the sound, and a word that starts with it. That kind of repetition seems to be very helpful with Alex and Emma. Then we concentrated on 'm' and 'n'. Not sure why Hooked on Phonics put these right next to each other, so confusing for little ones. Maybe that was the point, to hear the difference. Anyway, there were three pictures of 'm' words with the word written below it. We pointed out the 'm', said the sound, then the word. The next page has six pictures, we say the word and listen if it starts with the 'm' sound. Same thing with 'n'. Alex really did very well with this and I have learned that while Emma is mostly quiet, she is soaking it all in. That is pretty well how she learned her ABC's. So, by this time Alex was tired and getting distracted so we called it good for now. Maybe do a bit more later, may just wait for therapy this afternoon. I'm so proud of the girls for loving to learn. It is never a fight. If anything, the fight comes when they get too tired to concentrate but still want to work. Alex particularly gets frustrated when she wants to keep going but can't.

May

So Drew was home for most of the month of May and it was wonderful. While he was here we finger painted, planted flowers, worked in the yard, discovered some baby birds, painted the house, played games, read books, went fishing, worked on the boat, had a yard sale, had normal therapy, two Kansas City doctor trips, etc. The girls participate in most everything we do so there was lots of learning taking place. Lots of exploring and discovering and experiencing new things. Since Drew is back at Ft. Sill we are back to our normal routine. Some 'formal' school work and play dates in the mornings and therapy in the afternoons.
What the girls are doing right now:
Alex wants to 'read' everything. She always points to writing (wherever it is) and says, "Let's do this!" So we identify every letter, sound it out where appropriate, say the word, then read the sentence as a whole. While she isn't close to reading on her own, the desire is still there and we are still nurturing it.
We are still doing lots of math throughout our day. Counting objects and simple addition and subtraction. Both girls participate in this and love it.
Imaginations are continuing to grow. The latest pretend game is taking their babies to the doctor. Emma is all about that and Alex goes right along. They take their babies to the doctor, make them take naps, go shopping, to church, and back home. Guess that sums up what our life is like :)
Emma is finally getting her colors down, a handful of them anyway. Brown, pink and yellow are consistent right now. Don't know why those three stick with her, but they are her favorites.
Alex is also drawing a lot on her own lately. We used to have to prompt and encourage her to draw stick figures, etc. Now she sits with a piece of paper or the magna doodle and draws on her own. She mainly draws people and the sun. She drew a picture the other day and told me it was her family. She is always very specific about who is who in her pictures and she always wants me to write the names of each person.
So kids are getting out of school for the summer now, but we will continue doing what we do. Our schedule isn't a strict 8-3, five days a week thing anyway... so we have to plans to halt learning until the fall. That being said, Alex will officially be a kindergartner in the fall so once that time rolls around we may get a little more serious about the time we dedicate to school work. I need to get our letter of intent (for home schooling) prepared to turn into the school district and in the fall we will look into doing some activities with the home schooling group here.

ABC

Busy week last week. We took Alex to CMH in KC for an MRI and lumbar puncture. She did great, as always. Despite the crazy week we did a bit of learning here and there. In the waiting room at the hospital we did ABC flash cards. I was really shocked to realize that Emma knows most all of her letters (I already knew Alex was close to having them all)! We've continued working on that and it is going great. I made a point to read for a while with the girls last night. Reading time has been a bit neglected lately because of the crazy schedule and being so tired before bed. Also, Alex has gone from drawing a stick figure when asked to and is now drawing pictures of our family just for fun! I love it! She draws a stick figure for each of us and sometimes even adds the sun shine. She loves if we watch her work and then wants us to write the names of each person beside her picture. She's also using a few new phrases that she wasn't using a few weeks ago...
"Let me do this real quick"
"Just let me..."
"I no remember this place before"
Funny how the simple things and phrases mean so much.
Emma is asking lots of questions lately and right now she asks "Who you talking for?" a lot. I'm trying to consistently remind her that it is "Who are you talking to?" Still, the fact that she is showing curiosity and verbalizing it is great.
One of our current goals is to be able to retell a familiar story. I would definitely say they can both do that. Before bed it is the Goodnight Book, they both 'read' the book before bed. Other times it is on their own. Emma especially sits and looks at books and I can hear her 'reading' the story as she flips through pages.

Busy week

So, the week has been busy. I had a doctor appointment Monday afternoon so the girls spend an hour with Grandpa and did very well. I was so glad they didn't give him a hard time. I think the time was good for all three of them. I took the girls with me to Ginny's funeral on Tuesday morning. Alex had gotten upset a few days before when I told her that Ms. Ginny might be going to heaven, so I was a little afraid to tell her when Ginny died. But, she took it very well. I just said, "Ms. Ginny went to heaven last night. Who else do you know that is in heaven?" She answered, "Grandma." And that was about it for that conversation. Before the funeral I explained that we were going to church to have a funeral for Ms. Ginny. I asked why we had a funeral at church and she answered, "God." Short, sweet and true. The were pretty good and we came home after the service so they could go to therapy. That evening we went to Springdale to see Mollie's first grade play. They had a lot of fun watching Mollie and all the kids and thought the school was "COOL!" Carrie took us to her classroom afterward and the girls got to look around and explore. Carrie even showed them the Hermit crab. Lots of fun and I'm glad we went. Mollie was adorable as the farmer's wife in the program and she had fun showing the girls around the school.
Wednesday Lisa was sweet enough to keep the girls during my second doctor appointment. The girls got to play together, Lisa took A & E to therapy, and then they all went to the ballpark for MG and Hannah's softball game. A full day!
Today Alex had her pre-op doctor appointment for next week's procedures in KC. She did great and we had time to play and learn a bit while we were waiting for our turn. We do that a lot. Learn where we are I mean. In restaurants we identify letters and words on the menu or table top, we stop to look at signs in the store, we talk about the weather (especially this week!), etc. In the doctor's office we were searching the room and toys for certain shapes. It was fun to watch them discover that there were circles (squares, etc.) on all kinds of things in the room. We've also been working on colors more, for Emma's sake. Today she identified yellow and green correctly! I was so excited for her! We continue to observe and name shapes, colors, letters, numbers, etc. every day. Another thing we work into the day is math. Lots of simple addition lately... for example at lunch the other day we took the sweetener packets out and did some math. "If I have two pink packets and two white packets, how many do I have all together?" Lots of that sort of thing, and both girls really like doing that. I know we aren't to the "What is two plus two stage", but we are learning the process of addition and subtraction. I'm still loving homeschooling them and I'm proud of how hard they work, especially Alex. Seeing Carrie's classroom made me wish I had all of her resources (and I know she would let me dig through things whenever I wanted), but I still feel confident in being their teacher. The process of learning is amazing and I'm so thankful to be sharing it with my girls.

Letters

This morning Emma found a package of flash cards that had been given to us. We had never used them because they are sight words and I didn't think we were to that point yet, but we gave it a try. There were 25 common sight words (a, the, I, she, he, etc.) It was actually great because we named the letters (they did, with occasional help), we said the word, and took turns using the word in full sentences. Great letter identification (lower case) and sentence speaking practice. And the sight word thing can't hurt anything.
This afternoon Alex had PT. Yesterday they each had ST and PT. Church tonight.
Have a play date scheduled for the park tomorrow. We are planning a trip to Mollie's school next week to see her first grade program. The girls should love that! Drew will be home in a couple of weeks and he is hoping that we can take the girls fishing. That should be an experience! I'm hoping that when we take Alex to KC for her MRI that we can go back to the Wonderscope kids center, there is so much to do and learn there.

Math

I can't seem to recap what we've done since my last blog, I've really got to get better at blogging every day. Drew was home this past week and we didn't do much in the way of school work anyway. But today...
I got all excited last night because Julie e mailed me and asked for some homeschooling info. Lorelai will be starting Kindergarten in a little over a year and she wants to start working with her more. So, I got to share some of my infinite teaching wisdom! (Did you detect my sarcasm?)
Anyway, in thinking over some things for her, I pulled up the Kindergarten readiness list again. I went through last night and marked off the things that we are doing well with and highlighted the things that we will continue working on.
So, today we pulled out some manipulatives and got busy. I would pick up one shape and ask Emma to pick one that was the same. Check. Both girls can do that. I would make a pattern and the girls took turns picking the shape or color that came next. Did pretty well with that. More/Less. Do I have more circles or triangles, etc.? That one needs more work. Then we worked on simple addition. If I have two triangles and three circles, how many shapes do I have all together? Did really well with that. As long as we have the visuals, and of course they count out the total, but still... this first step is going well. Then they did puzzles. Alex does them completely independently and Emma needs only minimal help. Good fine motor and problem solving practice. Then Aunt Jessica showed up and we played the Candy Land Castle game. Taking turns, matching shapes, etc. Then just fun stuff. Right now they are playing with big Legos. I just asked Alex was she was building and she said a castle. I love to hear an original answer as opposed to a generic or copy cat answer.
Therapy this afternoon and the rest of the week.