Discoveries

One of the best things to me about homeschooling is that when my child has a new interest, we can explore it fully. Savannah's latest obsession is building and learning about circuitry, so we've been doing it for three days.

As you can probably tell from the photo, it makes her very happy. Deliriously happy! Perhaps because it ties into her goal of learning how to build robots that wash the dishes and clean up after people so she can build them and make loads of money (her dream, not my dream for her).

So far she's built alarms, fans, lights and learned how light switches work. She's learned that metals that conduct electricity such as paperclips can be used to complete a circuit and that electricity can only pass in one direction through an LED. She's also learned the difference between building in parallel versus in a series. (By the way, I should mention here that I have also learned much of this as we go along.)

And that water also conducts electricity and can be used to complete a circuit. (Don't worry it was a safe setup.)

"Mom, just tell me, what happens when I put the wires in the water."

"If I told you, you wouldn't remember, but if you do the experiment yourself, you will never forget."

Perhaps we have a budding scientist on our hands!

 With her eager assistant, William. William "helps" by clapping when her circuits work out as planned and to show her appreciation, Savannah often replaces the slide switch for the button switch so William can turn it off and on.

Savannah has fun building a flying saucer (a fan blade that launches into the air).

William made a few discoveries of his own. He found out that it may be easier to try on someone else's boots, if they have bigger feet, but that wearing one boot forward and one backward, doesn't make for easy walking.

He also discovered that while it may seem like a good idea to climb into the newspaper and kindling box, it may not be as easy to get out as it was to get in.

I guess some people just have to learn things the hard way.

Little of this and that

We've had such a busy schedule lately I never have time to blog about what we're up to. In the homeschooling department, we started a big science kick, robots, volcanoes, exploring our senses, the states of water, and bird form and function.

Here's the papier mache volcano that Savannah made from a toilet paper roll, cardboard, newspaper and the flour and water "glue". She looked at images of real volcanoes before deciding how to paint it in black, brown and red. We mixed some red food coloring and dish soap together along with the baking soda so the volcano's lava would appear red. It looked more pink than red so next time we'll definitely use more food coloring.

For homeschool we do a page of math everyday and since September have completed double-digit addition, double-digit subtraction (now with borrowing), telling time, basic multiplication, and are now working on a unit on money math. Savannah still reads as many as three chapter books a day so I've eased off the reading "for school" and am trying to get her to spend more time outdoors. She always resists but the second she's outside she's in heaven.

 

Let's face it - some states of water are more fun than others!

I called the elementary school in our district to talk with the administrators about their educational program and attended the open house of a private school near us. I am so disappointed in how little they offer. One school recognizes the importance of reading at different levels so they divide kids into reading groups with two classes having reading groups of just one student where the child is particularly advanced. However, the same school uses one math curriculum for all students in a grade, with no chance for movement up or down, all the kids learn math at the same speed, which is dictated by the slowest learners. The other school lets children work independently in their workbooks during "math" time and children work at their own pace. I noticed one child was on page 3 in her workbook, while another had nearly completed it, but with plenty of wrong answers. I plan to homeschool for a few years mainly because I feel I don't have a choice. I'm so disappointed in the quality of schools and education in our area, both public and private. It helps that Kevin is an engineer and I'm biochemist and writer.

 My box of secret items for our blind senses activity. Savannah correctly guessed everything except for the chopstick, which she wrote down as a pencil.

Savannah touching the secret objects to determine what they are while blind folded.

Writing down her guesses! She got 11 correct out of 12. I fooled her with the chopstick.

Soda can robot

 After a recent excursion to the science museum, Savannah wanted to build a robot, and why not, her dad is an engineer? So I got a starter kit for her with the idea that this was something she and her dad could bond over during the weekend. One nice thing about homeschooling is that it can take place at any time.

But the weekend was filled with farm chores, family time, pond snow removal, and finally ice skating. So that meant Mommy had to be the assistant engineer. I placed the parts list in front of Savannah (who received the soda can from a neighbor since we never have any) and she had to locate and name all the parts and help assemble them. Little fingers sure come in handy when tightening nuts to bolts in tight places! Her robot can move forward and backwards on its "belly" or upright and most importantly, it has a survival feature, namely, it can outrun her little brother! At least it can this week.

Can you tell she's proud of her creation?

We learned about batteries and motors, axles and cams and had some fun in the process.

Fall glimpses

William is five months old and busy breaking his mother's heart with his babyness. He loves his toes, his thumb, and his big sister. His first word may very well be "hungry", which we hear almost everyday, but I'm waiting to be sure he knows what he's saying (he appears to!) I hoping I'll hear "mama" soon!

He adores the baby chicks and watches the brooder with interest a few feet away on the safety of his blanky. He doesn't get good traction when on a blanky so he tends to spin in circles rather than inch his way forward, as he sometimes does.

Savannah is busy with her home school year well underway. Music lessons, private art lessons, story times, nature hikes, play dates and the chance to choose two of the four topics we learn about every month. She enjoyed her first spelling test so much, she asked for another one! Topics covered so far: apples, caterpillars, farms. Upcoming topics: fire and fire safety, bats, pumpkins. Each week she also has a cooking day where she gets to do most, if not all, of the work. I'm trying to teach her basic scarf knitting as well but these fine motor skills are still  a challenge. For her craft this week she made a haunted forest with a haunted house and decorated our house for Halloween. She also taught herself multiplication by 10s and 1s last week, "by just thinking about it".

Making apple crisp "by hand" from the apples we picked.

Woolly bear metaphorphosis - an easy project to do at home

One of Savannah's recent "science projects" is to observe the woolly bear caterpillar (Pyrrharctia isabella) turn into an Isabella Tiger Moth. Woolly bear caterpillars are especially common in New England during the fall and spring months and there old tales about how long winter will be based on the length of their brown and black stripes (although this really correlates to their age and growth before winter hibernation). Even though they hibernate all winter, come spring, they are hungry little buggers requiring a fresh supply of grass or leafy greens to eat everyday before spinning their cocoons. One nice thing about woolly bears is that they are rarely a nuisance to gardeners, preferring wild plants to cultivated ones. This is an easy project to do at home or school to enrich children's lives and understanding of the life cycles of animals.

We "captured" a woolly bear on one of our recent nature walks and brought it home. It resided in a clean applesauce jar with a foil lid that had many holes poked into it for circulation. We added a single strong twig, which is important for it to be able to climb and attach its cocoon to, and fed it either fresh grass clippings every day or fresh lettuce leaves every other day (the lettuce leaves usually last longer than the grass). I also put 1-2 drops of water in every two days but it's important to not have a wet jar and the lettuce and grass should provide enough moisture anyway. Every day for a week we cleaned out the old greens and put in the new greens for the woolly bear.

Today, the woolly bear climbed the twig and we watched it spin its cocoon throughout the day.

Here the woolly bear is beginning to spin its cocoon. You can still see through the threads to make out the whole caterpillar at the top of the twig.

I tried to get a close-up of this but my widest angle lens is only an 18-55. Now I know what to ask for for my next birthday...


Here the woolly bear has almost completed its cocoon and looks as though it is covered in fur. Now all we have to do is wait for 2-3 weeks for signs of the Isabella Tiger Moth to emerge. We'll release it outdoors as soon as it hatches but very gently, after its wings are unfurling and dry enough.

Additional tips:

• Do not touch or move the jar when the caterpillar is spinning its cocoon - any vibration disrupts the process.
• After the caterpillar has spun its cocoon, wait 1-2 days, then remove any leftover leaves or grasses so they don't rot.
• Keep the jar in the coolest part of the house - a window sill of a cold room maybe, or on a covered porch where it won't get wet, so the caterpillar gets used to the regular outdoor temperature. If it emerges too soon due to perceived warmth, it may not have a food source in bloom yet.
  
• If your caterpillar isn't thriving, release it outdoors.
  

Here are two more resources on woolly bears: general woolly bear info and raising woolly bears, with scientific info.

Some recommend capturing woolly bears in the fall as opposed to the spring. I find that woolly bears are just as easy to find in the spring so we take this shortcut instead of feeding and caring for them all through the fall and spring. I hope you have fun with your woolly bear project!

Chick Crazy - Brooding over Brooders

We have a baby on the way in a few short weeks and I've promised to make my daughter her very own sandbox this spring with a little digger in it but all she seems to care about is raising chicks. My husband was really worried when he found out I'd ordered six Rhode Island Red pullets (just one day old!) arriving April 17th. This is right after my due date and we haven't built the hen house yet and he was worried that the chicks would need their coop by April. He didn't realize that the chicks won't be ready for the coop until at least 8 weeks when their feathers come in and the weather is warmer. They will need a brooder until then but I tackled that project today with a little help from my eager-to-hold-and-feed-chicks daughter.

I started with a 90 quart plastic storage bin with lid and clear sides ($9) Apparently chicks don't like to be surprised and they prefer it when they can see you coming since their sense of sight and hearing are their strong points. The clear plastic sides take care of that.

On a workbench, I used an exacto knife to cut out half of the lid (approx 11"x 15" opening). For only six chicks, this should provide them with enough ventilation and a spot to place the warming light they'll need in the first few weeks of life. But it took me four tries on each side to get the exacto knife to cut through all the way. Using a jigsaw though seemed like too much for this project.

The opening cut from the lid.

Then I cut some 1/4" hardware cloth (with my little jewelry metal wire clippers) that was 1" larger on all sides than the opening, or 13" x 17" ($6 for a roll). I folded the sides over neatly to avoid the cut edges and tried to use my staple gun to staple the wire mesh to the lid opening but it didn't work. Plan B was to make a wood frame of 1"x1" wood to staple the wire to and that worked out much better ($0.65 for 8' strip of 1"x1" oak). My plan was to bolt this down to the plastic lid with little washers on the inside but the wood seems to hold the hardware cloth in place very well and it would be nice to be able to lift this section up to reach in quickly rather than undoing the whole lid for access.

Here's the opening with the mesh frame on top and the flood light ($10 and will be reused for the greenhouse later) sitting over the opening. I've read in a few different books on raising chickens that red bulbs are considered best for the chicks. They are attracted to red things and it is believed that the red light prevents them from pecking at each other. The flood light bulb I chose was a 100 watt (no 85 watt available) so I most likely will have to suspend it over the opening to prevent it from getting too hot inside the brooder. It is nice to be able to raise the lamp up and down to monitor the temperature and adjust it weekly as they grow.


Here it is with the lid snapped in place. The chicks should be happy enough in here with a towel or paper towels for litter beneath them for the first few weeks. It will also be easy to clean, transport, and to keep inside the house while they're really young (all messes contained). Plus, it cost me only $26 in materials and I still have lots of hardware cloth left for other uses. I've heard of people happily raising their chicks in whatever they have on hand including cardboard boxes (although these have to be changed frequently as they get soiled), bathtubs, aquariums, and large feed or water troughs. I like being able to see the chicks all the time through the plastic sides and being able to easily transport them in and out of the house (or around the house) to let them experience a sunny day outdoors with some grass clippings or other items of interest in their brooder.

Here's the inspiration brooder for this project with instructions and photos.

I'm so excited to pick up our fuzzy little flock of chicks! I think it will be a great project for Savannah (and for me to oversee) as the chicks will be a great distraction from baby in the early weeks as she gets to play "Mommy". She's been reading almost exclusively about chicks for a week now and can already tell you how to cure pasty butt and spraddle legs. Who knew that farm life could be so educational!

Sick for Santa and Charlie Brown trees

Savannah has been sick the past few days with a high fever, sore throat, and runny nose. Her cousins have been true to their nickname (the germ factory) every year we've spent time with them. One night she was in and out with fever dreams, crying out and mumbling those dream words that sink into the pillow without registering any meaning, so I slept beside her and talked her through the night. When I was little and had fever dreams, I always had the same one through which I was paralyzed to help myself and that ended with my death. But when Savannah woke up in the morning she said she dreamed all about dancing with the Nutcracker and sugar plum fairies and meeting Santa...some fever dream. No wonder why she's not afraid of anything.

Today she was mostly fine with the kind of runny nose that you get when crossing Rudolf with a dripping faucet, and red, watery eyes. We couldn't be without tissues for anymore than 3 minutes. I told the little darling that she had to get well soon so she didn't sneeze in the batter for Santa's cookies and make him sick too.

This morning we had school again. For December we do a special calendar that Savannah looks forward to everyday. Once a day after her reading lesson and homework, she opens one door and discovers a new activity to help us prepare for the holidays each day. Some days there are also special little treats behind the doors, but she's not allowed to peek ahead. It's all about anticipation, patience and surprise.

Here's her calendar with the little doors she opens to reveal a new activity to prepare for Christmas. Somewhere in there we have to make hot pepper jelly, candied almonds, toffee and flavored popcorn.


Yesterday we did our house cleaning to prepare for the holidays and today was her day to pick out and decorate the tree. Picking out the Christmas tree is Savannah's job and she's very good at it. Every year we have a different tree and every year it's wonderful. This year we learned some important lessons while selecting a tree. We decided that since we want to plant some evergreens in our yard in a loose zig-zag to give our lovely neighbors a bit more privacy at the top of our driveway and because we want to do things as green as possible, we would purchase a whole tree with the root ball attached. The tree would sit in a lovely green bucket that I picked up at the local Agway in our greenhouse, which remains 20 degrees colder than the rest of the house on most days, perfect for a live evergreen. Perfect that is until we picked up the tree and it weighed 200 pounds. So, on to plan B, this tree is going right into the ground with mulch and protection around its leaves for the winter this week. Savannah was crushed about not having this tree as her Christmas tree but I told her we could get dressed up in our hunter orange clothes and hike through the woods until we found our own tree. She found lots of trees that she liked - mostly 40 feet tall - but we finally stumbled on a little Charlie Brown tree that needed to be removed since it was dwarfed in a dense grove of much taller evergreens that had crowded it out. And Savannah loved it. She told the tree that she would be nice to it and give it water to drink and sunlight and pretty things to wear if it came home with her. I cut it down and we gently dragged it home to decorate.

Yes, it is a slightly bent, sparse little Charlie Brown tree, but it needed to come down anyway, and it's really ours, we cut it down ourselves on our own land, and Savannah loves it. What more could you want in a Christmas tree?

Just in case it wasn't clear - we love nutcrackers. Here are some of the two-foot tall ones that find their way into our living room every Christmas. When I was little my stocking always had a nutcracker soldier on it. Now Savannah loves them. It's a compliment to Daddy when she asks him to be her Nutcracker and dance to Tchaikovsky with her.

Savannah's leather armchair with a little Christmas cushion she helped to make last year.

For decorating the tree we have ornaments from all over the world that represent some of our favorite memories. Most of the rest of the ornaments were handmade by me. Today we found an ornament from our trip to Hawaii, one from Kevin's race in Osaka, a bell from Chinatown where Kev and Savannah ate their first dim sum, the golden aspen leaf from Colorado, the soldier bell I found in Camden, the wreath Savannah made at the library's holiday festival... Each ornament brings back memories of times spent together. I find it nearly impossible to buy over-the-counter, generic ornaments now no matter how shiny they are because it's so wonderful to unpack these little memories and re-live them for a few minutes every year as we find their perfect spot on the tree.

At our local Agway, they always have interesting farm-related toys for kids. We picked up a grasshopper Grow-A-Head for Savannah on our last trip and it has become her science project for the next week. She's learning a handful of new words and concepts: seeds, roots, germination, chlorophyll, condensation and absorption with this project. It's pretty good timing because we can model the same concepts with the Christmas tree. She has a science activity sheet for the week (in addition to the daily reading and writing lessons plus homework).

Pashmina and bindis on a rainy day

Today it's raining. There's a large cloud of mist in the valley below where the Bozenkill runs. We need some more exercise but with the cold outside and the treadmill not yet hooked up, we're not getting enough. I've been keeping Savannah busy with homeschooling. We're continuing our daily reading and writing lessons and she does a lot of activities related to the seasons or holidays. Today we learned about the pilgrims' voyage on the Mayflower and how their lives in Plymouth contrasted to the Wampanoag, or native people already living in Massachusetts, who helped them survive their first winter. Savannah was mostly interested in the Mayflower as ships are one of her favorite things to learn about due to her interest in pirates.

She also cut out ten place cards for Thanksgiving with her cousins (fine motor skill development) because she wanted to bring something that she made herself.

Savannah received some Indian bindis from her Aunt Megan today so she picked out her favorites and got decorated with them and a pashmina from my closet (that her Dearest brought back for me from a trip to Nepal 7 or 8 years ago). Here's the little princess all dressed up.

I can't believe how she's the spitting image of me when I was her age. If I could find a pair of bright red or green corduroy bell-bottoms in her size and a wooly lamb jacket, we'd be twins.

Homeschooling ideas for Halloween

Today Savannah and I listened to "Boo, Cackle, Trick or Treat" by Sue Schnitzer (the lyrics for the songs on the album are here and the album can be purchased on iTunes). She has some really good songs for kids for October including counting songs, songs with coordinating hand movements, and about pumpkins and bones, etc. and these songs aren't annoying like many of the Halloween songs for kids. I've decided to use these songs in our homeschooling so we're doing a small unit on bones, which Savannah loves. Today she cut out and used brass tacks to make this dancing skeleton from "the toy maker," a great site for toys to make at home and cut out, including math toys, airplanes, boxes and bookmarks.

Tomorrow we'll sing some more songs together (Savannah dances too) and practice learning some of the bone names that she doesn't already know and use the Kids Health website to talk about why bones are important and what they are made of. She's also excited to cut out these jack-o-lantern bookmarks, even though we don't use bookmarks that often right now. She can use them in her Science is Simple book by Peggy Ashbrook and in her reading lessons book.

We are really enjoying this science book that has activities for preschoolers through 2nd grade. The activities are easy to do at home with few additional supplies, if any, although it is presented as a book for preschool teachers. She presents each unit as a whole, by season including relevant stories to read with each topic and songs to sing. I sometimes extend the activities by adding a short writing component since Savannah can write or a math activity for counting or matching. I was really pleased with the unit we tried on wind earlier this week. We checked out books related to wind from the library, spent an afternoon on a picnic blanket watching the things that the wind moves, made a wind sock and bird to hang in the tree to monitor wind.

I'm all tired out again this week with preparations for moving. Savannah is sick of all this cleaning and organizing business and I just hope I have the energy to unpack once we're in Altamont.

Savannah's dancing skeleton that she's very proud of. She knows about a dozen bone names including humerus, femur, patella, cranium, ribs, vertebrae, pelvis and sternum.

Chicken Dreams, Homeschooling and Avoiding Stretch Marks

Chicken Dreams
All day I've been dreaming of chickens in between signing and faxing paperwork and other moving details. First thing in the spring, we are ordering our brood and building a hen house. I'd like to get eggs to incubate and hatch so Savannah can see this wonderful process right before her eyes. It will mesmerize her and me too! Plus, if one of the chicks imprints on her and follows her around as "Mommy" that would be an added thrill for her. We'll probably order Rhode Island Reds but I haven't finished researching all the breeds yet.

Belly Potion
Today I made a belly potion (as Savannah calls it). "tion" was one of the new sounds we've been practicing this week and potion is one of her favorite "tion" words, hence the belly potion. It is for mothers to rub on their bellies everyday during pregnancy to avoid stretch marks. I had terrible stretch marks with Savannah so I'm trying to prevent or minimize them this time. Even four years later, I can't stand to have my belly touched, even by my own hands, so rubbing it on is not a party. But it does soak right into my skin so I don't have to worry about getting it on my clothes. It looks like my entire belly shattered and had to be put together again, piece my miserable piece like a Victorian crazy quilt made from the tiniest scraps of same-colored material and assembled by the most skilled surgeon who stitched the scraps together with the finest silver thread. It's almost like a spider web fused to me but not quite one of Nature's masterpieces. Anyway here's my belly potion recipe and I'll let you know if it works for me.

Belly Potion Recipe (to avoid stretch marks of pregnancy)

Mix together in a jar with lid:

• 4 oz of almond oil
• 2 oz of jojoba oil
• 1 tsp of vitamin E
• 2-3 drops of lavender essential oil

Cap it and shake. Apply daily during pregnancy from the top of the public bone to the bottom of the ribs and make more potion as needed.

Homeschooling
Savannah has been doing extremely well in homeschooling. I can hardly believe it. I have an organized curriculum and teaching folder with lessons and activities prepared (language and literacy on one side, math on the other) but not a schedule. This way we actually have "school" for two or three 20-30 minute intervals in a day. Our first is always the reading and writing lesson. I love this time together. She sits on my lap as if she were smaller and I were reading her a story, but really, she reads the stories to me. She's already reading the Level 2 easy readers on her own and everyday she escapes to her room and sprawls out on her reading rug to read herself (or her animals) stories. The other day we stopped at a restaurant for lunch and I was grumpy from feeling so hungry (apparently with this one I'm much more likely to feel grumpy than puke). Savannah was dawdling and said she didn't want to get out of the car until she had finished the book she'd begun. I had to laugh - I was looking at a replica of myself as a young child, always with my face in a book, even through meals and family events. It drove my mother crazy. Now I suppose it's my turn, but to be honest, I love it.

I've started introducing a math unit almost every day as well and she's been doing very well with that too. Today she completed charts and read them, counted, played numbers Bingo, and put events in order. Kevin wants me to commit to homeschooling her through high school but I'm not sure. He has some very good points but for now I'm going to take it month by month. The 20 minutes of one on one attention she gets is superior to the attention I could give a classroom of students in a regular 90 minute period. And there's no need to waste time catching others up, returning paperwork, performing housekeeping tasks such as attendance, grading, announcements, breaking kids into groups, signing up for technology, etc. and she gets to choose how fast she goes and what her current interests are. For "science" right now, she's interested only in baby so every week we look at three websites to track baby's progress over time. She chooses one picture that she likes the best of a fetus in utero and prints and cuts it out to add to her baby book to see the progress baby makes week by week. We measure the approximate length on her ruler and she keeps it all together like a weird science scrapbook album. This week she's impressed that baby's skin is transparent and eyelids are fused shut. She doesn't know what to make of the placenta yet and says it looks more like a belly button tail. But, she's relieved that baby no longer has webbed hands like a frog and is growing finger nails. As for me, I'm impressed that my uterus is the size of a grapefruit but feels like it's the size of a sofa...

More socks and lessons learned

I made Savannah a second pair of the North Country socks and they turned out just as well. Savannah picked out the yarn herself, called beachball blue. As much as I love the sock pattern, I'm not keen on the yarn we picked out. The cotton stretches out after use, so I'm trying out a new yarn for a pair for myself called Heart & Sole with Aloe, Self-striping Knit Socks. So two-thumbs up on the pattern, and no recommendations on the yarn.

Savannah has been doing really well with her reading. The level 1 readers have become fairly easy for her and she reads some or all of her own bedtime stories now. She used to get stuck on big words and now she just tackles them sound by sound and usually gets it all by herself. She reads whatever she can get her hands on, recipes, newspapers, brand names, my trade magazines, it's inspiring to see what a big impact literacy has on her life. We are also practicing activities like what belongs together, opposites, shapes, what's wrong with this picture, counting activities, and interpreting illustrations. It's fun.

The weather has changed here with the leaves in the past few days. Today Savannah is wearing a sweater that was mine when I was little. It was handmade by a lady in Brunswick, Maine and has thistle buttons on the front that impressed Savannah. She's growing so quickly. Even last year I thought this sweater would never fit her.

I've ordered some Tai Chi DVDs so I can start at home. I love the short form and hope I can remember some of it! My main form of exercise this summer has been cleaning the house (yuck!) and yardwork so I'm really looking forward to having something to center my day again.

Homeschooling

It has not been my first choice or what I imagined myself doing but today I realized, I am homeschooling my daughter. She is considered highly gifted and didn't do well in the regular preschool program that we tried last September. The Gifted Development Center in Denver recommended that I try homeschooling her until she's old enough to test into a higher grade level, maybe in 1-2 years. A few weeks ago we started the Distar Reading Program at home simply because she was so excited about letters and sounds and words and spelling things. By Lesson 7 she was reading words all by herself. Now we're on Lesson 25 and she's reading the level 1 easy readers from the library. In fact, she's reading EVERYTHING she can get her hands on; signs while I'm driving, my books, flyers on the door, the pizza box, everything. Half of her sentences all day long start with either "Mom, I can read the word ___!" or "Mom, I know how to spell ___!" She's started every morning the last week by waking up and opening a book and not waking me up until she's finished the book of the morning.

So almost every morning after breakfast (and before her cartoon) we sit down and do a reading lesson together. It takes 10 minutes. Since she was interested in doing more, we bought some school supplies and a Hello Kitty school supply box that she brings to "school" everyday with her learning folder. After the reading and writing lesson, I ask her if she's interested in doing more and she always says "Yes!" Sometimes I give her a color by number challenge or a connect the dots, sometimes a maze to figure out, or a shapes project that involves tracing, writing, coloring, cutting and finding the shape all over the house, sometimes she's matching what's different and alike, or counting and practicing her numbers, etc, etc. So, now she's doing two of these additional worksheets a day after her reading lesson (two only because that's my limit, I don't want to push her). You can see why today it occurred to me that I'm home schooling my daughter, not talking about it or learning about it, I'm actually doing it.

(Four of my favorite online resources for preschoolers or homeschoolers are: TLS Books, PBS Kids, the BBC's CBeebies, and Activity Village.)

Savannah hard at work at school this morning. Today we had a reading lesson, and she practiced writing the letters "d" and "n", read me some new sentences, learned about rectangles, and did a color by number, all in Hello Kitty style.

Because I'm a craft-minded person we do an art project a day. Right now she's into jewelry making. After wearing her new bracelets to karate class today (of course she had to take them off for karate) she is now going to make bracelets for the three "divas" aka the triplets in her class, Sydney, Sloane and Cici.

Plus, she's decided that she wants to make or help make all of her own meals. I told her I thought that was a good thing since she has to eat everyday. So she's helping me in the kitchen to get her cereal or oatmeal in the morning, to make her sandwiches and slice fruits and she's still helping me set the table, a chore she decided to start doing when she was just 2.

The best and the worst part is, I LOVE having her home. I love being able to teach her new things and then to fold the laundry together, run an errand, give each other hugs, go for a walk around the block, weed the yard, and work on a project. And I love having her read me bedtime stories now! I worry about the social aspects but she does have a regular social schedule (karate 2x a week, Thursday night concerts with Gracin, weekly play dates, and usually another class like music, dance or swimming). Part of me knows that socialization has just as many drawbacks as it has advantages, but still whenever it is finally time for me to let her go to some other teacher, it's going to be very, very, very hard.

A, B, C's to reading!

Wow! We've just had the most incredible evening! I've been very slowly introducing Savannah to the SRA DISTAR program for learning how to read. It is based on sounds, rather than on letters since reading is learning how to string sounds together, not letters. Tonight we reached Lesson 7 of 100 and suddenly something just clicked for Savannah. Before I could finish giving her the instructions for certain tasks, she was literally reading the words off of the page! "Well, Mom, she'd say, I already know that word is "man" and it rhymes with "tan.""


She was so excited she ran around the house waving her arms in the air shouting "Sat is spelled "S", "A", "T"!" Then she ran to her chalk board to write the word and decided that since she could spell "Sat" she could also spell "Cat", "Hat", "Fat", "Vat", and "Bat"! Then we spent the rest of the night sounding out and spelling words together. She was so excited she was literally running around and jumping into my arms to give me hugs with her whole body and screaming the spellings of words as loud as she could. She spelled "poop" and "pee" while sitting in the potty as well as at least three dozen other words. When we read her bedtime story tonight she insisted that I stop to let her read some of the words so she did! She read "go", "in", "on", "so", "too", "men", "can" and a few other small words in the bedtime story she picked out. She said she couldn't wait to show her Dad all the new words she could spell and write and read. He will definitely be thrilled and excited for her when he returns from Beijing at the end of August.

AMAZING! I am so amazed tonight. It was incredible watching whatever it was just click inside of that clever little brain of hers and fantastic to see her total thrill and excitement about learning how to spell and read words (and she wrote a handful too!) Wow, I will definitely continue with this program and who knows, by Christmas she might be reading her own level 1 books by herself.


I am so excited for her. When I first learned how to read it was like a new light turned on inside of me and I can already see how excited she is to be able to read on her own. I don't know if I ever had a celebration dance, run, scream fit like she did all over the house today (think Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone!) but I'm sure I experienced the same pure inner joy no matter how I expressed it. Oh, my baby is growing up...



We have been using this book that I found on amazon. It is great and really slowly paced, not too much for kids to do and the lessons take 15-20 minutes each and it's no big deal if (like me!) you skip a few days at a time. Just be sure to read the 27 page intro to yourself and practice once before you start with your child to be sure you do it right the first time with them. I almost didn't and that would've been a big mistake.