Playing With Legos

well i’m still stumbling along…but haven’t found time to blog…sorry…i’ll get back to it, i really want to be better at keeping track of things here.

but right now i wanted to post about this thing i discovered on another blog, the “outdoor hour challenge.” i am going to be starting this with my kids…since i’ve not found time to organize anything science related. i’ve not found time for a lot of things. but maeven continues to learn…and read read read…she’s whizzing through chapter books now! so time is not wasted. and life is a learning experience…and she finds her own projects to do all the time. i’m very proud of her!

anyway, i really like the idea of this outdoor hour challenge…and on another site there is a “sketch tuesday” that i’m going to start with maeve as well. here’s the latest sketch tuesday challenge. maeven will really get into this sort of thing, i think. and more art for her! (which is totally her thing)…and i am finding all sorts of ideas like this on other people’s blogs…i just have to get organized and plan them for maeve.

this got me to thinking that i would like to do something here on this blog. there’s one thing i’ve yet to find anywhere (didn’t really look though, but don’t need to)…something to help us learn new songs regularly. i know a TON of songs…with my background in preschool, my head is crammed full of them! and i continue to collect kids’ music cds, and review them on my website. i’m way behind, though…there’s a ton that i need to add.

anyway, i’m thinking of starting a song-of-the-week. for my own kids to learn, and i’ll post here so others can benefit as well. i think learning one singable song a week is a good way to start adding a bunch of music to our day. i will start compiling a list of what i want to teach them…i have so many to choose from! and i want them to be songs that can be sung without the cd. “singable songs” (will draw some from raffi, hehe)…but right now i need to go shower and get some stuff done around here. and i have a thing to writeup to take to my first discovery center board meeting tonite. (they asked me to join! i’m so excited!) i’m proposing a children’s concert to benefit TDC. got a lot of info about it already and i’ll just have to organize all that. goodness but i have so many things i’m working on!!

i just got a catalog in the mail yesterday for montessori services, and i’m really excited! i see all sorts of ideas of “jobs” to keep tyren busy during maeven’s school time. some of the stuff i will buy, but i think i could probably set up some of that stuff from things i already have…or make for cheap from stuff that i find at thrift stores and such.

knowing tyren, i really think he’ll enjoy this sort of stuff. pouring and sorting and transferring and all sorts of practical life stuff. he really enjoys this sort of thing…so i’m really thinking now of setting up a little mini-montessori environment in our big room. (once its done being remodeled)…maybe even get some “jobs” set up ahead of time, so we don’t have to wait months for that room to be done.

in the meantime, i’m going to scour the net for info on montessori. get some books from the library and videos and such. learn all i can. i am really excited!

i just had to share this post from a blog i subscribe to that i thought was very powerful.

being that i’ve had a hard time getting focused time with maeven for “school”, it makes me feel pretty good reading that and realizing that i do a fair amount of those things already. and i’ve been seriously wanting to get us involved in volunteering…just have to find the time to find something that will work with a 3yr old in tow. this is spurring me to look!

i do try to just kind of go where the wind blows at times when i can see that a scheduled learning session is just not gonna happen. i do check out (just got a bunch last nite at the library! and we have a membership to blockbuster…and i frequently look up documentaries on topics we are studying) educational videos, particularly documentaries (in fact, we just finished watching “arctic tale“, made by the same people that made “march of penguins“…VERY fascinating look at the lives of polar bears and walruses and such.)  and maeven and tyren both absolutely LOVE nova and nature on pbs…in fact i’ve yet to see a topic on either of those shows that my kids weren’t fascinated by (although there have been some skipped due to some graphic violence, like one on the human sacrifices of the aztecs or something like that).

trips to the library have only been stressful with tyren, but i do go regularly…and often take maeven (she’s not as enthused by the library as i would like her to be…but i think i may try out the idea to check out other libraries…that sounds like it might pique her interest!) and i regularly order books from their website. and have them send the books and movies to our library close to us…the system calls when the books are ready to pick up…i love that! and all 3 of us (even tyren!) have our own library cards…which means even more things we can check out! woohoo! and we do, all the time! fiction AND nonfiction. so i’m doing well there, i think!

i do try to use art…just this past week we got paints out again and started making messes. :)  and maeven has a weekly homeschool art class she attends now. and as soon as i have that big room back, i’m going to be creating an art area that both my kids will be able to thrive in! until then, i am going to try to do more with them outside, weather permitting.

i did just get the math games book, and intend to start doing math games with maeve even when we cannot do an actual lesson…so she’ll be learning even if we cannot do the actual lesson…and i’m going to make it a point to do MORE games as well…we have tons of them for pete’s sake! need to get those great discovery toys games out again! :)  i also am wanting to get more puzzles…found this great one that is JUST what i’ve been looking for!! a US puzzle that actually has one piece per state, shaped like the state! i’ve been searching the net for years for this! and there’s a europe one as well!   puzzles are a GREAT way to learn geography! i plan to find one for each continent and if they don’t exist, i’m going to make one! (just need to find sheet magnets).

so i’m feeling better about how things are going now…because i’ve been really frustrated that i’ve not been able to get my routine down. i have a plan, but we rarely are able to stick to it. primarily because of tyren. but not always. but if the day is already stressful because of trying to keep him entertained…or breaking up fights or whatnot….i’m not about to dive into a lesson with maeven where i’m going to have to keep him occupied elsewhere and out of our hair. it just doesn’t work well. so i’m going to try to do math at night when daddy is consistantly here and can play with tyren. hopefully that will work. i’ve been wanting to do that for awhile, it just hasn’t happened yet. but i talked to adam about it and he thinks it could work too. so we’ll see. most of the rest of the stuff i want to do with maeven i can do during the day here and there…if we can all just get well again! the kids are sick again and so things slow down.

anyway, i’m glad i read that post about school less, teach more. that makes me feel less of a failure.

i can’t believe how fast it came in! i’m really excited about going in there and figuring out what games i need to be playing with maeve so that we can get past the counting issue.

i’m even thinking that on the days where we are just not able to get to a lesson, that we can still “do math” with just the games alone. and that might just work out just fine, actually. give her some more practice, in a fun way.  she loves games!

oh and i forgot to mention it comes with a dvd! i have to go check it out! i forgot to watch it today!

i just saw a site that had files for making tshirts that said something like “homeschool grad, class of _______”  it got me thinking…what “class” will my kids be? (at least tentatively, since it could change, depending on what happens over the years)

so i was able to calculate for maeven pretty easily because i consider her 2nd grade, for now. so that would make her “class of 2019″. weird weird weird.

now tyren, that made me have to look up the california law on when i legally had to start with him…because i put it off as long as possible (i am a believer in delayed academics.) so this is what my friend beckie found for me:

“California’s compulsory attendance laws require that children be enrolled in a school by their sixth birthday in the school year in which they turn six on or before December 2 (i.e., a child who turns six on December 3, of 2008, does not need to be formally enrolled in school until the fall of 2009).”

so that means legally tyren doesn’t have to be schooled until the 2011/2012 school year. since his birthday is in july. but i will probably start him on a relaxed kindergarten the year before. so 2011/2012 he’ll be 1st grade. (SO weird to think of him that old!!)

so that would mean that tyren would be “class of 2023″ wow, that’s so weird!!!! crazy to think of both of my kids as high school grads!

i’m actually looking forward to tyren being older and able to start doing some light homeschooling, because i’m HOPING that that will make it easier to keep him busy so i can accomplish some things with maeven. because i STILL have a DICKENS of a time getting anything done with maeven because of munchkin interference! ARGH.

i had set up times with my mom to be able to take tyren off my hands so maeven and i can have uninterrupted school time. but unfortunately just about every other week there are changes to that schedule for one reason or another because mom is unavailable. next week she won’t be available at all because they are on vacation. *sigh*

so my next option was going to be that then i can just do it in the evening when adam gets home. but so far that just isn’t happening. we usually just relax when he first gets home, all of us, and then the rest of the evening is taken up with dinner prep and eating and then bedtime. not much time for squeezing school in there.

but i think i’m going to tweak it and figure out a way to make it work. have to do some thinking on that. but if i can get onto a routine about dinner, then maybe, just maybe, i can get some time when adam gets home to do some “school” with maeven. if i can get him to entertain tyren. hmmm, have to think some more about all this.

but more importantly, i need to get the homeschool resource center i’m helping to start, started! the quicker that happens, the quicker classes can start and i can get more stuff covered for her. that’s the plan!  i’m really excited about it! i think its going to be awesome! ok, back to planning everything.

having a little difficulty with maeven’s math right now. nothing huge, but its something i need to work on. the problem is that she’s still counting while figuring out math problems. that’s not what she’s supposed to be doing in the rightstart math program. i had sorta known this but last week when i did a lesson with her that ended in a little practice work, i saw her even counting for the problems where she’s only adding 1 to the number…and i know she could do this quicker because we’ve been doing the “what comes after” game for weeks where i say a number and she tells me, as fast as she can, what number comes after it.  tonite i was thinking about this and realized she might not have put those 2 things together in her head yet to figure out that that’s what adding 1 is doing, just telling what the next number is. so tomorrow i’m going to make it a point to talk to her about this.

but anyway once i realized that she was still counting, i stopped the practice sheets because it says in the manual that children who are still counting at this point need more work on the strategies. so i went to the yahoogroup for users of this program and asked their advice.

i learned that i should use the games more…this program has a lot of great math games that are used to help kids learn the strategies. like having them better get to know the numbers that add up to 10 by playing memory where you don’t match the exact 2 numbers, but instead you get a match when you find 2 numbers that add up to 10. pretty clever, eh? i love it! they do the same thing with go fish and old maid. clever clever! :)  i just haven’t spent a huge amount of time playing the games with her and i obviously need to do these games more.

so i went ahead and bought the math games book, even though i don’t technically need it til the next level (because in the level we’re in, all the games are explained in the lessons), but it supposedly has even more games in it than are presented in the manual…and i was told by someone who has the book that she wished she had it when her child was in level b (the level we’re in).

so i am waiting for that to come in. and in the meantime i’ll go through the manual and pick out the games that will help me help maeven better learn the strategies we’ve learned so far, and stop counting. counting, according to this program, is an extremely inefficient way to do math. she’s supposed to do it visually, in her head. many kids picture the abacus in their head when they are doing problems, moving the beads over in their head.

the problem is, i think, that before we started doing this particular math program…we TAUGHT her to count. with her fingers even! DOH! luckily she didn’t get super efficient at it yet…i mean she’s good but at least she hasn’t been doing a lot of it for many years…because now i have to help her UNlearn that. woops!

even though i’ve not done very good lately at getting us into a regular school routine, today i did get maeven to start a new chapter book. she really loves these fairy books, but in between books sometimes she loses interest. so today i told her that i wanted her to take some quiet reading time in another room. (her and her brother had been at odds much of the day, as usual…it seemed a good time).  and i told her she didn’t have to read any particular amount, just whatever she wanted. she said she’d read one page…i just reiterated, she could read however much she wanted (knowing full well that once she got started, she’d get interested again.) and it was a good 20 minutes or more before she came out and said she was done for now. that was plenty, by my thinking! :)  she’s now reading a book again, so she’ll most likely want to continue…yay!

she just needed the reminder that she enjoys reading now, LOL. for a week or so (while we were waiting for the next books to come in at the library) she had forgotten. but i suspect she remembers now.

i’ve gotten offtrack with school, and with blogging about what we’ve been doing…we’ve done a little here and there, but not at all where i want to be. for one reason or another.

anyway, today was a good one though! today we went to maeven’s new art class, which was “art in the park” with one of the homeschool moms. she liked it! its not super expensive, she gets a little art (and a little art history…they talked about paul klee today, and then did art like him) and she gets to be with other homeschoolers. the class is mostly boys right now, but maeven did enjoy it. i just have to remember to bring something to entertain tyren because there’s not a playground…its just grass and trees.

afterwards we went for lunch and then headed to the homeschool park day that happens every thursday, weather permitting. we haven’t been in a couple years, i think…its just not been something we really wanted to do because we always felt kinda like outsiders when we went…all the kids knew each other and there were so many and maeven in particular didn’t know how to break into the groups. but we tried again today and today she really enjoyed herself!! today she made a bunch of new (and remade old) friends and had a blast!

its still a lot of work for me because i can’t just sit and chat with the parents…i have to follow tyren around. and keep him away from maeven so she can have fun without brother intervention. but still i got some socializing with some friends i haven’t seen in awhile and it was fun all around! so we will be coming again! i think we’ll make it a weekly thing again. very cool!

this week has just been more of the same. :(  maeven is still coughing up a lung and not feeling 100%. took her to the dr and i know she’s just got to ride it out…but its not making her all that inclined to sit and do any focusing on “schoolwork.”

today i had hoped to get some stuff done but then the day was taken up with more dr’s appts. this time for mommy and daddy.  adam stayed home today so that we could take turns with the kids while the other went to our new dr for a physical. then because this is a “friends playday”, and we couldn’t go play at our friends’ house because of their mama still being on the mend from pneumonia, we had maeven’s friend brooke come over and play with her…she really needed that socializing with her friends because she’s gotten so little of it lately with being sick so long (and them being sick before us).  so that shot the whole day pretty much. which is fine…since i didn’t feel like we were really going to get anything done anyway.

so tomorrow i am going to try to get some work done with her while tyren goes with nana and bompa for brunch. not sure how far we’ll get, but i’m going to do what i can.

and if maeven can just get well again and stop this horrible coughing, all our lives will be better! mary graves (ped nurse practitioner) said that it can last up to 6 weeks! gawd i hope it doesn’t last that long! i’m tired of everything being put on hold.

well yesterday was another waste of a day. we did get one spelling lesson done, with much crying. *sigh* not at all what i would call successful. maeven is still sick. its just not a very educational time.

yesterday my mom, thank heavens, took tyren for a couple hours to play…but i didn’t have that time for “school” with maeven because i had to take her to the dr’s office for her cough, which has gotten worse. took the entire time and when we got out i had to go get tyren and then take us for food. maeven absolutely refused to eat anything in our house before our dr’s appt so i had to rush her afterwards to find something to eat because she’s just a bear without food…and being sick already…ay yi yi. i just didn’t want to argue with her anymore, just wanted to get her some food, fast.

so when adam came home, i had him take tyren with him while he ran an errand. so i was thinking that would give me time to get even just a little school done. but no. much whining and crying and coughing and “i’m sooooo hot!!!” (no fever, but she’s been acting feverish.) ugh. so i relented and let her take a shower, which changed her attitude some. and we were able to get through one spelling lesson. that’s all. and by the end she was crying every time she got a word spelled wrong. and writing it all sloppy. so i gave up.

yesterday was just not a good school day. hopefully today will be better.