Analogies

I love analogies. When I find myself facing something I have to explain, I search my mind for a proper analogy and trot it out. It has come in handy several times when explaining my craziness to my spouse.

One that I come back to again and again is the similarities between potty training and learning to read.

Hear me out.

First, the social stigma or look-down-the-nose-upon those whose children are not potty training by a certain age or reading by a certain age.

There is pride in some parents when their child is potty trained or reading at a much younger age than ‘normal’ (whatever “normal” is). There is despair in the minds of other parents when either of these two abilities is delayed much past ‘normal.’

Secondly, some parents spend quite a bit of time trying to train their child in the science of proper elimination of their bodily waste. Most homeschooling parents spend quite a bit of time training their children in the mechanics of reading (phonics, sight words, blending, etc.) unless the child figures it out at a young age on their own.

Third, plenty of parents bang their heads against the wall, figuratively, when their child doesn’t seem to be able to properly perform the task which the parent is attempting to train them in repeatedly.

I have found that I have absolutely nothing to do with my child making that final leap that allows them to be properly reading or potty training. Something inside their head just “clicks” and while one day they cannot do the task, the next they can. In our house, we also have set-backs and tough days after the “clicking” takes place, but there is such a noticeable difference in ability that a new pattern quickly emerges.

Anyway, I just wanted to encourage those out there facing either of these two sometimes seemingly insurmountable tasks. Keep gently showing the proper steps and behaviors for a few minutes each day. Don’t despair and don’t get upset. Unless there is something physical that is not right and impeding the process, when the “click” occurs in your child’s brain, all the ground work you are laying with help them succeed all the more.  This can make the difference between a child who automatically washes their hands after using the restroom and one who just leaves the bathroom. Your patience can determine if you spawn a life-long love of reading or a sullen peace treaty between your child and books.

Good luck!

 

Translation Help

We recently opened a box of Cheerios® that had a children’s book in it. We’ve gotten these before, although it has been awhile. The kids look forward to this and we’ve found quite a few that have become favorites. The books in the cereal box don’t keep up well with the frequent handling and we’ve had to replace many of them with sturdier purchased ‘board book’ or soft cover.

Anyway, my oldest asked me why this one came in both English and Spanish. I explained that it was so people who speak Spanish can also read the book. She pondered this for a minute or so and came back to ask, “But what if you only speak Latin or French or Algebra?”

Summer Reading Club

The tiny local library has started their summer reading club up. Activities are planned once per week at the library and all books the kids read (or have read to them) are recorded on sheets and turned in. At the end of the club, the kids get a chance to redeem their “book bucks” for prizes and also have a chance to win a bike donated by a local business.

The older kids really enjoyed the first week’s activity. We arrived early enough to pick up our stash of books (eventually maxing out our checkout number). Child #1 who now “loves to read” has already read between two and three (170-210 pg) books per day since then. It is hard to find “suitable” reading material on her reading level in our small town library. We are going to be joining the “big city” library system (1 1/2 hrs drive away) sometime this late summer/early fall to gain access to more books we would like to use for our Story of the World history curriculum and hopefully more books on Child #1′s reading level.

Until then, we are having a great time with the summer reading club, swimming several times a week at the local pool, and hitting local (or regional) kid-friendly events while trying to stay cool!

Summer Session: Day 3

We took a two week break after the official “end” of our school year. We started back up on Monday for a light summer session of schoolwork.

I start out with Child #1 & Child #2 working together on Writing With Ease Level 2. It is primarily for Child #1 who just finished second grade of our homeschool. I determined that she needs to have steady practice in copywork, narration, and dictation. Knowing myself, I won’t give her daily practice in such things unless I have a curriculum that has it all laid out for me. So, I purchased the workbook for WWE2 to do this school year.

Child #2 just finished Kindergarten but she loves to write and does a pretty good job writing in cursive. (I started teaching cursive to them both last summer with sidewalk chalk and continued this last school year with Cursive First.) She needs help in cutting her “narrations” down from a retelling into just a couple-sentence summary. The copywork is a bonus and I don’t expect her to keep up with the dictation as she can’t read or spell well at all yet.

The WWE2 workbook is laid out so that Day 1 is narration. Day 2 is copywork. Day 3 is dictation. Day 4 is narration and then dictation. Days 1 and 2 went pretty well. Day 3 was horrid. I didn’t think Child #2 would be able to do dictation, but she did pretty well – with lots of prompting of how to spell the next word (which she pretty much remembered). Child #1 remembered much of the sentence but showed a lot of frustration when I gently tried to help her with her misspellings (flattery was spelled fatery, off was miswritten oof, guard was gard, etc.) or when she left a word out (your). She quit with three words to go and refused to continue. Eventually, she did write the last three words. But she had to take a break first. I am not looking forward to Day 4 or future Day 3s. I could take her back down to WWE Level 1, but I really don’t think it is necessary. She just needs more practice and more patience! (And I need to continue to have patience.)

My up & coming (pencil-phobic) third grader also started Growing With Grammar 3. It went fine the first two days. She even said she kind of liked it. Today, however, the writing got to her. There isn’t that much, but she was asked to rewrite run-on sentences into two complete sentences. There were about eight of them in the lesson and she balked at the first one. After two separate bouts of crying an hour apart, she took a nap. She’d gotten up at 5 a.m. and I decided she needed to lay down because the histrionics were more like Child #2 than Child #1. She completed the lesson at around 5:30 p.m.

I picked GWG because it is supposed to be easy for the child to do without much direction or teacher-time while also being comprehensive, spiral, quick, and not involve much writing. I have had to go back through the lessons with her each day so far. I will say that it doesn’t take long once she applies herself to the lesson. I find myself spending the time explaining things to her from the student manual and correcting her work as she goes along because she doesn’t seem to “get” the concepts when she puts them into practice. Her sentences frequently don’t end with punctuation and they definitely don’t all start with capital letters. This is why she needs a grammar program. We will continue and see how it goes in a few more weeks.

My little first grade not-wanna-be (she would prefer to stay in K) continues in the Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons book. We left off on Lesson 44 before Christmas due to extreme frustration on both our parts. We lent the book out to a friend in the spring and when it came back, my child actually got the book out on her own initiative and started to “read” the stories. We started back up at around Lesson 15 just doing the story section of each lesson. We finished Lesson 31 today and she does really well. I plan to continue until we get to another roadblock. Then, we’ll switch back to Spell to Write and Read (SWR) phonograms and spelling lists. To be honest, she hates SWR right now, so it is doing us good to take a break.

Both children do some math for about 15-20 minutes. The older child is working on making her addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts come more easily and quickly. We play games, do speed drills (timed/untimed), work with Math Wrap-Ups (timed & untimed), and other activities that is not tied to her official math curriculum. She is already 20 or so lessons into A Beka Arithmetic 3 and I think this time will help her when we start that back up.

The younger child is slowly working through the beginning of A Beka Arithmetic 1. We finished Lesson 19 today and do only about a 1/2 lesson per day (and sometimes less). She is struggling with the concept of reading numbers above 10. (It takes her a long time to “read” 34, 71, 14, etc.) She is also working on her addition and subtraction facts for the zero to five families. She does about five minutes of either flashcard work or oral math response per day as part of each lesson.

These activities have taken about an hour total to complete each day once you subtract the whining and delay tactics each child attempts. I hope the whining gets less as they realize that doesn’t help (i.e., they still have to do the work) and when they get back ‘into the groove’ of doing school each day.

The weather has been chillier than it had been with occasional rain. When it warms back up without the precipitation, they must have their schoolwork done to go to the pool. That will hopefully be a motivating factor as well.

Reading Comprehension

I’ve written previously about some issues we were concerned about with our oldest child at the beginning of the school year. We had her evaluated by a Vision Therapy Professional to see if something between her eyes and her brain was causing her to have more trouble learning than she should. While we ended up not pursuing vision therapy at this time, we were very glad we had the testing done.

One of the things I was really concerned about was her reading – or lack of desire and ability in this area. In the spring of 2008, she was reading on second grade level (while at the end of her first grade year). In the fall of 2008, she had regressed to reading very little on her own and tested at a comprehension level equal to a beginning first grader. She struggled. She hated reading.

Fast forward four months to today. It has been a fast and amazing ride with this child. Twice a week, we use McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons for Reading. Per the instructions, we average every ten tests to see where her reading comprehension is. Here is a summary of her results after thirty selections.

First set of 10:             Average 2.7
Second set of 10:         Average 3.4
Third set of 10:            Average 4.1

I have been having a hard time making sure she has appropriate level reading material because of her amazing progress in the past four months. It is a good problem to have!

We can definitely thank our wonderful local eye doctor for helping us make sure she has clear vision. My spouse and I have discussed how we might have attributed this zooming progress to the vision therapy had we done it. I’m not knocking Vision Therapy – I have heard WAY too many success stories and encouraging words since we embarked on this path to say it isn’t worth it. But, I am content in our decision – at this time – not to pursue it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Child #1′s spelling hasn’t improved very much in the same time period. It has improved – but not by a huge amount. Her coloring (in the lines) has greatly improved to where we have a hard time telling the difference between her coloring sheets and those of her younger (artistically-inclined) sibling. And she still hates to use a pencil to write anything.