A Week, Briefly (#30)
I feel as if we've hit some sort of milestone . . . week 30! I guess it's time to start thinking about how to wrap up our school year. In our state, we have to reach a goal number of hours rather than days or weeks, and we so easily reach that goal that I rarely think about it any more. The defining boundaries of our school years depend more on us than on legislation.
I'm grateful for that.
Our Morning Meetings continued much the same as last week with one addition: now the older girls and I are doing some brain teaser puzzles together using this book that I picked up at a second hand curriculum sale last Saturday morning. Pixie and Belle love it; Rose Red and Super Star not so much. We definitely get thinking each morning!
We've studied Mosiah chapters 19-21 this week, and we're finally getting the hang of The Family Proclamation paragraph 6.
In Math news, Super Star finished her Saxon 6/5 book! This is big news for our math phobic, math struggling girl! Belle isn't quite finished with Saxon 7/6 yet, but we don't want Super Star to stagnate, so they're going to share for a season.
We'll see how that works out. :)
We finished 4 more music history/appreciation lessons in our LDS Family School. I continue to be delighted by these lessons. We listen to great music and talk about great composers and elements of music. I just wish the assignments were better--we're skipping them in favor of listening to more music.
Nature Angel did minimal formal school, but she's been reading American Girl books voraciously--Josephina this week. She's also been inspired by Belle's drawing of our house to work on drawing interior views of our house. Her work is both lovely and precise.
Little Princess is also reading American Girl books--Molly has been her focus. She's also spent lots of time playing with our American Girl dolls with Nature Angel and Ladybug. They spend hours setting up elaborate play scenes and acting out stories. In addition she read about Aesop and a few fables in The Good and Beautiful.
Ladybug read some books this week!
Mister Man gave his Sonlight reader a break in favor of reading and re-reading A Fly Went By--one of my favorites from when I was a little girl.
In preschool we went on a nature walk that turned into a wild rain dance at the end, worked on our color books, experimented with yellow and blue to make green via water color paint on coffee filters, and read stories.
Dance practices just keep getting longer, and now we're organizing costumes. We're doing 3 spring shows next month, and the show dates are looming large.
We're still running every morning. It's doing me a great deal of good.
For our evening reading we completed a few more chapters of Augustus Caesar's World, finished and returned The Story of Science to the library, and began The Witches. The older girls have read and re-read it, but the littler girls haven't heard it, and it was time for some light fun in our evening reading.
One afternoon Super Star and Belle took the littles to the field to fly the kites the kids won at our county's Family of the Year dinner/carnival (yes we were nominated . . . and we won! Go figure). There wasn't any wind, so the kids had to run and run and run to keep the kites up, but they weren't bothered a bit by that.
At the ACEs clinic follow up for Brother, we found out that he has a visual processing impairment--his vision is good, but he has a hard time correlating what he sees to what he should do. They also said his strength is auditory learning. Too funny given that we thought he had an auditory processing issue. I'm not completely sold that he doesn't. But this is a start, and we'll see what happens in the coming months and years. He also needs OT, scoring in only the 5th percentile for small motor skills for his age group. He's too young to be diagnosed with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, but they gave me materials to study about it because he has many of the hallmarks of that diagnosis. He's also been diagnosed with Adjustment Disorder.
What does all of this mean for us?
Just keep doing what we're doing--read aloud, sing songs, have him work with his hands, provide safety and structure, let him be a little boy.
And make a few changes--work lots of puzzles and go ahead and start some simple academics (letter recognition, letter sound recognition, etc--he's going to need lots and lots and lots of repetition to learn); Pixie is going to run simple OT sessions with him (picking up and gluing beans, cutting paper, working with Legos, etc.)
On Friday most of us attended a homeschool convention--Little Princess and Nature Angel had a blast at the kids' convention. I got to attend a few good classes and browse the vendor hall. I'm past the point of needing to make many purchases, and I got out of there with only $39 worth of history books.
Pixie, Super Star, and Belle attended a class on courtship vs dating. They said it gave them lots to think about for the years ahead of them.
Rose Red had to work, so no convention for her.
Dad kept Mister Man, Ladybug, Brother, and Little Brother for the day. They had pizza for lunch and went to the zoo. It was a fine day for them. :)
The weekend was so full of events that we didn't get to complete all of our Saturday chores. And when Sir Walter Scott and I looked at the calendar we realized that we don't even have time to breathe for some weeks to come. There's a lot going on!
That doesn't make us unique--just part of our crazy culture.
I've begun to dream of down time.
I guess that's part of reaching that week 30 milestone.
I'm grateful for that.
Our Morning Meetings continued much the same as last week with one addition: now the older girls and I are doing some brain teaser puzzles together using this book that I picked up at a second hand curriculum sale last Saturday morning. Pixie and Belle love it; Rose Red and Super Star not so much. We definitely get thinking each morning!
We've studied Mosiah chapters 19-21 this week, and we're finally getting the hang of The Family Proclamation paragraph 6.
In Math news, Super Star finished her Saxon 6/5 book! This is big news for our math phobic, math struggling girl! Belle isn't quite finished with Saxon 7/6 yet, but we don't want Super Star to stagnate, so they're going to share for a season.
We'll see how that works out. :)
We finished 4 more music history/appreciation lessons in our LDS Family School. I continue to be delighted by these lessons. We listen to great music and talk about great composers and elements of music. I just wish the assignments were better--we're skipping them in favor of listening to more music.
Nature Angel did minimal formal school, but she's been reading American Girl books voraciously--Josephina this week. She's also been inspired by Belle's drawing of our house to work on drawing interior views of our house. Her work is both lovely and precise.
Little Princess is also reading American Girl books--Molly has been her focus. She's also spent lots of time playing with our American Girl dolls with Nature Angel and Ladybug. They spend hours setting up elaborate play scenes and acting out stories. In addition she read about Aesop and a few fables in The Good and Beautiful.
Ladybug read some books this week!
Mister Man gave his Sonlight reader a break in favor of reading and re-reading A Fly Went By--one of my favorites from when I was a little girl.
In preschool we went on a nature walk that turned into a wild rain dance at the end, worked on our color books, experimented with yellow and blue to make green via water color paint on coffee filters, and read stories.
 |
| I just loved this ensemble--snow boots, shorts, and a hoodie. :) |
Dance practices just keep getting longer, and now we're organizing costumes. We're doing 3 spring shows next month, and the show dates are looming large.
We're still running every morning. It's doing me a great deal of good.
For our evening reading we completed a few more chapters of Augustus Caesar's World, finished and returned The Story of Science to the library, and began The Witches. The older girls have read and re-read it, but the littler girls haven't heard it, and it was time for some light fun in our evening reading.
One afternoon Super Star and Belle took the littles to the field to fly the kites the kids won at our county's Family of the Year dinner/carnival (yes we were nominated . . . and we won! Go figure). There wasn't any wind, so the kids had to run and run and run to keep the kites up, but they weren't bothered a bit by that.
At the ACEs clinic follow up for Brother, we found out that he has a visual processing impairment--his vision is good, but he has a hard time correlating what he sees to what he should do. They also said his strength is auditory learning. Too funny given that we thought he had an auditory processing issue. I'm not completely sold that he doesn't. But this is a start, and we'll see what happens in the coming months and years. He also needs OT, scoring in only the 5th percentile for small motor skills for his age group. He's too young to be diagnosed with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, but they gave me materials to study about it because he has many of the hallmarks of that diagnosis. He's also been diagnosed with Adjustment Disorder.
What does all of this mean for us?
Just keep doing what we're doing--read aloud, sing songs, have him work with his hands, provide safety and structure, let him be a little boy.
And make a few changes--work lots of puzzles and go ahead and start some simple academics (letter recognition, letter sound recognition, etc--he's going to need lots and lots and lots of repetition to learn); Pixie is going to run simple OT sessions with him (picking up and gluing beans, cutting paper, working with Legos, etc.)
On Friday most of us attended a homeschool convention--Little Princess and Nature Angel had a blast at the kids' convention. I got to attend a few good classes and browse the vendor hall. I'm past the point of needing to make many purchases, and I got out of there with only $39 worth of history books.
Pixie, Super Star, and Belle attended a class on courtship vs dating. They said it gave them lots to think about for the years ahead of them.
Rose Red had to work, so no convention for her.
Dad kept Mister Man, Ladybug, Brother, and Little Brother for the day. They had pizza for lunch and went to the zoo. It was a fine day for them. :)
The weekend was so full of events that we didn't get to complete all of our Saturday chores. And when Sir Walter Scott and I looked at the calendar we realized that we don't even have time to breathe for some weeks to come. There's a lot going on!
That doesn't make us unique--just part of our crazy culture.
I've begun to dream of down time.
I guess that's part of reaching that week 30 milestone.
Happy to find this update this morning and to catch up on all the miraculous progress. Love the fun/beautiful pictures! Love to all! Be safe in the storms this week...
ReplyDeleteHooo! I drove through a doozy of a storm this morning. We're safe, though, and today the weather never got warm enough to cause more storms tonight.
DeleteI have been watching for your update the last few days and praying for your family. Sounds like an overall good week. 30 just feels like such a milestone, doesn't it? :)
ReplyDeleteI've been learning a bit about NVLD too, as it is very common with Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, both of which Mason was born with. A book you may want to see if your library has is Smart, but Scattered. I'm still working through it and there is so much that is useful for all my children. They focus on executive function skills and finding where your child (and your) strengths and weaknesses are, with specifics for strengthening them and ideas about how our own strengths and weaknesses can affect our interaction with our children based on their combination of strengths and weaknesses. Really good.
Here is a great overview of NVLD from a spina bifida group: http://www.spinabifidasupport.com/nvldsyndrome.htm
And an even better site with lots of articles to read: http://childmind.org/topics/disorders/nonverbal-learning-disorder/
Ha, obviously I've been looking at this a lot. Sorry if I just overwhelmed you with links and information.
Thank you for the recommendations!!!! At the moment we're focusing on emotional crises, but we should settle back down soon and get to look to other areas of growth. :)
DeleteHow are all of you? I miss your blog.
Yay for reaching 30 weeks! Love the pictures!
ReplyDelete