In the three days I've been rather incapacited and provided very little instruction, the girls have quite happily been left to their own devices. One aspect of this is that our cable was out on our tv when I got back home, but I had no energy to try to call Adelphia about it.
I have to say, they've been remarkable, in that a lot of what they've devised for themselves has been very educational. Not that they hit the workbooks or anything, but their play has included Madison typing out sentences and printing them out for Ella to read, which both helps Madison with spelling and Ella with reading. They have been doing a lot of crafts (as the craft area, which they haven't been inclined to clean up, attests!), reading, and play-acting. They have devised some new imaginary friends and have spent hours each day playing with them all together. Madison has read to Ella, and read on her own a lot. They have both played educational computer games. And, even though they both now have colds, there has been very little fighting.
And all of this in the context of no TV! (Not that they have ever relied on TV in any significant way.) Even their use of videos was minimal and limited to when I suggested it.
Maybe I should become an unschooler.
No, don't worry.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Neglecting my post
From Deb:
We've had hardly any school for three days now because of this weird stomach bug I have that won't quit.
Good thing that they're ahead and at least I don't have to worry about missing a few days here and there.
We've had hardly any school for three days now because of this weird stomach bug I have that won't quit.
Good thing that they're ahead and at least I don't have to worry about missing a few days here and there.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Dare I say it, but the multiplication is working
After six months of struggle with the multiplication tables, Madison's sudden decision to take control of her own multiplication learning (admittedly at my mild suggestion) is bearing fruit.
Today, she took her 10 x 10 grid to her room, looked where she hadn't colored in with highlighter, and she learned, really learned (I tested her at the end of the day):
Six problems in one day...when you have only 38 to learn, that will happen in no time. Even SHE can see that.
Then, when we were talking in the car about 4 x 6, I asked her:
Today was a pretty good and fast day, work-wise. Ella is working on odd and even numbers, and we have a little block set where she can fit together chains of numbers, so the last few days she's been doing that. She gets the concept of an even number, but I'm not sure she's at the point at which she could describe it.
Ella and I also worked on time, today. I realized that before I teach her about telling time, I have to teach her more about the concept of time. So for the last couple of times we did it, I've simply been taking this nice little educational plastic clock with the big and little hands that you can manipulate -- an important component of this clock is that the big hand will only move if you correctly move the little hand around the dial, so it acts as if real. For the last couple of times we have worked on this, we start at midnight and go around the clock twice for the 24 hours, saying whether it's light or dark outside, and say what we're doing at that hour. One more session of that and it will be time to talk more about the big hand and the small hand.
Madison did spelling fairly willingly today. We are using the Spellwell series a bit unconventionally, which is just taking their list suggestions and testing her until she gets six that she doesn't know. Then she has taken those six and typed them out on her computer. (I love seeing her do this, because she is starting to hesitate and focus before typing a word -- I can see that she's working out the typing pattern with her eyes on the keyboard so she can do it as a unit rather than hunt-and-peck. I didn't teach her to do this, she's just doing it naturally.)
Amazing that even though she's such a good reader (she's into the third Harry Potter these days), she can't spell better than the typical first- or second-grader. When she was very young, I used to think that she was an aural learner, because sometimes she could figure out what word we were spelling by listening to the sound of the letters. But as soon as she could read, she snapped right into being a visual learner. It is amazing that in the course of about the two months before she turned six, when reading became a pleasure rather than a chore, she also became completely a word recognizer and relied much less on phonics, so little that sometimes she's lackadaisical about sounding out a word that she doesn't know; she'd vastly prefer to figure it out from context or just skip it. Regular "educators" might try to point to the idea that she is now a whole-language learner rather than a phonics learner, but that is nonsense. Already-successful readers recognize words as units, it is true, but to try to use that as a pedagogical method rather than phonics is, I really believe, a recipe for disaster.
To round things out today, Madison worked in her logic workbook (Mind Benders -- she LOVES this, I have to limit her time on it or she'd do the whole workbook in a day). She also read out loud a fair amount of Robert Frost, as occasioned by the onset of a fall-like day here in Virginia. She loves reading The Road Not Taken, and I think her favorite poem by Frost is The Last Word of A Bluebird. We have a wonderful edition of Frost in the Poetry for Young People series; this book is divided up into poems for the various seasons, and it's illustrated by Henri Sorensen. Henri, wherever you are, you're wonderful.
Oh, and we went apple picking this afternoon, in preparation for our marathon applesauce cooking extravaganza tomorrow. Madison loves eating fresh applesauce right off the stove. The one orchard in Charlottesville is Carter Mountain Orchard; the orchard is right on the top of Carter Mountain and you have a beautiful 360-degree view all around Virginia.
Today, she took her 10 x 10 grid to her room, looked where she hadn't colored in with highlighter, and she learned, really learned (I tested her at the end of the day):
2 x 8
4 x 6 (and 6 x 4)
5 x 6 (and 6 x 5)
6 x 6
Six problems in one day...when you have only 38 to learn, that will happen in no time. Even SHE can see that.
Then, when we were talking in the car about 4 x 6, I asked her:
What happens when you double 4?
You get eight.
What happens when you divide 6 by 2?
You get three.
What is 4 x 6 again?
24.
Guess what happens when you multiply 8 x 3?
(Gasps.) No! Really? Does it work for EVERY SINGLE number, if you multiply one by 2 and divide the other one by 2, do you get the same answer as for the first problem?
Yep.
(A big grin from the back seat.) Ok, let's prove it... give me another!
Today was a pretty good and fast day, work-wise. Ella is working on odd and even numbers, and we have a little block set where she can fit together chains of numbers, so the last few days she's been doing that. She gets the concept of an even number, but I'm not sure she's at the point at which she could describe it.
Ella and I also worked on time, today. I realized that before I teach her about telling time, I have to teach her more about the concept of time. So for the last couple of times we did it, I've simply been taking this nice little educational plastic clock with the big and little hands that you can manipulate -- an important component of this clock is that the big hand will only move if you correctly move the little hand around the dial, so it acts as if real. For the last couple of times we have worked on this, we start at midnight and go around the clock twice for the 24 hours, saying whether it's light or dark outside, and say what we're doing at that hour. One more session of that and it will be time to talk more about the big hand and the small hand.
Madison did spelling fairly willingly today. We are using the Spellwell series a bit unconventionally, which is just taking their list suggestions and testing her until she gets six that she doesn't know. Then she has taken those six and typed them out on her computer. (I love seeing her do this, because she is starting to hesitate and focus before typing a word -- I can see that she's working out the typing pattern with her eyes on the keyboard so she can do it as a unit rather than hunt-and-peck. I didn't teach her to do this, she's just doing it naturally.)
Amazing that even though she's such a good reader (she's into the third Harry Potter these days), she can't spell better than the typical first- or second-grader. When she was very young, I used to think that she was an aural learner, because sometimes she could figure out what word we were spelling by listening to the sound of the letters. But as soon as she could read, she snapped right into being a visual learner. It is amazing that in the course of about the two months before she turned six, when reading became a pleasure rather than a chore, she also became completely a word recognizer and relied much less on phonics, so little that sometimes she's lackadaisical about sounding out a word that she doesn't know; she'd vastly prefer to figure it out from context or just skip it. Regular "educators" might try to point to the idea that she is now a whole-language learner rather than a phonics learner, but that is nonsense. Already-successful readers recognize words as units, it is true, but to try to use that as a pedagogical method rather than phonics is, I really believe, a recipe for disaster.
To round things out today, Madison worked in her logic workbook (Mind Benders -- she LOVES this, I have to limit her time on it or she'd do the whole workbook in a day). She also read out loud a fair amount of Robert Frost, as occasioned by the onset of a fall-like day here in Virginia. She loves reading The Road Not Taken, and I think her favorite poem by Frost is The Last Word of A Bluebird. We have a wonderful edition of Frost in the Poetry for Young People series; this book is divided up into poems for the various seasons, and it's illustrated by Henri Sorensen. Henri, wherever you are, you're wonderful.
Oh, and we went apple picking this afternoon, in preparation for our marathon applesauce cooking extravaganza tomorrow. Madison loves eating fresh applesauce right off the stove. The one orchard in Charlottesville is Carter Mountain Orchard; the orchard is right on the top of Carter Mountain and you have a beautiful 360-degree view all around Virginia.
The struggle of handwriting
From Deb:
It's hard when your brain so far outstrips your hand. Madison is getting a little better at handwriting, but struggles both with its look and its pace. She knows it's pretty bad, and it takes her so long to form the letters that she in no way can use handwriting to record her thoughts. She's learning to type partly to take away this frustration, but that is still very slow, of course. (It's a good thing we're doing the book together, us talking while I type, just so that she has some outlet for getting down her thoughts.) Yesterday was the day for thank-you cards for her birthday, and my god, it took her two hours to write "Thank you, love Madison" on ten cards and print out a sentence or two on the computer in the vein of "Thank you for coming to my birthday party. I really loved the art supplies." And I even typed the original sentence, made her letterhead, and provided her with the list of who gave her what. She had a lot of fun with fonts and colors, though.
It even frustrates me, so I can imagine how she feels.
I know that the key is the same as the way to Broadway. But I think I hate that she has to practice even more than she hates it. So, admission of guilt here: We don't do it every day. Kind of far from it.
It's hard when your brain so far outstrips your hand. Madison is getting a little better at handwriting, but struggles both with its look and its pace. She knows it's pretty bad, and it takes her so long to form the letters that she in no way can use handwriting to record her thoughts. She's learning to type partly to take away this frustration, but that is still very slow, of course. (It's a good thing we're doing the book together, us talking while I type, just so that she has some outlet for getting down her thoughts.) Yesterday was the day for thank-you cards for her birthday, and my god, it took her two hours to write "Thank you, love Madison" on ten cards and print out a sentence or two on the computer in the vein of "Thank you for coming to my birthday party. I really loved the art supplies." And I even typed the original sentence, made her letterhead, and provided her with the list of who gave her what. She had a lot of fun with fonts and colors, though.
It even frustrates me, so I can imagine how she feels.
I know that the key is the same as the way to Broadway. But I think I hate that she has to practice even more than she hates it. So, admission of guilt here: We don't do it every day. Kind of far from it.
Ella and reading
From Deb:
Because I had not pressed Ella on reading all summer, she naturally fell behind in skills, which I of course didn't worry about because she's only 5, after all, and she came so far so fast in the spring. So what I did this week was borrow back my EPS Phonics Books from Tatiana, and start Ella back on the second series of 10 books (she had finished the third in the spring). We'll read them through again. We've done one every day (where usually she has read just half a book in a day as they got harder). This has been very successful the last two days; she is impressed with herself that she is able to zoom through a whole book in about 10 minutes. We'll rapidly be back to where we left off.
Regarding the silent E question, I have noticed an interesting thing about Ella: She is not holding the entire sound of the word in her mind until she actually makes the word-meaning connection, it's still a collection of strung-together sounds that she has to reconstruct by looking again at the first letter. I noticed this because when she is reading a word that has a silent E, she doesn't notice at the outset that there is a silent E at the end, and adjust her vowel sounds accordingly (she had done this well as of about May, so I'm sure it will come back quickly); instead, she sounds through the entire word, comes to a silent E at the end, and stops, confused. She has heard the sounded-out version in her mind, and it doesn't make any sense.
For example, take the word "cake". She'll sound out C-A-K and then stop and see the silent E. She repeats "CAK" in her mind. "CAK" doesn't make any sense to her. But instead of automatically substituting the short A vowel sound for the long one she's using, and realizing that it must be "C-AY-K," she has to reconstruct the whole thing. First, she fixes in her mind that the sound is now "Ay" not "Ah" because of the silent E, and then she goes back to reconstruct the word. "C-AY-K" and now she hears herself saying it, and knows it's Cake.
That probably made no sense to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating. I need to get this stuff down, because there is no recreating the little bits and pieces of exactly how they learn; you have to record it immediately.
One other note: I am seeing glimpses in Ella that she is interested in listening to more complicated stories from chapter books rather than just being willing to sit with me for picture books. I had noted -- not in a worried way, but interested -- that whereas at the age of 3 Madison had wanted to hear books like The Trumpet of the Swan, Ella is still not interested in focusing on those kinds of stories. And by her age, Madison was having me read her the Boxcar Children and Cam Jansen. I don't know exactly what it means that Ella hasn't been ready for these things, maybe it's just that Madison has always had this exceptional imagination that she is willing to substitute for the pictures in the storybooks. I don't know.
Because I had not pressed Ella on reading all summer, she naturally fell behind in skills, which I of course didn't worry about because she's only 5, after all, and she came so far so fast in the spring. So what I did this week was borrow back my EPS Phonics Books from Tatiana, and start Ella back on the second series of 10 books (she had finished the third in the spring). We'll read them through again. We've done one every day (where usually she has read just half a book in a day as they got harder). This has been very successful the last two days; she is impressed with herself that she is able to zoom through a whole book in about 10 minutes. We'll rapidly be back to where we left off.
Regarding the silent E question, I have noticed an interesting thing about Ella: She is not holding the entire sound of the word in her mind until she actually makes the word-meaning connection, it's still a collection of strung-together sounds that she has to reconstruct by looking again at the first letter. I noticed this because when she is reading a word that has a silent E, she doesn't notice at the outset that there is a silent E at the end, and adjust her vowel sounds accordingly (she had done this well as of about May, so I'm sure it will come back quickly); instead, she sounds through the entire word, comes to a silent E at the end, and stops, confused. She has heard the sounded-out version in her mind, and it doesn't make any sense.
For example, take the word "cake". She'll sound out C-A-K and then stop and see the silent E. She repeats "CAK" in her mind. "CAK" doesn't make any sense to her. But instead of automatically substituting the short A vowel sound for the long one she's using, and realizing that it must be "C-AY-K," she has to reconstruct the whole thing. First, she fixes in her mind that the sound is now "Ay" not "Ah" because of the silent E, and then she goes back to reconstruct the word. "C-AY-K" and now she hears herself saying it, and knows it's Cake.
That probably made no sense to anyone but me, but I find it fascinating. I need to get this stuff down, because there is no recreating the little bits and pieces of exactly how they learn; you have to record it immediately.
One other note: I am seeing glimpses in Ella that she is interested in listening to more complicated stories from chapter books rather than just being willing to sit with me for picture books. I had noted -- not in a worried way, but interested -- that whereas at the age of 3 Madison had wanted to hear books like The Trumpet of the Swan, Ella is still not interested in focusing on those kinds of stories. And by her age, Madison was having me read her the Boxcar Children and Cam Jansen. I don't know exactly what it means that Ella hasn't been ready for these things, maybe it's just that Madison has always had this exceptional imagination that she is willing to substitute for the pictures in the storybooks. I don't know.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Order of Operations
From Deb:
We had a good first day back after vacation today. I mean yesterday, it's past midnight.
Madison, who has finally decided to take control of her own multiplication table learning, asked to create a 10 x 10 grid so she could see which ones she knew by heart and which she didn't. I printed out a grid from Excel so she didn't have to waste hours trying to make a nice one with rulers, etc. She completed all of the blank spaces, sometimes knowing the answers by heart, sometimes having to figure them out. I used it as our handwriting lesson, too, and believe it or not she was kind of enthusiastic about making it look nice, so things looked better than normal. She still kept reversing the 6's, though.
After she completed the grid, she had me test her on the tables. I put a small dot in the squares of the ones she knew by heart. Then, she took a highlighter marker and colored in all of the squares of the ones she knew, leaving the rest white. She figured out that she didn't know 38 of them, which translates to roughly 20 that she has to memorize since many of them are the same backwards-forwards.
20 seemed so manageable to her. She's going to devise strategies for doing the memorization. I'll leave her be on that for a while.
So that was the scheduled part of the day. But I love how sometimes learning happens just spontaneously rather than having been planned.
We were eating out for lunch (I want to mess up the kitchen as little as possible because of potential buyers seeing the house), and she asked me the difference between answers to equations that people knew, versus ones they had to figure out. So, she asked me, "Do you know the answer to 10 times 10 minus 10 plus 10 times 10?"
We then talked about how knowing the answer to parts of it makes the other parts easy to figure out, and that no one has memorized the answers to problems that have more than 2 steps; pretty much you just have to know the multiplication tables and your addition facts, to be able to do things that are much more complicated.
And THEN I gave her a shocker, which is that the answer to her question depends on how you group the parts of it. Really? The answer can be 1000, or 190, or 200, and probably others, depending on whether you don't use any parentheses at all to group them, or put parentheses in certain configurations. We talked about My Dear Aunt Sally as being the way to memorize the Order of Operations, and we did a couple of problems on napkins, both her above problem and things like
3 x 4 + 4 = 18
if there are no parentheses, and that this means
(3 x 4) + 4
But if you use a different set of parentheses like this:
3 x (4 + 4) then the answer is 24.
She loved this. She's glimpsing the fact that there is cool math beyond the multiplication tables.
We had a good first day back after vacation today. I mean yesterday, it's past midnight.
Madison, who has finally decided to take control of her own multiplication table learning, asked to create a 10 x 10 grid so she could see which ones she knew by heart and which she didn't. I printed out a grid from Excel so she didn't have to waste hours trying to make a nice one with rulers, etc. She completed all of the blank spaces, sometimes knowing the answers by heart, sometimes having to figure them out. I used it as our handwriting lesson, too, and believe it or not she was kind of enthusiastic about making it look nice, so things looked better than normal. She still kept reversing the 6's, though.
After she completed the grid, she had me test her on the tables. I put a small dot in the squares of the ones she knew by heart. Then, she took a highlighter marker and colored in all of the squares of the ones she knew, leaving the rest white. She figured out that she didn't know 38 of them, which translates to roughly 20 that she has to memorize since many of them are the same backwards-forwards.
20 seemed so manageable to her. She's going to devise strategies for doing the memorization. I'll leave her be on that for a while.
So that was the scheduled part of the day. But I love how sometimes learning happens just spontaneously rather than having been planned.
We were eating out for lunch (I want to mess up the kitchen as little as possible because of potential buyers seeing the house), and she asked me the difference between answers to equations that people knew, versus ones they had to figure out. So, she asked me, "Do you know the answer to 10 times 10 minus 10 plus 10 times 10?"
We then talked about how knowing the answer to parts of it makes the other parts easy to figure out, and that no one has memorized the answers to problems that have more than 2 steps; pretty much you just have to know the multiplication tables and your addition facts, to be able to do things that are much more complicated.
And THEN I gave her a shocker, which is that the answer to her question depends on how you group the parts of it. Really? The answer can be 1000, or 190, or 200, and probably others, depending on whether you don't use any parentheses at all to group them, or put parentheses in certain configurations. We talked about My Dear Aunt Sally as being the way to memorize the Order of Operations, and we did a couple of problems on napkins, both her above problem and things like
3 x 4 + 4 = 18
if there are no parentheses, and that this means
(3 x 4) + 4
But if you use a different set of parentheses like this:
3 x (4 + 4) then the answer is 24.
She loved this. She's glimpsing the fact that there is cool math beyond the multiplication tables.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Working and home schooling
From Deb:
Sometimes this is really hard.
I mean, the girls are very independent, especially for being 5 and 7, but sometimes clients just need me in the morning and there's no two ways about it--especially for people whose projects I've been working on a lot and getting it to them late, if you know what I mean. There's only so far that they'll be perfectly understanding about my setup.
So I'm afraid I've been giving a bit more of a reduced workload for Madison and Ella this week. I haven't been pushing Ella too hard on the reading, nor Madison on handwriting, and the multiplication strategy that Laura suggested I try with Madison involves just a bit too much of my focus for me to accomplish it this week. Add to this is the stress that I'm going to be on vacation next week, and there are things that simply.must.be.accomplished for clients before I go. I've been working until 12:30 at night (another benefit of David's being gone...he's not here to distract me, and not to give me The Disapproving Look) and getting a lot done in that quiet time, but clients actually need to converse during the day.
And I'm supposed to be the epitome of home schooling working mom, or so I may be portrayed in Sue Shellenbarger's column next week. Ah well, some days are easier than others.
On the other hand, they are getting learning time in, no doubt about it. And having fun. Gotta go and do our new "Teaching American History with Folk Songs" book and CD, which I've been promising all morning as long as their other work got done. It turned out to be a good incentive!
Looks like I'm leaning toward a Robinson approach in the next few years!
Sometimes this is really hard.
I mean, the girls are very independent, especially for being 5 and 7, but sometimes clients just need me in the morning and there's no two ways about it--especially for people whose projects I've been working on a lot and getting it to them late, if you know what I mean. There's only so far that they'll be perfectly understanding about my setup.
So I'm afraid I've been giving a bit more of a reduced workload for Madison and Ella this week. I haven't been pushing Ella too hard on the reading, nor Madison on handwriting, and the multiplication strategy that Laura suggested I try with Madison involves just a bit too much of my focus for me to accomplish it this week. Add to this is the stress that I'm going to be on vacation next week, and there are things that simply.must.be.accomplished for clients before I go. I've been working until 12:30 at night (another benefit of David's being gone...he's not here to distract me, and not to give me The Disapproving Look) and getting a lot done in that quiet time, but clients actually need to converse during the day.
And I'm supposed to be the epitome of home schooling working mom, or so I may be portrayed in Sue Shellenbarger's column next week. Ah well, some days are easier than others.
On the other hand, they are getting learning time in, no doubt about it. And having fun. Gotta go and do our new "Teaching American History with Folk Songs" book and CD, which I've been promising all morning as long as their other work got done. It turned out to be a good incentive!
Looks like I'm leaning toward a Robinson approach in the next few years!
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
First Day of School
From Deb:
We had a good First Day of School. Not a to-die-for day, with wild enthusiasm for every new idea presented to them, not a my-god-I'm-the-best-mother-educator-in-the-whole-freaking-world kind of day, not a can't-wait-to-get-to-this-new-work kind of day, but a solid day of education and (mostly) snuggles. Ella has a new attitude that she is trying on, a cranky one, but it won't work, trust me. She just needs a few days for that fact to sink in.
In between reading, handwriting, math, and logic, we pulled all of the remaining carrots we planted in the spring (a motley crop of mostly small, hairy, bitter carrots) and put them into a stew that cooked all day in the crock pot. The cooking didn't improve their taste too much, so even Ella, who is wild for carrots when I slow-cook them with my Brazilian beef stew (apple cider vinegar and cumin flavoring), didn't like them come dinnertime. We worked on the Frontier Team (Raymond will be happy to know we're about done with Chapter 3) and I had my interview with Sue Shellenbarger in peace for 40 minutes. Plus I got some work done for, well, my own work. "Real" work. And I have a loose outline for the rest of the week.
Some day, maybe my own real work will be the Frontier Team. God, that would be great. Given focus, Madison and I could probably churn out two or three per year. She LOVES writing with me.
We're going to take off all of next week and travel to various northeast friends and relatives for about 10 days. We'll make it all the way up to northern Connecticut where we'll stay with a colleague of mine and visit...yes, really!...the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum. I found out about it today, and Madison is REALLY excited about going.
And just to top it all off, heck, maybe I'll take the girls to the beach on Friday. It's not like we're going to be anywhere near a beach when we live in Rochester. Why not, we'll just go to the darned beach. TWPFFFTT to the school officials.
We had a good First Day of School. Not a to-die-for day, with wild enthusiasm for every new idea presented to them, not a my-god-I'm-the-best-mother-educator-in-the-whole-freaking-world kind of day, not a can't-wait-to-get-to-this-new-work kind of day, but a solid day of education and (mostly) snuggles. Ella has a new attitude that she is trying on, a cranky one, but it won't work, trust me. She just needs a few days for that fact to sink in.
In between reading, handwriting, math, and logic, we pulled all of the remaining carrots we planted in the spring (a motley crop of mostly small, hairy, bitter carrots) and put them into a stew that cooked all day in the crock pot. The cooking didn't improve their taste too much, so even Ella, who is wild for carrots when I slow-cook them with my Brazilian beef stew (apple cider vinegar and cumin flavoring), didn't like them come dinnertime. We worked on the Frontier Team (Raymond will be happy to know we're about done with Chapter 3) and I had my interview with Sue Shellenbarger in peace for 40 minutes. Plus I got some work done for, well, my own work. "Real" work. And I have a loose outline for the rest of the week.
Some day, maybe my own real work will be the Frontier Team. God, that would be great. Given focus, Madison and I could probably churn out two or three per year. She LOVES writing with me.
We're going to take off all of next week and travel to various northeast friends and relatives for about 10 days. We'll make it all the way up to northern Connecticut where we'll stay with a colleague of mine and visit...yes, really!...the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum. I found out about it today, and Madison is REALLY excited about going.
And just to top it all off, heck, maybe I'll take the girls to the beach on Friday. It's not like we're going to be anywhere near a beach when we live in Rochester. Why not, we'll just go to the darned beach. TWPFFFTT to the school officials.
Right-mouse-click for spelling
From Deb:
The last few days, both Madison and Ella independently have been obsessed with writing on the computer. I got Madison a new computer and printer at the beginning of the summer, and in the last couple of days, despite the fact that we haven't officially started school yet (that's today), she has preferred writing in the word processor to playing games. Ella, too, has wanted to do this on her own computer, and, really, it's independent of Madison, it's not as though she is imitating her deliberately. Ella may even have had the idea first.
One shortcoming of this is that I have had to be fairly close by, otherwise there is Spelling Shouting going on all over the house. "Mom, how do you spell SCHOOL?" one of them might shout while I'm down in the kitchen. I yell back over the sound of the sink, "School. S-C-H-O-O-L. School. There is a silent H in there, so think of it as pronounced "SK- -HOOL."
One thing that Madison can't abide when we're writing The Frontier Team together is the wiggly red line under the misspelled words or the wiggly green line under the sentence fragments that Word deems ungrammatical. Even when I tell her that it's just a proper name that Word doesn't know, or we're doing something for effect so it's okay, she wants me to get rid of that line. So of course she notices instantly when she has misspelled something in her own writing when she's on the conmputer.
I debated about 4 seconds after I thought to teach her the right-mouse-click to fix the spelling. Should I or shouldn't I? Would it just make her too reliant on the right-mouse-click and she wouldn't bother learning to spell? On the other hand, I'm not in the least concerned over her being able to spell well someday, and this way she's noticing what she did wrong (which she doesnt, particularly, when she hand writes something; it either seems okay to her, or she sees it's wrong but it's too late to do anything about it except an ugly cross-out so she lives with it), checking out the possibilities the computer provides, noticing the difference between what she did and the correct spelling (she invariably picks the correct spelling because she recognizes it instantly -- which speaks to the stupidity of the multiple-choice spelling test Laura's tutoring client will be using in her 6th-grade classroom). So, right-mouse-click it is, and she loves the independence. I'm only being consulted at times when the spelling is so far off the mark that the options don't give her the right word (such as when she tried to spell "they" T-H-A).
She didn't want to stop writing even after 9pm last night. She wanted to write in lieu of reading her new (old) Bobbsey Twins book or of having me read to her. Who was I to deny her, I figured. So I let her write until 9:30 and then snuggled with her in bed, but she was so excited by what she was doing (more on that later) that she couldn't fall asleep until almost 10:30.
The other thing that I have noticed about both girls after only a few days of this writing obsession is that they're both getting much better at knowing where the letters are on the keyboard. Madison keeps wanting to use more than one finger, so she's thinking ahead two or three letters and placing her fingers on the keyboard so she can use two or three fingers.
Ella is deinitely much faster than before in knowing where the letters are, too, although she's using just the one finger. When Ella types, though, I really do have to stick close or else she gets stuck on the spelling. Ella doesn't care a whit about the red underlinings, though, and she's content to misspell and doesn't really realize that she has done so. Interestingly, she is more willing than Madison to make an effort to memorize the short words I give her when she wants to spell them, and then type them out from her memorization. (Got. G-O-T. Got. And then she'll go over to the computer and type G-O-T.) Madison is much more interested in me giving her the sounds chunk by chunk, rather than the whole word at once.
The last few days, both Madison and Ella independently have been obsessed with writing on the computer. I got Madison a new computer and printer at the beginning of the summer, and in the last couple of days, despite the fact that we haven't officially started school yet (that's today), she has preferred writing in the word processor to playing games. Ella, too, has wanted to do this on her own computer, and, really, it's independent of Madison, it's not as though she is imitating her deliberately. Ella may even have had the idea first.
One shortcoming of this is that I have had to be fairly close by, otherwise there is Spelling Shouting going on all over the house. "Mom, how do you spell SCHOOL?" one of them might shout while I'm down in the kitchen. I yell back over the sound of the sink, "School. S-C-H-O-O-L. School. There is a silent H in there, so think of it as pronounced "SK- -HOOL."
One thing that Madison can't abide when we're writing The Frontier Team together is the wiggly red line under the misspelled words or the wiggly green line under the sentence fragments that Word deems ungrammatical. Even when I tell her that it's just a proper name that Word doesn't know, or we're doing something for effect so it's okay, she wants me to get rid of that line. So of course she notices instantly when she has misspelled something in her own writing when she's on the conmputer.
I debated about 4 seconds after I thought to teach her the right-mouse-click to fix the spelling. Should I or shouldn't I? Would it just make her too reliant on the right-mouse-click and she wouldn't bother learning to spell? On the other hand, I'm not in the least concerned over her being able to spell well someday, and this way she's noticing what she did wrong (which she doesnt, particularly, when she hand writes something; it either seems okay to her, or she sees it's wrong but it's too late to do anything about it except an ugly cross-out so she lives with it), checking out the possibilities the computer provides, noticing the difference between what she did and the correct spelling (she invariably picks the correct spelling because she recognizes it instantly -- which speaks to the stupidity of the multiple-choice spelling test Laura's tutoring client will be using in her 6th-grade classroom). So, right-mouse-click it is, and she loves the independence. I'm only being consulted at times when the spelling is so far off the mark that the options don't give her the right word (such as when she tried to spell "they" T-H-A).
She didn't want to stop writing even after 9pm last night. She wanted to write in lieu of reading her new (old) Bobbsey Twins book or of having me read to her. Who was I to deny her, I figured. So I let her write until 9:30 and then snuggled with her in bed, but she was so excited by what she was doing (more on that later) that she couldn't fall asleep until almost 10:30.
The other thing that I have noticed about both girls after only a few days of this writing obsession is that they're both getting much better at knowing where the letters are on the keyboard. Madison keeps wanting to use more than one finger, so she's thinking ahead two or three letters and placing her fingers on the keyboard so she can use two or three fingers.
Ella is deinitely much faster than before in knowing where the letters are, too, although she's using just the one finger. When Ella types, though, I really do have to stick close or else she gets stuck on the spelling. Ella doesn't care a whit about the red underlinings, though, and she's content to misspell and doesn't really realize that she has done so. Interestingly, she is more willing than Madison to make an effort to memorize the short words I give her when she wants to spell them, and then type them out from her memorization. (Got. G-O-T. Got. And then she'll go over to the computer and type G-O-T.) Madison is much more interested in me giving her the sounds chunk by chunk, rather than the whole word at once.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Woodworking birthday party
We had a fun, energetic, and non-frantic birthday party yesterday for Madison on our screened-in porch. I had always vowed (there's that vowing again!) to have the girls' birthday parties outside the house, to let other people manage it for me. But Madison really wanted to have a woodworking party with Miss Judy, from whom she's been taking lessons during the spring and summer. Miss Judy actually does it pretty cheaply, and I figured that since it would be the main activity, I wouldn't have to plan other "party games." I have always had these nightmare visions of having to corral a screaming bunch of kids and lead them from one activity to another. This was pretty tame; we had eight kids accept the invitation, although only six showed (!). I made great little gift favor bags with real tools: A small screwdriver, pliers, a level, glue (Wal-mart for only 9 cents each!), and a ruler. Miss Judy managed everything well, everyone had a good time, and as you can see from the photo, the local bakery was able to take this printout that I made by downloading some "tool alphabet" letters from the web and put it in edible form on the cake. Interestingly, every single present Madison got was art supplies, although one family also gave her a Mad Libs books.(Too bad I'm banning art projects until we sell the house. They'll have art Thursdays with Mrs. Geffken anyway.)
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