perplexing question

10 Oct 2008  around lunchtime  Lady of the House

Why do men’s crew socks come in a resealable bag?

Catching a Cold

09 Oct 2008  in the early evening  Nursemaid

Jaeger was found scrounging around under Ilse’s crib, chanting, “Going to catch a cold, going to catch a cold, going to catch a cold….”

Apparently one catches a cold in the same manner Pooh and Piglet catch a woozle.

Problems

08 Oct 2008  in the early evening  Nursemaid

Hans: “Mom, do we get some medicine tonight?”

Mom: “Yeah, I think so.”

Hans: “Well, Mom, did you know that Nana’s children give Nana problems when they need medicine?”

Mom: “Really?”

Hans: “Yeah, that’s what Nana said.”

Mom: “Why would they give her problems?”

Hans: “Well, that’s just what she said. She didn’t tell me why.”

Mom: “Hm, well, that’s strange to not like medicine.”

Hans: “Yeah, I just don’t like to give problems to anyone.”

Mom: “Really?”

Hans: “Yeah, problems are just for moms.”

Mom: “?!”

Perks

08 Oct 2008  terribly early in the morning  Housekeeper

Small perks to single parenting during the week: The clean laundry stacks can remain on half the bed overnight without being disturbed.

Pictures for Daddy

02 Oct 2008  around lunchtime  Nursemaid

…and the occasional onlooker

The Stronghold

Corkie

Defenders of the Yard

Ilse’s Favorite Nook

Audio Vocabulary

01 Oct 2008  terribly early in the morning  Nursemaid

So, the boys can listen to Hank the Cowdog and come down with

“Mom, what does swallerred mean? Hank said he swallerred the poison.”

Or they can listen to the Chronicles of Narnia and come down with

“Mom, what does coronation mean?”

Unlikely Sources of Conviction

30 Sep 2008  in mid-afternoon  Lady of the House

Last week I pulled a chocolate out of the drawer for a little mid-afternoon refreshment. Inside the wrapper, this little “promise” jarred me:

“Bring your life to life. Stop planning, start doing.”

I consoled myself by griping about the comma splice.

Today I announced to the boys that Grandma wanted to take them to the grocery store in a little bit.

“Oh, Mom!” cried Hans, “I will! I am the goodest bagger. I can bag groceries better than a payer [cashier]!”

“Good,” I said absent-mindedly as I moved the laundry.

“Well, Mom,” chided Hans, “Just make sure you do a good job on your work while we’re gone and don’t mess around reading blogs.”

I consoled myself by reminding Hans that he is not allowed to speak to me in imperatives. No, I didn’t actually say imperatives. And I didn’t say, “You’re not the boss of me,” though that is what I was thinking.

Changing Format Yet Again

30 Sep 2008  in mid-morning  Governess

So this is the year of habit-formation (for me) and experimenting with format and materials.

We are on our fourth venue for school. All of them have worked, each of them have their benefits and drawbacks. I think I will probably keep all of them up my sleeve and change depending on what benefits we need at the time. With all of these, the content doesn’t change, only the location.

First: Living Room. I sat in a living room chair, the boys stood or sat at their own Oddvar side table. They had stools on which they were supposed to stand while reciting and on which they could sit if they wanted at their short tables. Benefits: * moving up and down and having a definite (and small) spot to stand for reciting helped. They took turns doing their memory work, so they got to hop up and down quite a bit. * they each had their own separate place to work. * I got a comfortable chair. * we can take advantage of natural lighting, since it is a corner with large windows on both sides. * the side tables don’t get dirty or messy, so my lazy self doesn’t even have to wash the table before starting directly after breakfast. Drawbacks: * the tables are small and their pencils rolled off all the time. * the temptation to wander away is great. * if bad attitudes are in the air at all in the air the opportunities for battle are numerous. Verdict: Best for soldier-like (stand-at-attention) recitations.

Second: Dining Room. I sat at the head of the table and a boy sat at each other side of the table. Benefits: * the boys are confined at have a definite place to be and the temptation to wander is reduced. * we all have more table space. * it feels more school-ish Drawbacks: * it feels more school-ish * attention spans are shorter due to the restriction on wiggles. Verdict: Best for accomplishing school work.

Third: Dining Room. I sat at the head of the dining room table and the boys at at their children’s table close by. Benefits: * the boys had chairs and a table at the right height. * the dining room table did not get pencil and crayon marks that have to be scrubbed. Drawbacks: * they were awkwardly placed for me to help them or see their work. One would always be out of my reach. * it involves moving the children’s table or having it in the way. Verdict: Good for a change of scene.

Fourth: Couch. We sit together on the couch, a boy on each side. Benefits: * school time doubles as cuddle time, so there is less pressure and more affection. * read-aloud time actually gets accomplished, and is done first. Drawbacks: * table work (math & copywork) has to be done later, which means less of it gets done. Verdict: Best for the mother/child relationship.

Right now I would rather give up copywork than reading aloud, especially since Hans enjoys writing and does it on his own anyway. I like the books I found for our educational (in the real, liberal-arts sense, not the cardboard modern sense) reading but with life as it is now, I need quiet time after lunch and couldn’t pull together enough emotional stamina to do reading before nap time. I think it would help us all if I could, but it wasn’t happening. So, I’m doing the reading first in the morning before we do reading and math, and it helps us all. We start, then, by establishing our mutual affection and so attitudes for phonics and math, which were growing gradually and gradually worse, are becoming increasingly better. So this is the best choice for us while we’re all a little more stressed and emotionally worn thin without Matt during the week. The relational and poetry/story aspects are priority right now, so the “couch school” as Hans calls it is working best for us now.

charts and incentives

29 Sep 2008  around lunchtime  Governess

Hans was able to do the place value and counting to twenty with ease last week, so we moved on to addition. The math curriculum has an addition facts chart and encourages the children to color in each row of facts as they learn them. So I copied the chart, put it on the fridge, and drew Hans and Daddy walking to an ice cream cone at the bottom corner of the chart. The zero-facts were used primarily to introduce the concept and symbols of adding. Hans watched the “how to teach lesson 4″ video with me and didn’t even need it retaught by me to complete the whole lesson sheet, which had 14 problems (4 write the equation pictured, 8 standard equations, and 2 word problems) and Hans did them all in one sitting! We used the blocks to “build, write, and say” every one, and he was doing the whole process himself by the end, so he really had mastered the lesson right away. That was Friday. Monday Hans read and said the zero-facts from the copied chart without building or writing, and colored in all the zero-facts. Actually, he drew people or motorcycles or trains with steam on top of each equation. So tomorrow we will do lesson 5, adding by 1. We watched that lesson on Friday, too, so I’ll try my hand at teaching it cold.

I have also seen around that some people keep track of the first 100 books their children read, and so I decided to do that as well. After copying the addition chart, which has 100 equations, I decided to make a chart for the books, too, and I drew a present at the bottom of the chart. My parents bought each of us our own Bible after we could read smoothly on our own, and we are going to carry on that tradition, too. I figured reading 100 books would probably mean he is reading independently, and it gives a concrete goal for giving him the Bible. We bought The Children’s ESV hardback this summer when we ordered other school books, and I had been wondering how the logistics of deciding when exactly to give it to him would work out (I had already assumed it would be a year or maybe more until he was ready for it, but I wanted to have it on hand). He doesn’t know that plan, so the picture of a present at the bottom of the book list was a surprise and the contents is still a surprise. He already has the first 11 Bob Books listed on his chart. There are 18 books, and at this point he could probably read them all, but we’re taking them at a few new ones a week to make sure and reinforce what he already knows. He’s already ahead in reading ability, so I’d rather he get the basics he has down pat than forge ahead until he’s struggling. After the Bob Books I have a couple first-grade readers my mom gave me, then we’ll begin checking out “I Can Read” books from the library. We still do TATRAS phonogram charts every day, and alternate every-other-day reading Bob Books and words from the TATRAS lists. I like TATRAS even better after seeing that the Bob Books list some words (like “the” and “a”) as sight words, but which Hans sounded out just fine with his phonics skillz. :) “The” can be said as “THEE” and still be accurate, and “a” can be said “ay” and both are phonetic. Now that Hans has recognized the words from reading them so often, he says them the with the “schwa,” which is simply American “lazy-tongue” (as my professor from my History of the English Language class called it) so it’s a natural evolution.

And, we cannot leave Jaeger out of the chart system, nor does he want to be left out of the phonics bandwagon. So the first page of TATRAS has a “letter recognition” exercise, so I put that up on the fridge with the first phonogram chart of 8 letters (S A L T M I N E), and he is learning the sounds of those letters. When he can correctly name all the letters (which are random and include upper and lower case letters) and give the sounds of the 8 phonograms without prompting, then HE gets to go to ice cream with Daddy. :) Before working with Hans, I give Jaeger the option of working on his page first. Jaeger’s lesson it optional; Hans’ no longer is. So far, however, Jaeger has gleefully done his lesson.

Third Time the Charm?

29 Sep 2008  in the early morning  Lady of the House Mother

Jaeger asked on Thursday to be potty-trained. He seemed quite confident that he could keep underwear dry and use the bathroom. We tried when he was 2 1/2 and we tried again when he had just turned three. I might have been able to become Mommy-trained when he was three, but he wasn’t self-aware enough to become potty trained himself. And I’m just not into being Mommy-trained and pestering and watching and waiting and cleaning. So we waited.

I wasn’t going to attempt potty-training until Matt graduates and returns, even though that would be only a few months from Jaeger’s fourth birthday. But when an almost 3-1/2-year-old, who has been going through a maturity-spurt and longs for validation that he is a big boy, asks — even pleads — to be potty-trained, what can I do?

Consume more coffee and buy M&Ms.

We are into the second hour of potty-training this morning and — drum-roll — Jaeger has kept dry! The timer goes off every ten minutes and our routine is potty, wash hands, drink apple juice, have one M&M for using the potty and one for being dry (and one for Hans and Mommy for our encouragement efforts), and then set the timer again. He has used the bathroom each ten minutes and has kept dry, as well. Phew!

And Hans just came down from using the restroom and tried bragging about his dry underwear. His sympathetic mother responded, “Well, I should hope so; you are five years old. No, you don’t get candy for dry underwear.”

So, I’m thinking that from now on I’m not even going to bother initiating the potty-training ordeal. When they can communicate that they want to, it’ll go a whole lot faster and easier! :)

This afternoon we’ll graduate to fifteen or twenty minute increments while still pushing loads of juice. Tomorrow we’ll try thirty minutes without juice or incentives. And, if that goes well, we’ll attempt play group on Wednesday. :)

So far, it’s not been stressful. He’s old enough to get it without loads of forced enthusiasm. A sincerely stated “Oh Jaeger, I am so proud of you!” or “I knew you could do it! You really are a big guy.” and then getting on with the day is most meaningful for him. So if this works and takes, then perhaps it will end up making life easier. One or two fewer icky diapers a day is a perk in my book.