they do pay attention

Thursday  around lunchtime  Nursemaid

Overheard

Hans: Ok, Jaeger, I will be the sermon.
he stands on a step stool.
Jaeger: Ok, I will get my Bible.
Hans: Ok. I have my Bible. Please turn in your Bibles to 14:30. Ok.
Hans: Alright. Please open your catechisms to page 40 in the blue Psalter.

….

Jaeger: Ok, now I am this sermon.
they switch places
Jaeger: Please stand. Turn in your blue Psalters.
Hans: You have to do your hands like this while I am standing.
Jaeger: Ok.
Jaeger makes choir-director motions while both boys sing
Jaeger: Please be seated. Ok, so, you should always listen to what your mother says. Obey your mother and pay attention. Obey the law. Now, turn in your blue Psalters.

…..

Hans: Ok, now I am a teacher at Sunday School. Ok, so now I’ll give you all some cards so you can remember church, ok?
Jaeger: Ok. Thanks.
Hans: So, I gave those to you people so you know what church means.
Jaeger: Is that what it said?
Hans: Yeah, well, you should just read it in your head.
Jaeger: Well, I need two because I lost mine.
Hans: Well, that one is just for your seven or eight year old.
Jaeger: Ok, well, I told them if they will break it I will have to put it up high.
Hans: Ok.
Jaeger: Can I get a new one, because they just tore it.
Hans: But they said they wouldn’t tear it.
Jaeger: But they just did.
Hans: Well, then, they just lied. Heh.
Jaeger: Yeah. Can I have another one?
Hans: Ok, here’s one that tells you how to get to church.
Jaeger: Ok, thanks. I will just treat it like a church, ok?

….

he amazes me every day

Thursday  in mid-morning  Lady of the House

Hans brought me his notebook and said, “See, Mom, this tells me the baby is sleeping,” as he held up his own writing:

THe=BABY=iS=SLYPYNG

Kindergarten Update

Wednesday  in mid-morning  Governess

Andrea asked me the other day when our next term break week was. I replied, “Well, I figure you have to have a term before you can have a term break.”

Of course, that’s not to say there haven’t been off weeks. Actually, it’s more to say there haven’t been on-weeks.

We have been having “couch school,” as Hans has named it, 3-4 times a week. We read aloud a Bible story, a few pages from A Child’s Garden of Verses, a few pages from a Mother Goose book (whichever one I have out from the library), and a story from a fairy tale book (whichever one I have out from the library). Sometimes we add a science-related story book (I really like the “Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out” books I’ve checked out of the library so far) or an alphabet book. Then I’ll do a little phonics with Jaeger if he wants to (because he’s got to be just like Hans, you know. He is learning a is /a/ /ay/ /aw/ because learning letter names isn’t close enough for him to what Hans is doing). Then Hans does phonics/reading. He’s learned c is “/k/ /s/, /s/ before e, i, or y” and g is “/g/ /j/, /j/ before e, i, or y” and is now learning ‘ou,’ ‘ow,’ ‘ar,’ ‘er,’ ‘wh,’ ‘ng,’ and ‘ch.’ He’s read all the Bob Books (our set has 18 books) and I have a pile of level pre-1 and 1 readers from the library. So after phonics drill (about 1-2 minutes), he chooses something to read. He rarely chooses the reading words from the book, so sometimes I say that he’s going to read those or nothing, and then he’ll choose nothing. But the next day he’ll choose the word list rather than nothing. :) Because I can tell that he is sounding words out and not memorizing them, and because he’s figuring out how to sound out long words on his own (the other day, he saw the word ‘employee’ on a sign and, without making any audible noise, a minute later said, “Mom, that sign said em-plaw-YEE, what’s an em-plaw-YEE?) I’m not too concerned about using the phonics book’s word lists.

---

A while ago Hans noticed me reading a book and asked, “Mom, why are you being quiet?” And, because I was reading, I answered without really paying attention: “Because I’m reading.” “But, Mom,” he probed, “how can you read without anyone hearing you?” Smile, “Well, you wouldn’t be interested in this book, so I am reading it in my mind.”

Now, of course, he curls up into a chair and announces that he is reading in his mind. And, the thing is, he actually is. He will look at a sentence, making no audible noise, and then tell me what the sentence says.

How nice to have an easy, quick reader! I’m trying to remind myself that it won’t always be this easy. :)

---

So, we are regularly doing about half of what I had planned for our school year to hold, and we are accomplishing it in a much more relaxed manner than I had imagined.

I gave up math a couple weeks ago because I didn’t feel like pushing him. He could get addition after patient instruction and practice for several weeks or we could cover it quickly and easily next year. He’s been introduced to the concepts, I’ve learned how the program works and the language it uses to describe things so I can lead him toward “reading” numbers (which I couldn’t before), and I’ve figured out the program and thought of a few different methods of implementations. So I think we’ll add math back in after Christmas and see how it goes, but not get serious about it until first grade.

We’re not doing copywork or drawing or art or nature study or picture study. Copywork will reenter in January, but Hans is writing words he thinks of “in his brain” (his words) on his pictures. I have noticed that since we stopped copywork and I’ve left him to himself in this area, he has begun reversing ‘D,’ ‘d,’ and ‘J,’ which he never did before, so I do need to get back onto the copywork bandwagon. Hans enjoys drawing and likes to copy things. So instead of trying to do “Drawing with Children” with him as lessons, I checked out a few children’s drawing books from the library that show how to put shapes together to draw things. He loves those and follows the step-by-step instructions. I read into and did attempt both nature study and picture study earlier in the year. I decided both are good things after reading about it skeptically, and I found both were doable. However, it’s on the same plane as crafts for me. It doesn’t come easily to me, it takes double the effort for me to pull it off as it takes “nature-y” or “crafty” people, and while it’s a good thing, it isn’t a necessary thing. So it’s all dropped as unnecessary at this point. We will do a garden again next year and that will be nature study. If it’s just reading books, I can do that, so I’m going to be checking out the books Andrea discovered for picture study.

The saddest thing we have dropped the ball on is memory work. For some reason, it became more and more stressful for Hans. I tried several different things to help him out, but the stress only grew. With Matt gone none of us is handling stress well, so I eliminated the memory work. I even gave into the requests for books on CD at naptime, so they haven’t even listened to their Quiet Time CD of memory work for at least 6 weeks and they couldn’t even quickly and easily tell my dad “what else God made” when he was refilling his Sunday School “candy for catechism” jar when we were over once. So we are back to the QTCD, and I also finally got around to updating our car CD player. It holds 6 CDs, so right now I have a memory work CD, a hymns CD, the math facts CD that came with our program, the piano practice CD that came with the piano program, and lastly the latest Andrew Peterson CD is in there for me. The boys have been petitioning against the memory work CD at quiet time, but them clamor FOR it in the car. Go figure. One way or another. :) I think the car playlist will become part of my school planning!

Babies and towers

Thursday  in the late afternoon  Nursemaid

So far I haven’t observed many differences between my little baby girl and my previous baby boys. But now she’s moving and playing and the differences are showing up. :)

I sat down with Ilse and started building a tower with clear peek-a-blocks that Hans received as a gift when he was a baby. Hans and Jaeger as babies absolutely loved it when I built towers; they would knock over all towers with glee. They could hardly restrain themselves from attempting destruction by the time I had stacked three blocks. Ilse has glee as well. However, her glee is in watching me build a tower. She loves tall towers. She tries to touch the top block, but as soon as the tower starts to teeter, she pulls away and looks concerned. She absolutely loves it when I top a tower with a ducky, putting the ducky at her eye-level. She giggles and tries to take the duck, but will do so carefully and do her best not to knock over the tower. She looks and laughs and peers at the blocks in the tower, but does her best to keep her tower intact.

Then Jaeger comes and swipes at it and shouts with joy the wanton destruction.

Pumpkin Patch

Thursday  in mid-afternoon  Lady of the House

Thanks to Kirsti, I have some pictures from our recent pumpkin patch excursion:

Thanks, Kirsti!

Pattern

Wednesday  in the early morning  Lady of the House

We are half-way through week 11 of 18 of police academy (i.e. stay-at-home single parenting 5 days a week). I have finally figured out a pattern to my psychology throughout the week:

1. Monday: starts off well; half-way through my goals and hopes for the week overwhelm me and I crash; I spend the late afternoon or evening actually making progress.
2. Tuesday: craziness: running around with things seemingly out of control, but it isn’t actually as bad as it feels.
3. Wednesday: long, drawn-out exhaustion; poking around.
4. Thursday: worn out, just trying to hold myself together.
5. Friday: expectation and joy that Matt returns in the evening, so I wrap up all the loose ends laying around the house.
6. Saturday: I look back and realize I actually did quite a bit, even though it didn’t seem like it at the time. So I make plans of what I want to work on the coming week.
7. Sunday: rest.

Repeat.

Six more times.

I am definitely going to have to go into caffeine detox when this is all over.

Begging

Thursday  in the late evening  Linguaphile

Can I have a quarter every time I hear someone say “___ begs the question” when they mean “____ raises the question”? Please? Could one of the candidates please put that into their outrageous spending plans?

I am afraid that the phrase “begging the question” might have already turned the corner in language development. I think descriptive grammar is true, though I wish prescriptive were — poor language!

Clarification: “begging the question” is a logical fallacy wherein you base your conclusion on something that needs to be proved as much as your original proposition. Fowler’s example is “democracy must be the best form of government because the majority are always right.” So this works:

Candidate: “Democracy must be the best form of government because the majority is always right!”
(The candidate would view the majority as a single mass entity, not a plural of individuals as Fowler interprets it)
Pundit: “Sir, you are begging the question. Who says the majority is always right?”

This does not work:

Candidate: “Democracy must be the best form of government because the majority is always right!”
Pundit: “Well, this begs the question: Is the majority always right when 40% of registered voters are fraudulent?”

95% I see or hear “begs the question” it should be replaced with “Well, then, let me ask you.”

And the other day on the radio — and it was not a caller, though I can’t remember who it was — I heard “This begs the answer!” I have no idea what he meant.

begs
verb, trans.

3.
1. To evade; dodge: a speech that begged the real issues.
2. To take for granted without proof: beg the point in a dispute.

I don’t think it’s etymologically correct, but I have always thought it similar to saying “You have just beggared your question.”

tr.v. beg·gared, beg·gar·ing, beg·gars

1. To make a beggar of; impoverish.
   
2. To exceed the limits, resources, or capabilities of: beauty that beggars description.

What this world needs is more classical schools…..that’s pretty much my conclusion to the matter….

Poor Professor Higgins

Wednesday  around evening time  Mother

I’m listening to My Fair Lady while messing around on the computer. When I was growing up I — quite literally — memorized the whole movie word for word. And although it’s been years since I’ve watched it, I can still give every line verbatim. Well, “Poor Professor Higgins” just came on. I can remember quite vividly this being the only part of the movie that I detested, and Dad thinking it was funny — or probably thinking I was funny for being so vehement against it (come to think of it). He played devil’s advocate in defense of the veracity of the song. I resisted any such reasoning as Dad simply being purposefully vexing.

Not that I doubt that he was being purposefully vexing, but he might also have had a point.

As a child, I identified with Eliza and deeply felt the injustice done to her.

As a parent, I can identify with Dr. Doolittle about how exhausting and difficult Eliza was being. It seems like she’s not even paying attention and is being stubbornly stupid.

Of course he’s a jerk, but um — so can I sometimes be.

So can his behaviour (he is English, so it is behaviour) really be inexcusable?

[....cricket....cricket....]

perplexing question

Friday  around lunchtime  Lady of the House

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

Catching a Cold

Thursday  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.