August 2012

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2012.

The Twins Update – One Year Old

August 27, 2012 in The Twins Update | No comments

Yes, Leo and Zoe are one year old already. Both of them. Imagine that!

We are all so busy just trying to keep up with Zoe’s and Leo’s development. The whole house seems to need to be rearranged every few weeks. The rotation of stuff in and out of the house is astounding! We have to get rid of stuff quickly because new stuff has to come in all the time. We’ve installed baby gates and a few cabinet locks, replaced their high chairs with booster seats, sold off or given away tons of old things like bouncy seats, changing tables, clothing, mobiles, pillows, blankets, Bumbos, and more. We need a new dining room table – our current one only seats four and every meal is mad chaos with mix-matched chairs being slid all over the place. We had to rent a storage unit for our overflow because we’re using all the rooms in our house now. I had a bit of a break in the buying of new clothes for a while – they’ve been wearing their current set of clothing for about 3 months – but it’s about time again to clear out the closet, sort through the hand-me-downs, and visit the consignment store.  And I think the next big change will be that I’ll have to start buying shoes for them! I can’t write an integrated, thoughful post, but here are some bullet points about our babies:

  • My favorite thing about Leo right now is his laugh. My favorite thing about Zoe right now is how she mimics everything we do.
  • Zoe was bigger than Leo by a few ounces at last check. I suspect the difference will be even greater when they go in for their one-year check up. Did I schedule that yet? Yikes, I might not have.
  • Both Leo and Zoe are at about the same level of mobility. They both crawl and can go up and down a single step, although they still fall on their faces sometimes. They haven’t yet figured out how to go down backwards, even though I keep trying to teach them. Zoe is currently fascinated by stairs and has climbed halfway up the staircase with our au pair, Ale, right behind her. Leo stands up a lot more than Zoe. He cruises a bit, but mostly he just likes to stand, as he has since he was just a few months old. They can both balance for a second or two while standing, and they can both take steps while holding an adult’s hands. Leo is much better at it than Zoe, but I won’t guess who will walk first or when it will happen. It could be tomorrow or it could be months away for either of them.
  • Zoe has five teeth and Leo has three. Neither one seems overly bothered by teething. Zoe looks positively toothy when she smiles and it’s really cute. Leo still has a gummy smile and it’s hard to imagine what he’ll look like with teeth on top.

  • Leo loved to get into the pots and pans, but we had to put a lock on his favorite cabinet because there is a sharp screw sticking out of the wall in there. He also likes to move furniture, especially big furniture. If it’s big, he’ll try to move it, and he usually succeeds. So far, this is not a problem because we’ve rearranged the furniture for safety, but that could change as he gets stronger. It’s fun to watch him drag a heavy chair or table across the room. Zoe would rather sit in a chair. She loves sitting up in a chair like a big girl.

  • Both Zoe and Leo point, and I know Zoe waves but it’s hard to tell if Leo does because he’s always waving his hands around trying to tell us all kinds of things. But the pointing is thrilling for us and for him! He points to everything he wants to explore and we carry him to it if he can’t get to it himself. He loves pictures of people on the walls and all the knicknacks on the shelves. Zoe’s bye-bye wave is adorable.
  • Both Leo and Zoe have done some sign language, but they’re not really good enough with their hands to use it successfully. They are both pretty good at communicating, though, and they communicate in very different ways. Leo is a horrible whiner. I mean, he is really, really irritating. If he wants something and doesn’t get it immediately, he does this very loud whining cry. And he WANTS. Oh, that boy wants everything, all the time. Especially food. He can’t stand that other people have food on their plates that he is not allowed to eat. Mealtimes are not pleasant and it’s very hard to make Leo happy because there is always food on the table that he can’t grab, or a drink that he wants to try and that means that he whines whines whines. But along with that, we get strong expressions of pleasure and the huge hand movements and waving that help us understand him. Zoe is more subtle, but I seem to understand her most of the time. I’m not sure if that is true for Adam and Ale, but for me, Zoe is just a pleasure to communicate with. I feel like I can just ask her a question and I’ll get an answer in the form of a look or a little gesture or even a noise. In this way, Zoe is more like Sam than Leo is.
  • Both Leo and Zoe speak a bit, too. Leo definitely says two words: “no” and “banana.” They sound like “nuh” and “na-nuh,” but there is no doubt in my mind that he is using the words for the right concepts. Well, okay, he likes to say “no” when he means other things, but sometimes he means “no.” And he definitely asks for bananas, his favorite food. It’s all about values, people. Zoe doesn’t say any specific words regularly, but she mimics sounds that we make quite often. Yesterday, she clearly tried to say, “key” and “ten.” But mostly, both of them still just babble. Oh, and they scream. Sammy taught them how to do that really well.
  • They feed themselves their bottles!

  • Both Leo and Zoe have new nicknames. Zoe is “conejito,” for bunny, because she makes a wrinkly-nose face and sniffs like a bunny. Leo is “perrito,” for puppy, because I’ve always called him puppy. Conejito and perrito.
  • Zoe seems to need more cuddles than Leo. She will come over and crawl into my lap and I’ll just hug her for a minute, then she’ll happily go back to her play. Leo doesn’t do that. Leo is also militantly independent. He gets upset when he can’t do something himself and he does not like to be helped. In this way, Leo is more like Sam than Zoe is.
  • Leo and Zoe had their first bath together last week! They don’t need any special bathtub anymore and they can sit and scoot around well enough that it’s safe enough to let them both be in the water at the same time. I haven’t actually done this – Ale did it – she gives them most of their baths. But I watched, and two naked babies in a tub is almost too much cuteness to bear.
  • Both of them love being read to, but Zoe especially seems to love books. She gravitates to them and flips the pages more often, although Leo is actually better at flipping pages. He does it in the typical Leo way, though – he takes the page and flips it as fast and hard as he can.
  • Zoe and Leo have always been aware of each other, but in the past week or two, they’ve begun to play with each other. I’ve seen them hide from each other and do a kind of peekaboo game, I’ve seen them lean towards each other and butt heads (not sure what that’s about, but they both cried and then did it again), and I’ve seen Zoe do things to try to make Leo laugh. Once I sneezed and it made them both laugh, so I kept doing fake sneezes. Eventually, Zoe mimicked me: she made a little noise and threw her head forward. But when she looked up, she wasn’t looking at me for my reaction, she was looking at Leo for his. Awesome!
  • Zoe tries to mimic everything we do. If I put something on my head, she puts something on her head. If I make a face, she tries to make the same face. This is how I know she is saying words – because I’ll say something and she’ll say it right back. Leo does this too, just not as often as Zoe. I had forgotten how wonderful this mimicry was. There’s just nothing better than a one year old. Except two of them.

 

 

Grammar

August 16, 2012 in Homeschooling | 4 comments

I gave up on spelling entirely. The Spelling Workout workbook that I purchased was no good for Sammy because it requires writing. Sam would just get too caught up in her printing to focus on the spelling. We put that book away after one lesson. I might try it again when she prints more easily. (The Handwriting Without Tears program is still a highlight of every school day. We both love it, and Sam is getting so much better at printing. I wish I had something so wonderful for every subject.)

To fill the spelling void, I started thinking about grammar again. Sam had begun a bit of grammar in Montessori, so I did purchase a Montessori Lower Elementary curriculum guide for “language arts” which includes the Montessori grammar program. I was not thrilled with it, and it requires a lot of work to implement. I went back to my trusty, already-well-worn copy of The Well Trained Mind and decided to give Jessie Wise’s First Language Lessons a try.

What I like most about this book is that it is so easy to use. Each lesson is short, and it is fully scripted for the instructor. It does not require much in the way of materials or other preparation. And so far, Sam loves the lessons, which is a surprise because it involves a lot of direct instruction from me, such as, “repeat after me: ‘a noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.’ Okay, again. Okay, again.” I thought Sam would balk at this kind of drilling, but I think it’s okay because the lessons are so short, and there always seems to be some kind of payoff: either she has something memorized (which she enjoys), or she has dictated a sentence to me and gets to put it in her notebook, or something.

This book is more of an introduction to grammar than real beginning grammar. There is some talk of parts of speech, but a lot of it is memorization of poems, “readings” of pictures, copywork, and more. It is a perfect fit for where Sam is with language right now. When the student is asked a question, he is supposed to respond in complete sentences, so it is oral, not just written. This is good for Sam, also.

And how can I not love a program that produces output like this:

From 2012 08

Time, Place, History

August 16, 2012 in Homeschooling | No comments

As I’ve explained, Sammy and I haven’t started history yet. Before we do, I wanted her to have a better sense of place and time. Little did I realize that it would only take a few weeks for her to come up-to-speed on these concepts!

I wish I could take the time to write about all the different things we’ve done to help Sammy with her concepts of time. Mostly it is just marking days off on two different calendars, a couple of timelines, and an excellent “sun clock” that I got from Falling Apple. (I also plan to use their astronomy books and materials when we are ready. The sun clock is part of an astronomy activity kit that will be available this fall–I was lucky enough to get an early version. I’ll try to remember to link to it when it is available since I don’t have time to explain it here.)

Most of this is the same stuff we’d been doing with Sam for a couple of years. But the little bit of extra work in school helped, especially since Sam was simply ripe for this development. Of course, her sense of time will continue to develop for a long time. There is no substitute for experience, after all! But I think she has enough clarity on the difference between “yesterday” and “last week” and “before you were born” (not that she truly understands that yet, but at least she knows it is different) that we can begin talking about history.

As for place, she is also ripe. I didn’t have to do anything more than point out places on a map, really. She loves her Montessori puzzle of the United States and she has memorized the names of all the states using the song Fifty Nifty. Her grandparents are full-time RVers, so they are always moving from state to state, and sending Sam postcards. My mom tries to find postcards with the shape of the state on them, and Sam absolutely loves all of this. When her dad goes on a trip, she wants to see it on the map. She pays attention when we drive around in the car (but she has always done that). And I bought this awesome little book, Me on the Map, which she read out loud to me a dozen times. We made a map of her bedroom, and I hope we’ll make a map of the house and the neighborhood soon. But even before we do that, I am comfortable that when I talk about a place in history, if I show it to her on a map, she will have some sense of it being a “place,” and that as her databanks grow, she’ll have some tools to put all this together. That’s really all she needs to begin.

And now I have to think about history! We might start History At Our House next year, but I haven’t decided yet, and she’s not ready for that yet. I might do the Montessori “big picture” overviews. I know a lot of Objectivists say that it is anti-hierarchical, but I disagree. I think it’s okay to start with a broad overview to inspire and stoke interest. In fact, that might be exactly the right kind of “preview” for the upcoming year, before we start a more concrete and chronological approach.

It’s exciting to think how much progress we’ve made in just six weeks of homeschool. I thought we’d have to buckle down in the fall, but the way we’re going, we should still be able to take a lot of days off for field trips or travel or whatever else strikes our fancy.

Math

August 2, 2012 in Homeschooling | 5 comments

Continuing my series of posts on subjects we are studying in homeschool, today I want to talk about math.

Sam’s Montessori teacher assured me when she graduated that Sam had a good grasp of place value, addition, and subtraction, that she was beginning to understand multiplication, and that she was also beginning the process of memorizing her math facts. I had my doubts based on what I had seen at home and unfortunately, I think I was right.

I started Sam off in homeschool exactly as my Montessori curriculum guide for “first grade” suggested, because it lined up with what Sam’s teacher had told me. All of the exercises we have been doing are things Sam did in her class at Montessori – I didn’t introduce anything new. But it was the material at the edge of what I thought was her ability: the addition and subtraction “snake games,” where you add and/or subtract a series of single-digit numbers, the “finger charts” which are just tools for memorizing math facts, and the multiplication “bead board” which is the first concrete work with multiplication.

But it looks to me like Sam still does not understand that addition, or “plus,” means AND, that subtraction or “minus” means TAKE AWAY and that multiplication means adding things a certain number of TIMES. I also do not see any clear understanding of place value. She loves the memorization, though, and is pretty good at it. Maybe she is like her father and has an excellent memory and has gotten by without having to really understand anything. This is not an insult to either of them. It’s a wonderful thing to have a great memory! But I think it is natural to try to accomplish any task with the minimum effort necessary, and I know Adam’s memory is so good that he was able to do very well in math as pure memorization until he got to algebra, when it all fell apart.

I think moving forward too early would be a huge mistake. One of the best things about homeschooling is that I can spend as long as it takes for Sam to master whatever it is that she is working on. We will not move on with math until I can see that she is at least beginning to grasp these concepts.

So, I have to take a few steps back and put together more basic activities. Luckily, most of the materials I purchased can still be used, and other things I might need are easy to make. I’m going all the way back to the “bring me” game, where I give Sam a number and ask her to bring me the beads (units, ten-bars, hundred-squares) that represent it. (Well, really, the number that I give her is a level more abstract than the beads, so I shouldn’t say “the beads that represent it,” but I think you get my idea.) I’ll see how she does with that. We’ll also do the reverse: I’ll give her a bunch of beads and ask her to write the number. Then we will do some kind of work with exchanging – there is something called the Game of Nines which I have to look up, and we might use dice, too.  I can also just give her a huge pile of beads to exchange into the proper number of hundreds, tens, and units and then she can write it down. I’ll have to see how she takes to each of these games. We have an abacus but I have no idea how to use it so I have to look that up and see if it might help. Also, I have some iPad games that are excellent, and I’m not afraid to use them! One of them is the Stamp Game, which is something I know she did almost daily during her second year of Montessori, and yet I don’t think she really gets it, even a year later. In fact, I don’t think she is ready for the Stamp Game yet!

What all of this says about her Montessori education, I can’t say for sure. If Sam really does have an exceptional memory like her dad, then it might be understandable that her teacher did not catch this. Or, I could be totally off-track and she does understand these things as well as any five-year-old. Sam does tend to hide her true abilities and “play dumb” sometimes. I don’t understand what’s going on with that and I don’t know if it is happening here. I have no knowledge of other five-year-olds, so maybe I’m just off-base in my expectations–meaning, maybe she really does “understand” as well as is necessary to move on. I thing those things will be more clear once I see firsthand how she does with the earlier material. But it is also possible that her teacher was just not observing her well enough. That would be a disappointment, and I need to know because we plan to put either Leo or Zoe into that teacher’s class in two years.

The only way to find out more is to keep experimenting and to keep observing. I don’t mind that we have to go back. I don’t think Sam is in any kind of trouble, educationally. It doesn’t feel like any kind of failure or shameful. I know Sam is capable of learning, and I know I am capable of teaching her. Going back like this is precisely why one-on-one education is so great. It’s a real challenge to figure out what she will need to help her along – it’s like a little mystery. I love doing all of it! I love homeschooling!