Reading

Eric and I share many common interests, not the least of which is reading.  We do not necessarily share the same taste in books, though.  For example, Eric can quote LOTR and give quite descriptive explanations of plot points; whereas I could not finish "Return of the King" and to be honest, barely read the first two.  I prefer fiction in general and he prefers non-fiction.  Though, over the years our tastes have begun to merge more.  Particularly, in the selection of what we listen to in the car on road trips.

However, our preferential reading choices are not really the point of this post.

As a result of our enjoyment of reading, we have tried to pass this along to our children.  We read to them frequently and mostly per their request.  Dom knows that when I sit down to nurse Molly, this is the best time to snuggle up to my side and have me read to him.  Even if I try to hide in order to read my current book selection, he will find me and bring along a couple of  books he has selected.  William can hear me reading from several rooms away and will come running in saying "Stop! Stop! You have to wait for me!".  The boys listen in very different ways.  Dom will sit quietly through an entire story, while Will frequently interrupts with questions.  Or declarative statements.  Like "He's wearing a blue shirt!".  If I do not acknowledge his observation, he will continue to say it over louder and louder until I do.  Will is simultaneously helping me work on the virtue of patience while also causing me to add on to time already acquired in Purgatory.

Recently, Dominic has been showing an interest in reading books that aren't necessarily picture books.  Eric has read bits of "The Hobbit" to both boys at bedtime.  And Dom has shown interest in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" series that I have been reading.  Last night, I had escaped to my room to quietly feed Molly and finish "Prince Caspian" when Dom discovered me.  He asked if I would read to him and quickly produced his selections.  He had picked one particularly long and boring story (an adaptation of  "Cars") and a Thomas the Tank Engine flap book.  I tried to dissuade him, but he looked up at me with his big brown eyes and said please, so I commenced reading "Cars".  I hadn't read more than a couple of pages when he started reading the flap book to himself.  When I asked if he wanted me to finish, he agreed that it was too long.  After doing a couple of pages in Thomas, we agreed that it was more appropriate for William.  Then Dom picked up "Prince Caspian" and asked if I wanted to read that to him.  I readily agreed and started to read the last chapter.  Soon William came in holding his bunny Foo-Foo.  I read the final chapter to the boys as they drifted to sleep on either side of me.  This is a situation that I would call:  Win-Win-Win.

Homeschool with pictures and other anecdotes

Here is a horrible picture of what the book shelf now looks like. I probably should have just stuck to a description, but there you go. About a month ago I realized that the Childcraft Series that Nana and L'Opa gave to Dom when he was born will be an excellent resource. It has all sorts of information about the world and science and literature and math. The boys love looking at the science based ones. We also have a copy of "The Book of Virtues" that I will get out and read from. The boys favorite story is "The Selfish Giant". Mainly because it is about a Giant.

Last week we worked on the letters C and D. The boys make letter collages and Dom practices writing the letters. I'm so proud of how he is doing with this. I was really nervous that he would refuse, but having him write on the white board makes a big difference. Plus, he sees that he is perfectly capable of it. We've also been practicing counting to 50 by 1's, 5's, and 10's. In the picture, Will is putting the number of stickers indicated in some circles I drew. Dom is helping him. I loved it that Dom took the initiative. Cooperative Learning at its finest.

We did a couple of science experiments. I've been wanting to try the first one for a while. It is experimenting with density. You make layers in a clear container of syrup, water, and vegetable oil. The picture in the book makes the layers look quite distinct, however, after dying the water blue, the water and syrup just looked dark. The boys were pretty excited about the snacks, but were even more excited about throwing them in the concoction. I will probably try this experiment again with Caro Syrup. Most of our testing items floated on the oil, the peanuts floated on the water, I suspect the raisins floated on the syrup, though dark raisin were hard to spy in the abyss of dark water and dark syrup. The coins sank to the bottom. I unfortunately forgot about this as I dumped the whole concoction down our garbage disposal. I unfortunately also forgot about the rubber gloves under the sink as I fished out the coins from the disposal. Live and Learn.

Our second experiment was seeing what would happen when we put raisins in a cup of Sprite. The boys loved this one. Especially Will. The raisins immediately sink to the bottom of the glass, but as bubbles collect on them, they rise to the top. At the top, the bubbles pop and they sink to the bottom again. One suggestion is to have people pick a particular raisin and see whose will rise first. This was made impossible by William's throwing in several raisins. Still, the boys had a good time, which is the whole point of this entire exercise in homeschooling.

Finally we have the display of all of our hard work. At the bottom you can see the art project for the week. They no longer look like this as the boys took pens to them earlier today. Ah well. My plan is to keep these in a three ring binder. Though I may tape them up in our hallway as we currently have no other works of art on the particular wall I am thinking of.

The boys have picked out what they want to be for Halloween and thanks to ebay I will have their costumes in plenty of time. Spiderman showed up last week. It is on the big side for Will, but Dom fills it out pretty well. Stay tuned for when Darth Vader makes an appearance!

And here we have a picture of Molly-girl. She is cooperating pretty well about taking naps around the time we do classes. And I discovered yesterday that she is pretty content to hang out in the exersaucer if her nap schedule is off. As long as she is fed and changed ahead of time. Molly is crawling up a storm and is a happy little camper (as long as she is fed and changed). The thing that I can't get over is how she will ignore all brightly colored toys, but will make a beeline for a scrap of paper across the room. We've been vacuuming much more frequently since she turned 7 months...

Homeschool: Week 1

My intent was to do lessons on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.  As Monday was Labor Day, we started school on Wednesday.  Tuesday I spent time making the room we are using look a bit more like a classroom.  At some point I'll have a picture, but until then let me describe it in approximately 1000 words.  We transformed our office into the classroom.  This wasn't a huge transition as up until then we had used the office as a catch all for junk mail, purchases from stores, miscellaneous material we have moved with us three times, overflow guests, and anything else that doesn't have an allotted space and doesn't fit in a closet.  We broke down the twin bed.  I went through years of cards that had accumulated on the floor in order to determine which ones to keep and which ones to toss.  I kept most of the cards with messages written.  Those with just a signature got tossed.  Why I had one from our insurance guy, I'm not sure.  Maybe I liked the picture at one point.  I will say it was a pleasant walk down memory lane.

I then moved to the bookcase.  It was crowded with books that have very little chance of being read.  Several are currently sitting in a donate pile, several are cleverly arranged on another book shelf, and several more are in a bunch of cardboard boxes that will undoubtedly move with us several more times until the Smithsonian requests them for an exhibit.  After all this maneuvering, I had an empty bookcase that I was able to fill in an attractive way that I knew the boys would appreciate.  And I am SURE it will look the same at the end of a week.

On the walls we have a whiteboard and a bulletin board.  I also made a little reading nook with the comforter and pillows from the twin bed.  The whiteboard gets the most use.  Not only during class.  I will often find William drawing on it.  "Mommy, look what I drew!" "What is it?" "I don't know!"

On Wednesday we had our first lessons.  Dom and Will loved the classes.  My original thought had been to do them while Molly was napping.  Naturally, Molly had other ideas.  Instead, she became my teaching assistant.  The biggest breakthroughs were that the boys officially learned their last name, Dom is a whiz at writing the letter "A" and "OHIO", and Molly isn't a very good assistant.  I planned to only do about an hour worth of activities, but between Molly's "helping" and other unforeseen occurrences, we ended up doing about 2 and a half hours.  We didn't even get to everything I wanted to do, so I've since switched my plan to focusing on  letters and numbers Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Art Projects and Science Experiments on Tuesday and Thursday.

Let me close with the science experiment we did on Thursday.  I leafed through a science workbook and came across an experiment in which I conveniently had all of the ingredients.  I took the boys down to the kitchen and got out a bowl, cornstarch, 1/2 cup water, and blue food dye.  The boys mixed all of this together.  Dom wasn't too excited by the mixture, Will enjoyed putting his fingers in it.  I wasn't impressed, but I figured it was something to do.  We messed around with it for maybe 3 minutes, but it basically just looked like blue soup.  I tried to show the boys the difference between dry cornstarch and the the liquid, but no one really cared.  I left out the bowl so that Eric could see the goop we had made.  When I got back from swimming lessons that night, I noticed it had solidified a bit more, but I didn't think too much about it as we had a friend over for supper.  Later still as I was talking on the phone, I just started to play around with it.  It was incredible.  As you squeezed it, it almost felt dry, but then it would liquify again as soon as pressure relaxed.  It really blew my mind.  I spent the next couple of hours just playing with it.  Our friend gave me some tips on what to do with it, and I look forward to doing the experiment again with the boys. . .now that I know what to expect!

Oh and for those observant ones, we did not do lessons on Friday as we all took naps.  We covered a little bit this morning.  Saturday school...Dom's idea.

Trip West part II

A big benefit of going to Colorado was getting to visit with my family in Missouri/Kansas and seeing some good friends along the way.  We stopped in Lee's Summit, Missouri for a couple of nights and had a wonderful time hanging out with Katie and Robert.  Dom and Will loved hanging out with their cousins and are looking forward to doing it again soon.  While there we toured their beautiful new home, played a lot of cards, played Just Dance II, took Mary Ann to school, went to Costco, picked Mary Ann up from school, went swimming, had a party, and found a few hours to sleep.

In a related story, a few weeks ago I noted that the day would come when my children would be embarrassed to be seen with me.  Little did I know that would occur mere days after that post went up.  We were waiting to pick up Mary Ann and, being the cool aunt that I am, I started calling her name and waving when she came out from school.  Dom stood on his tip toes in order to cover my mouth with his hand and said "Mom, stop doing that".   Pretty soon he won't want me to dance in public either...

                                                                          We dropped off the boys in Lawrence where Dom barely said "bye", though Will, bless his heart, cried when we left.  This apparently lasted about 5 minutes.  They had a wonderful time with Nana and L'Opa.   I know they played a lot of games, visited the KU campus and rode on a bus, went for a train ride, helped in the vegetable garden and apparently ate a lot of ice cream.  Shockingly, they weren't that thrilled when we returned, though they were very happy to see Molly.

On our drive to Colorado, being the crazy spontaneous couple that we are, we surprised our maid of honor, Ann of Abilene, Kansas, with a brief visit.  Luckily, we caught her at a good time and it was nice to catch up quickly.  Molly appreciated a respite from her car seat.

While in Colorado, we stayed a couple of nights with my college roommate and her parents.  Eve's daughter Lettie is the same age as Molly and it was fun to watch the two "play" together.  Though, I will say, they interacted quite a bit which is not at all the norm for this age.  Clearly these two are topping the charts in the IQ department.  Again, it was nice to catch up and to play a lot of cards.   We were also able to stay with some friends we had made in Ohio who recently moved to Colorado.  The Wahlquists have a wonderful family and their kids are close to the same ages of ours.  It was great to spend time with them, made only better due to a  game of Set that was as close as I've seen in a while.  I quit after one game (which I won by 1) because I doubted I could have won best out of three.  April clearly had my number.  Weak, I know. . .We also discovered a potentially new favorite breakfast there: Crepes with nutella and strawberries.  Now if April would just come back here and make it for us. . .
 

We finished off the week with an afternoon of games at my parents and then an early morning departure for Ohio.  The kids traveled great.  Molly was only ever mildly upset and the boys were just thrilled to watch movies in the car.  I hope they keep these characteristics as we have another long road trip coming up in a few weeks.  Thank you again to all who hosted us and fed us.  We will be happy to return the favor at any time!!