This is where we stand:
William
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| 10 years, 7 months |
I've had trouble lately on and off getting him to do his self-led work, like his daily journaling and getting his weekly history and science stuff completed on time. He is a great help around the house much of the time, for the most part, and for that I'm so very grateful. He's so sweet to do extra when I need him to, even making breakfast some mornings. That still takes up very little of his time, and he certainly possesses far more time than an institutionalized child, so I still find it very frustrating that he's not completing his work. I've been praising him for the things he is doing well, and I'm brainstorming on the best way to get him to do his school work continually.
I know and totally respect that he likes to direct his own learning. I'm the same way. I don't like to be told what to learn and when. And he is very much a self-directed learner. He researches a lot and is always talking to me about a wide variety of things he's been reading about, and I even learn new things this way on a regular basis. I constantly tell him he'd make a great college professor. But it's not reading skills and scientific and historical and geographical and language and other such things I'm worried about him not succeeding throughout his life in. He reads and observes, explores, and experiments plenty. But his writing skills need improvement, and they won't improve unless he writes, writes, and writes some more. I don't even require a lot of writing, but if he'd just do what I require of him in that, I think he'd be fine. So I've got to think of a way to get him to want to write, without it being a bribe. He's at least happy about doing math these days, thanks to Life of Fred.
For various reasons, we've missed probably three, maybe four weeks of history, but we're almost a quarter of the way through the second volume of Mystery of History. The goal for his science reading (he does this on his own, but we read history together) is for him to finish the three volumes of For Heaven and Earth by the end of this Roman year, and he's halfway through the first one, plus he's doing supplemental reading. Still, our self-led science lifestyle dominates. Again, the only reason I use the textbooks is to make sure we don't miss anything.
He's almost finished with Honey in Life of Fred, even though we missed some weeks. I think we're doing fine on that. It is such a blessing that he looks forward to our math time now! We do do this together still for now.
He is constantly drawing sketches of invention ideas and even wakes up from dreams to sketch out invention ideas or additions to existing ones he's got, and yes, he even writes notes (though that is not going to get him up to where he needs to be in regards to writing skills).
He is still owed one pottery wheel class from when one was canceled, and we're still waiting for the remaining creations he made to be given to him. They were supposed to be fired/glazed, but we haven't received a phone call. I emailed today to ask about it.
He builds a lot of our fires in our wood stove, he's helped Nathan skin and cut up deer meat, and he still takes good care of our chickens. He is very protective of our chickens. He's also our dog's favorite person.
Plans for the next four months: to continue working in the books previously mentioned, also starting Life of Fred: Ice Cream and perhaps we'll get to Jelly Beans before the end of the next four months, and figuring out a way to get William to want to write.
Trusten
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| 6 years, 8 months |
Trusten is the opposite of William. He starts on his Explode the Code and journal drawing and writing first thing in the morning, but I have trouble getting him to get dressed before he starts the day and to help pick up and otherwise help around the house (doing easy, age-appropriate things). He is highly motivated to do his school work by getting to game for awhile in the afternoon. I never need to ask him to start his work. He just does it.
Since the post four months ago, he has gone through the second and third Explode the Code books and is more than halfway through the fourth. He typically does five pages a day now. He was loving it and doing extremely well until the fourth book. He's still doing well for the most part, but he wrote an interesting message at the beginning of that book. Stay tuned for that in the upcoming new month "What We've Been Doing..." post. He has been introduced to syllable division in the fourth book, and he's not cared a lot for that, but I'm going back over that with him to make sure he understands each rule. He has normally gone through the books on his own, reading the directions and doing the work almost perfectly. I got way behind on going over his work, like fifty pages or so behind (but I got caught up today--Jan. 29), and as I went through it all, I noticed some syllable division rules he seems to understand fine, while others he doesn't as well. Then on the pages where he doesn't have to divide syllables but just do the things he's normally done in the other books, he's missed more, whereas before he rarely got anything wrong. He may be getting tired of it.
He also finished the U.S. history and geography book Our Christian Heritage a few weeks ago. I've given a much lower work load over the past three or four weeks, but I'm wanting to focus on U.S. geography with him now, teaching him all fifty states, the capitals, and some important facts.
He's doing fine with math. He's nearly finished with Life of Fred: Butterflies, which is the second book in the series.
I totally did away with starting him on science textbooks. He is not ready for the books we've got, but this is no big deal at all. We can wait three or four years, and depending on how Liv turns out, I might be able to go through that with them together. He'll just continue to learn science solely by our dominant method of talking about it, reading whatever we want, observing, experimenting, etc.
He's almost done with the entire Rocket Readers books.
I just started him on Grade 2 Complete Curriculum writing section, which wasn't done by William who completed the other sections of the book a few years ago.
Olivia
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| 4 years, 3 months |
Liv does some free drawing, plays iPad and iPhone games, plays with her toys, talks to her imaginary friends, asks me a plethora of questions throughout each day (with a heavy emphasis on, "Why?"), and tells dramatic stories. This is pretty much the way it's been for the longest time, so nothing really has changed since the last general update. I did finally start her in the Language Lessons book, writing her letters, listening to poems, etc. but I haven't been diligent to do this much with her. She does still practice writing numbers and letters with the Writing Wizard app on my iPad. She sometimes watches our phonics videos by Preschool Prep.
I think I need to get out the Inchimals more often and work with her and Trusten together on math that way.
I just need to work in more time with her, period, working on cutting and pasting, writing, preparing for reading, counting higher, etc. I'm going to try to work on this. Nathan says I really should work with her more and believes she could start reading soon.
Elizabeth
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| 2 years, 1 month |
I'm surprised this girl didn't melt all the snow around her, because she sure melts my heart! She's so full of love and joy and compassion and a humble and repentant spirit. She usually will stop what she's doing if I tell her to stop. She will usually come to me when I ask. If she slaps or swipes at someone, and I remind her to be gentle, she will self-correct and pat gently.
I'm hardly worried at all anymore about her speech delay, and it is more of a speech delay than a language delay. She gets her point across, and she uses several signs. She has demonstrated a superb memory, for she has used signs that haven't been used in many months, showing she understands about something. I've got around 30 words and a few additional phrases that she use—or has used—on a regular basis. This is below average for her age and WAAAAY behind either Trust or Liv, but I simply cannot compare her to them, as they were both advanced in language and speech, with Olivia being the most advanced child in speech I've known thus far and has amazed many people with whom we come into contact.
I know some children end up being geniuses or nearly so who don't have but one or a few words, until around their third birthday (sometimes not using sentences until age four), where all of a sudden they start talking a lot. Einstein was like that. But Elizabeth does not meet those set criteria, as she's been delayed in multiple areas, but not severely so. She didn't walk until 16.5 months, which is late, but it's not severely late. She is not potty-trained, yet, whereas all my children before have been by their second birthday (though Liv regressed multiple times, until she was about 2.5). Elizabeth has used the potty a few times, but she isn't quite ready, it seems. I've observed that in about everything Elizabeth is a few months behind the average. The accepted and normal average number of spoken words for a child by their second birthday is fifty. Although there are a few words she has said only a time or a few times and hasn't said since, the number of her total words that I know to be words is not up to fifty, even a month after her second birthday. But I believe she is absolutely fine.
From an early age she would mimic animals sounds and hum musical tunes that she'd heard perfectly. Last week in church a friend who was sitting behind me told me afterward that she noticed Elizabeth was trying to sing the words to "Onward Christian Soldiers." I can't remember whether she was humming the tune or not, but I think she supposedly was mouthing the words.
I also strongly believe she is analytical and meditative, as I am, and so she may very well choose to simply do more thinking rather than uttering her mind. She will sit quietly studying something or trying to put something together. Trust and Liv weren't that way at all. They have always constantly been moving.
In either case, her words are increasing still, and she shows me in so many other ways that she's developing just fine, so I'm less concerned at this time than I've ever been.
Here in the past week or so she has taken to climbing up on the couch arm and jumping onto the cushions. Makes me nervous how she goes about it. William used to do that, though he was probably three or so, and he had much better balance. Anyway, sure enough she went over the back somehow one day, and I don't know how she did it or how exactly she landed, as I was in the kitchen, but she ended up being ok. But today (1/30/14) I caught her three times standing upright on the very back of the couch!!!! Talk about coming close to having a heart attack. Thankfully each time I got over to her before she lost her balance. I keep showing to her my alarm and telling her how dangerous it is. I hope she will get it. I've got to try to get her to learn how to jump on the rebounder. Otherwise, I'm going to have to strap the monkey pack thing we've got on her and keep her "chained" to me while I'm in the kitchen or elsewhere.
I was constantly on my toes with Trust and Liv at this age, though, and constantly maxed out with cortisol and frequent adrenaline bursts and such. I really did think I was going to have a heart attack with those two, as they did CRAZY things constantly. So even with Elizabeth's newly-found jumping fun, she's truly laid back!
Anyway, language development, more frequent water play, and other such things are the main foci for Elizabeth over the coming months...oh, yeah, and teaching her to jump on the rebounder or in some other safer way.
If all goes well, I'll post my new month post in the next day, and also coming soon is a thematic post on "Sharks and Teeth."
Until next time...
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