Plugging Along

Learning

Xander has been learning to play the recorder. He is officially on Lesson 2 of our Progressive Recorder Method book, but unofficially he is practicing ahead on Lesson 3. I have been surprised by how much he likes to practice and how well he can read music. I have to stop him when practice time is over. He can now make three notes and play little practice songs that contain two different notes, rests, half notes, and repeats. I shouldn't be surprised that he can handle learning this at a slow but steady pace, but I keep thinking how I learned to play flute in 5th grade. That's 11 years old! Now that I think about it, my grandma taught me the beginning basics on the organ when I was younger, but I never took off on that instrument.

Nick still really appreciates music and sounds. Any time he hears a sound out of the ordinary, he immediately mimics it. This morning, he's been listening pretty intently to A Child's Celebration of Classical Music and A Child's Celebration of Folk Music.

He is learning fast at preschool. He now explores other games and activities in the room - not just shells and Moon Sand (it helps that they change up the sensory materials every once in a while) - and cleans up right away when it's clean up time. He participates just fine in the group time. Since starting preschool, he describes what he is doing or drawing in a more comprehensible way. Though the homework assignments always seem a bit beyond his grasp, he learns through doing them. For example, his assignment last week was to draw a picture of his family. He drew a lot of circular squiggles and said they were a shell. With my prompting, he did get around to talking about the members of his family and (presumably) drawing them, too. It's not in the assignment but in his talking and playing the next week that I see the learning. My idea of having him plan and draw what he will do at preschool before he goes each week is catching on with him. He naturally makes a simple plan now.

At preschool, they use flashlights in group time to practice the actions of pointing it up, down, in front of, behind, to the side, in circles, etc., which is pre-writing work. Nick is able to do this pretty well.

I've discovered that Nick knows the names of most of the letters when shown them and seems to recognize that words on a page make up the story being read. He doesn't seem to find his name on the preschool sign-in page without help, but in all fairness the page is printed in small type. He loves to type on the computer when I pull up a blank page for him.

When asked to draw details on a face, he knows the right areas for different body parts, but uses scribbles to represent them. When asked to draw lines from one point to another, he does so, and that does seem to "improve" his free drawing in terms of his using more shapes and lines.

Art appreciation and Xander: I don't know if it's a passing whim, but Xander says he did not like the last two paintings we examined by Raphael. He admits to liking the big, bold modern piece he chose to pose in front of at the museum a few weeks ago. I will have to look that up on their website and let him study that a little bit.

Erik started making a salt dough map of Egypt with Xander last weekend. They have formed topography and pyramids, and placed flags. They still have to paint it and place more flags and possibly make some other tweaks.

Xander decided to use his allowance to get a Playmobil set of Egyptian soldiers. We are studying ancient Egypt in some depth, so I think this is great.

These are the school books we have been using:

• Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling
• James Herriott's Treasury for Children {finished}
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne
• A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (Xander laughs aloud at some of these poems)
• Everyday Graces: A Child's Book of Good Manners edited by Karen Santorum (this book uses stories and excerpts from classic literature, so I love it)
• This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall
• Pocahontas by D'Aulaires {finished}
• D'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants (one of Xander's favorites)
• Exploring the Ice Age by Margaret Cooper {finished} (I just read that this is for grades 5-8; Xander loved it, though)
• My Brother Martin by Christine King Farris and Chris Soentpiet {finished}
• Champion: The Story of Muhammad Ali by Jim Haskins and Eric Velazquez {finished}
• Progressive Recorder Method for Young Beginners
• The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Karla Kuskin
• Among the Night People by Clara Dillingham Piers 
• The Usborne Internet-Linked Ancient World
• The Aesop for Children
• Everyday Number Stories by Emma Serl, Florence Elledge, George Baker Longan
• Singapore Math 1A textbook and workbook

Sleeping

Aaaaaahhhhh! Nick has entered a weird sleep zone. If he sleeps too late during his nap, he gives us a lot of trouble at bedtime, getting up, laughing, crying, and all that. Yet I want to try earlier bedtimes for him because he has been getting up in the morning even before my alarm. (This is what he does with later bedtimes.) He naps best at a later hour, but when you put all these variables together, they don't quite fit.

I am considering letting him get up in the morning and going about my quiet morning routine with him there. He will have to journal, look at books, and all the things I am doing without getting breakfast until breakfast time. Naptime can be between 1:30 and 2:00 and bedtime can be about 8:00. These are my happy mediums I'm going to work with next. A time change is coming up. I hope that doesn't mean Nick wakes up at 5:00 in the morning!

Xander seems to be staying awake long past lights out and getting up pretty late. Today it was about 9:00. The only tweaking to be done there is to enforce lights out and go in around 9:00 at night to make sure he's actually trying to sleep. He does get a small book light to use between 8:00 and 8:30 to read to himself. Last night, to gauge how well he can read to himself, I had him read a beginning reader book to me (Small Wolf). In my opinion, it was long enough and challenging enough for his age to be a good gauge. He read the whole thing just fine. (It is meant to be for ages 4 and up, but Xander would not have had the stamina to read this whole book at age 4, and he would have stumbled over many words.)

Eating

Erik says just wait until they are teenagers. He says at that point we should stock up on meat and teach them how to grill to satisfy their teenage appetites. He's right. I shouldn't make a big deal about how Nick wants to eat EVERY THIRTY MINUTES. When he is allowed to eat, it doesn't spoil the next meal for him. I have gotten into the habit of buying bags of apples and allowing him to pick out apples, wash them himself, and eat them when he is hungry. Xander, on the other hand, does not eat as often. He could almost go without snacks - almost, but not quite. He eats a hearty meal sometimes and other times does not.

Nick is a good helper in the kitchen. I have him help me pretty often. I remember not wanting to go to that trouble with Xander. I don't know if it's more my loosening up or more Nick's temperament that has him "cooking" in the kitchen with me more often at an earlier age than Xander. Xander is handy in the kitchen, but at this age doesn't seem to want to make the foods he knows how to make. On the other hand, he does get into helpful moods and will get Nick what Nick wants if I am otherwise occupied.

Outdoors

They have spent so much more time outside this fall. I have tried not to turn on the TV for days on end. As long as the other boy is outside, too, they love to play outside for an hour or so. We also try to get to the playgrounds to meet up with other kids once or twice a week. In fact, this afternoon we are meeting brothers who are the same age as Nick and Xander at a park.

Now I just have to get a handle on how I want to structure our nature studies (and how much I want to structure it).  But as far as simply being outside goes, they are doing great. I hope the neighbors don't mind their play yells.

Field Trips

Field trips to date this fall:

• the homeschool group Not Back to School party
• the art museum
• the military forces museum
• geocaching twice
• Dino Day at Champion Park
• Sea World Homeschool Day