Saturday, January 9, 2010

Fowarded E-mails

I get a lot of forwarded emails and usually delete them without reading as I just can't handle the volume of them. If I do happen to open one... I rarely/hardly ever/ almost never forward it on to others. But today my Godparent sent me one and I opened it and thought it was cute so I will share it here.
I can't respond to any emails today.Something has crashed on my computer...
And the mouse is missing.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

P.E.

Today was Bounce House day with our homeschool group.


We usually have P.E. at our local Y and it is a really fun and beautiful facility, but of course, this is a favorite.
For the last 2 weeks James has been having nose bleeds. It happens every winter after I turn the furnace on...the house gets so dry. Today he bumped his nose with his knee and that started the blood a-flowin, but he reacted very quickly and got off of the bouncy toys before it dripped. Good Boy!
It was a smaller crowd this month, but the kids still made good friends and had loads of fun. I think this weather had something to do with it...

Very slick and lots of black ice.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Guess Who's Reading!!!

Pre-K is reading!!! I am excited and happy for him as he is so happy and enjoys reading. This is the first time I have ever used the Harcourt Reading Program. All of my other children learned to read using a phonics program that was developed by a group of nuns that had a small private school years ago in our town. They had a “learn to read guaranteed” program that I purchased. It focused on learning by rote line letters, clock letters, two, three and four-letter phonograms by watching a video. Once you learn all 70 phonograms, the sounds can be put together to read words. Jackson has an auditory processing disorder which makes hearing and repeating the sounds with the teacher on the video very difficult. The Harcourt program teaches high frequency words and uses pre-decodable, decodable books and short early-reader books. I did not intend for him to read this year, but once I showed him the books, he.wanted.to.read!


We started by learning the sight words: a, my, the, I, like, go, we, on, to, you, have, do, what, no, see, look, come, for, me, one, little, are, here. He learned these very quickly as I have noticed that if he sees something he can remember it very well and for a long time. I am almost tempted to think he has some degree of photographic memory. Once he learned those words, he started just flying through the pre-decodable books which slowly introduced decodable words.
He received the book, “Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See” as a gift and I used “Tot Pack” to print the “Heads and Tails” cards.




He was just doing the cards and looking at the book when he just started reading the book. Earlier this semester he learned to recognize color words. I snuck and video taped him from behind.

Well...stink.... the video will not load tonight. I will try again later

Monday, January 4, 2010

Back in the Saddle

We had a good first day back to school. We started late and that was good because it was so cold this morning it was hard to get out from under the warm covers.

Both boys got recorders for Christmas, so we have started lessons during music. I already had a very nice one that I purchased years ago that never got used. At first, I could not find something simple enough for both boys to use, but then I found Musicteacher44 on YouTube and she gave a good visual that both boys could see. So today we just started with holding, finger placement and steady blowing. Look at those faces (I first typed eyes and then realized you could not see their eyes. Ha ha)...concentrating so hard. ~Smile~


I also started Pre-K on the use of Tangrams today. I have had little foam ones for a couple of years, but never took the time to use them. This past weekend, I printed off this sheet and actually printed off paper tangrams and laminated them. This kid is really good at puzzles and now I know...tangrams






Sunday, January 3, 2010

Mean Mommy Strikes at Midnight

First I must admit...I can be somewhat of an extremist (Ha Ha - somewhat) and I try not to drip too much of that in my parenting, except in this area. Whew...confession is good.

My mom survived a house fire when she was little and the story of the fire always impacted me. When I was a Social Worker several years ago, I had a client family that had a huge house fire. Their children's bodies were found under the bed and in the closet. Again, huge impact.

I make my kids practice fire drills in the house. We talk about the importance of getting out and not hiding. They learned that they should not leave anything in their path, should feel the door for heat before opening, and how to open their windows if the door is not available. Sometimes I make them practice while wearing backward hoodies (with the hood tied) to simulate the heat, difficulty breathing and darkness. Most drills are after they go to bed. They HATE it! HATE HATE HATE it! But my hope is that they will automatically drop to the floor and crawl out as we practice.

We had a rough summer and had not practiced in a while. Tonight was the night. So at midnight, I sat at the end of the hallway and held the tester button. Lets just say...they did not make good time tonight and there were a few strewn items on their floors that kinda got in the way and boy did I get some *stink eye* looks (and I cannot wait to see what our respite care kid tells her therapist about this one), but they did all get out and....




I heard people putting their shoes and other toys away on their way back to bed. Ha Ha!

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Ready to Start Up Again...

I think... We have already decided to have a late start on Monday.

It has been an interesting 2 weeks as we have been doing an emergency respite care for a 13 yr old girl. I usually will not take any children older than my 2 older kids, but this child is pretty delayed and really does not displace my daughter. She has however brought issues to the table that actually gave my kids an opportunity to see some of the behaviors that we often talk about... which I have found to be a more effective way of teaching sometime. Being a foster parent is so very rewarding for me and 1 of the bonuses is that my kids learn empathy and have an opportunity to care for others. They also develop vision for what behaviors may look like to others.