Round-Up

I've been trying to limit my computer time lately and I hurt my back, pulled a muscle I think so I have been longer between posts. We have had a good school week. We are not involved with any activities out of the home this week, especially since next week will be a big week for us.

Ciaran has been really into play-doh and coloring this week. He made some neat "people" and has colored some nice frogs and owls. He also painted one of his big letters and hopefully we will finish our collage tommorrow. He has been on again and off agian with his interest level and I am going with that these days. Today he picked up our big Spectacular China book and looked at all the pictures, he was excited for them. He has also been into being read to. Rhiannon has stepped up as well and for the past two nights she has read to him in bed until he has fallen asleep from Frog and Toad and Little Bear.

Rhiannon has been reading quite a bit and we went back to daily Phonics drills as I noticed an increase in her whole word reading and an avoidance of sounding unfamiliar words out, she uses context and often will sound out the beginning and then guess until she gets it right. We just finished up working on different endings (ink, ank, unk, onk) and (ing, ang, ung, ong) and began work on long vowels. We are both enjoying working through Phonics Pathways. It is easy to follow and has the right mix of words with no context and words in sentences. She asked to do an extra page today. We have also finally added in the spelling portion of the book. Up until recently I felt she was too young to have to try to spell any of the words. I am not hard on her but she does need to do spelling from diction as part of each of her phonics lessons now.

She has been very into making little books and writing us letters. This week she made two books "The Story of My Life" and "A Book about Mom" she wrote a full page that she sounded out (spelling was sometimes difficult to follow) and then illustrated the book with her special pictures. She also made each member of the family, including younger brother and sister a special picture of her with them on a summer day. These have been precious to receive and a lot of fun.

Math this week has been exciting. We had been in a routine with Miquon math on the subject of addition and subtraction but on Monday Rhiannon asked if we could do math with blocks and we had a great time! We used our big unit blocks to show fractions and how different things can equal one another. We used blocks to represent half, quarter, and eigths. I showed how that worked with both vertical and horizontal blocks and we played around with it for awhile. Then we moved to money and I showed one dollar, half dollar and quarters. After she got her mind around this we set up both the blocks and the money on her desk so she could see the relationships. I also wrote the fractions on the board for her to see adding fractions and how they become whole numbers and then made flash cards with the fractions written on it. We ended this by playing a game where I would hold up either a coin or a block and she had to find the right flash card that represented it. She had fun with it and I think she really grasped it.

We continued with work in First Language Lessons, today we focused on aunts, uncles and cousins and for copywork she wrote the names of all her aunts, uncles and cousins, 9 in all. We talked about common and proper nouns and she worked on memorizing a new poem.

We have been reading through "Tell me the Story of Jesus" and "ABC Memory Verse: Hiding God's word in Little Hearts" for bible studies. Just tonight when we arrived at church for our midweek service she informed us that she thinks she is ready to be baptized and we should talk about this weekend. It was very matter of fact and not in the context of anything else from the car ride. We have been reading about John the Baptist during our bible study time though and she has been asking a lot of questions about how I came to be baptized. On the way home Ciaran was so excited about his class and what he learned and asked to keep coloring his sheet from class and shared all about the story they learned tonight.

Both Ciaran and Rhiannon have been very inquisitive this week, especially about my education and marriage. Today at lunch I spent the entire time answering questions about our wedding, honeymoon, how we met and how long we went to school. They also wanted to know if I ever had a job like dad before I stayed home with them. It was fun sharing all those things with them and interesting to me that they were suddenly interested. It was also suprising to me that the answer to how long I spent in school was 20 years!

Sirah has been a lot of fun. She is starting to use more and more words and finding different ways to communicate her desires and needs. She still does not want to sleep until nearly 11pm each night and naps are becoming more of a fight with her as well. She picked up a stack of books and climbed on my lap tonight before bed. We have also been playing peekaboo - it is very cute to see her play and cover her eyes. She gets so excited when you play with her. She knows almost all of her body parts and can tell the difference between my eyes and her eyes. She is learning her animal sounds and LOVES to color and play with playdoh. She was so proud this week when she colored a picture for me, it was so special to see her standing there holding out this piece of paper for me and realizing that she made it. It was cute to see her proud of herself. She is also very into taking off all her clothes especially her diaper. She has taken to putting her diaper into the toilet! If she were not so little I would see this as time to start potty training her. She keeps taking off her diaper and putting on Rhiannon's underwear!

I've been trying to take it easy to recover from hurting myself yesterday. Keeping laundry going, the house picked up, playing with Ciaran and Sirah and Rhia's school has been enough for me. I've also gotten some personal reading time in, a little crocheting and our 2004 taxes completed (HOORAY!). Serona is working hard on some preojects for work including some presentations he needs to finish. We are in the middle of painting our living room and we need to finish tommorrow as we are hosting bible study here on Friday!

Peace,
Tenn