Not Much, But Life

Today wasn't our best day for sure.

Thankfully the sun was shining this morning. After a grey weekend the sun was a good boost. The usual Monday housework went pretty well. But then school time came.

The word "pat" proved to be A Very Hard Word To Read. Edmund would read it correctly, then get stuck on saying "pap". It was very frustrating, but I knew that he could read the word properly if he actually took the time to think, instead of just saying the first thing that came to mind. In the end I had to feed the other boys lunch and take them outside to play, leaving Edmund to sit and clear his mind.

Once that hurdle was past the day flowed more smoothly, though right about that time the younger boys started getting really cranky, but then, thank goodness, it was nap time.

I took time to hang the laundry outside today. It smelled so lovely when I brought it in; I really need to hang the laundry more. Partly because of the rain I haven't hung the laundry out as much I usually do in the spring.

My sewing projects are coming along well. I won't bother you with all the mending details, but I should be able to get up some pictures of the new things I am making. I will be making a quilt (and maybe curtains) for Miss Cook's nursery, and the fabric for that came in the mail the other day, so now I am trying to make a final decision on what the quilt will look like. I won't start that project until all the mending is done. I find quilting to be rather addictive, so I need to get the less fun stuff out of the way first. :)

And a couple random pictures from the weekend.

Nathaniel...speed reading? He is our literary child. We had friends over on Friday, and Nathaniel and their little girl brought our entire collection of children's books into the kitchen and read them all while we played games.

We went to a Renaissance Faire near St. Louis on Saturday. This is one of the only pictures I took. A fire-dancer. She was pretty good, nothing fancy, but then I don't know how long she has been doing this. Besides this two ended pole she also has some torched chains and a little torch that she did fire eating with. Edmund was quite fascinated.

Summer Activities

As with my other pregnancies I have hit that point where I feel the need to finish my half done projects before the baby comes. Sewing projects are the main thing on my list. But there are also a lot of things that still need to be done in the basement that I would like to do before Miss Cook comes. It would be nice to get the schoolroom completed and ready for the new school year, as well as getting the bathroom down there up and running.

For now, I have started on my sewing projects. There are many, ranging from mending to new projects and as I sat and looked at my boxes I started feeling overwhelmed. So I closed all but one box, and from that one box, pulled out the first thing and finished it. Now I have gone through an entire box, fixing what I could and making a list of necessaries for the other things. Some of the projects were so easy and quick that it is ridiculous that I took so long to do them.

One of these was Jeremiah's name sampler. I have made these for the other boys, always finishing them up while pregnant with the next child. After I finished Nathaniel's I started Jeremiah's and had it almost done before he was born. Then I never picked it up again. Well, I finished it the other day, and when I said it was almost done I meant it. It took me all of maybe four hours spread over a few days to finish it. Wouldn't it have been nice to have finished it back when Jeremiah was a newborn?

Here it is: finished, washed, and framed.

And a close-up.

It would be nice to get Miss Cook's done before she comes, but I do think I should finish all the other half done projects I have going first. We will see what happens.

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On another note. We have the pool out and the boys have been in it pretty much every day for the last week and a half. Some of the days were really too cold and they didn't last long, but Sunday and yesterday they were in it a lot.

They all love the water, but of the three fish this one is the fishiest:

Neither of the other boys liked the pool much at this age, but Jeremiah loves it! It doesn't matter how cold it is. In fact, last month when we went to the river for a picnic Jeremiah actually crawled right into the river. Not only is the river always rather cold, but below the spring (where we were) it is ICY!!! But Jeremiah didn't care. As you can see, he loves to splash!

While Jeremiah sat down right away, it took Edmund a little while to get acclimated.

But it didn't take him too long. Oh, the life jacket? I don't know, maybe he was afraid he would be out of his depth. :)

Nathaniel was sleeping when some of these pictures where taken, otherwise he would have been in there more, too.

On Narnia, Imitation, and Walking

Harper Collins has a great unabridged audio book set of The Chronicles of Narnia. Jaired and I discovered it at the library when we were back in Virgina Beach. Recently, Edmund has become really interested in listening to audio books. He started out with some Jaired made for him, just reading books into a voice recorder, then burning them onto CD's. A few months ago Jaired brought home The Magician's Nephew and Edmund has since listened to all the books several times. He loves them and can recite all his favorite parts.

Last night, the evening wrestling matched somehow evolved into a game of Narnian kings fighting giants on the western border. Then Edmund got his "magic U" (a plastic letter magnet U) and transported us to the little country train station where the book Prince Caspian begins. He proceeded to give us a blow by blow account of the story and what each of us, as the different characters, was doing. We were then transported to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where we went from listening to his accounts to actually acting out the story. Particularly one of his favorite parts, where I, as Lucy, had to go read the magician's book, and act out all the events related with that.

It was very amusing and fun to be able to participate in and encourage his imagination. He was so serious about it and was so pleased every time I was able to insert the correct Lucy quotes for each event. The evening ended with him asking me to read him a story from "the magician's book". When he climbed into my lap I asked him how is was that the magician (for that's who he was playing at the time) was able to sit on Lucy's lap. He said that he was a small magician. :)

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"Me, too!" For everything. Nathaniel wants to be like Edmund and do what Edmund is doing. Even when he doesn't know what we are talking about, if he thinks it sounds good, "me, too!" Even if Edmund is excused from the table and Nathaniel is still eating he wants to be excused too, though he ends up being hungry and wanting to come back to eat more.

Nathaniel is definitely in the unenviable position of middle child. He tries so hard to do all the things Edmund does, and at the same time is trying to stay ahead of Jeremiah. It's not fun. But that little, "me, too!" sure makes me smile.

And after saying hello to the baby, he always point to his own tummy and says, "me, too. Baby!"

Oh, and he has started volunteering kisses. He has the cutest little pucker.

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Jeremiah has finally started walking. He is so funny. Sometime last week, he started by walking up to something with his walker and stopping a couple of steps away, and then taking those last steps alone. He would hold his hands up above his head and as he reached his target bring them down onto it with a triumphant crash. Yesterday, we again had a fire going in the fireplace, so we spent most of the late afternoon and evening in there. Jeremiah walked back and forth between the couches or people, trying further distances as he went along. Today, he got up to halfway across the room.

He is so proud of himself. Of course we are proud of him, too.

(No pictures, I know. I'll try to get some in the next post.)

Baby Number Four

I should have posted this last week, but I wasn't feeling up to writing a blog post, so I distracted myself by reading a mystery story instead.

As some of you know, we are expecting our fourth baby. The due date is August 11. Yes, I know, that means that I am already over halfway through my pregnancy and I haven't blogged about it at all. That's bad.

Anyway. I had a doctor's appointment Monday of last week (the 18th) and we found out that we are having a girl!

It will be interesting to see how much differences there will be between raising a boy and raising a girl. But I think we will have fun.

Edmund is excited. Of course he has known all along that this baby was a girl and would never hear otherwise from anyone. He has even named her, Miss Cook. "Because she will be a good cooker like Mama when she gets big."

Once while listening to Alexander Rybak's "Dolphin," where one line runs, "...and in my dreams he's promised me that someday I'll find my girl..." Edmund said, "Mama, do you know when I'll find my girl? When she comes out of your tummy!"

"April Showers Bring May Flowers"

We have been getting a lot of rain. More rain than sunshine, particularly this past weekend.

On Saturday we and the fam went to Jaired's office for a spring clean up. It started to rain about halfway through the morning, but we still managed to get all the outdoor work done. I think we worked faster because of the rain than we would have normally. The indoor work all got done, too, though there wasn't as much of it. Mostly just a thorough cleaning of the whole building. We were able to hang Jaired's diplomas and other documents that we had finally just recently gotten framed. And Kimberly cleaned the chimney. I think she got about 30 lbs. of ASH out of it. Really? How was there ash in the chimney?

Saturday night the rain got really crazy. We even got hail, which, though it is sometimes in the forecast isn't really that common in this area. No tornadoes though, thankfully.

When we moved into this house there were four or five places in the basement that leaked. We thought we had taken care of all of them, but there is still one left in a side room. It turns out that the leak is in a different place than I thought, but I believe I have it pin-pointed now. We have to go down there a few times a day to vacuum and mop up the water that comes in. But things got even more wild when the back yard and patio flooded up to the house and water started pouring into the schoolroom. After frantically trying to scoop it up faster than it came in I happened to glance over at what we have always thought was some odd hole in the patio floor that was kept covered with an old pot. Willing to try anything I pulled out the pot and watched with relief as the water began to pour down the hole. We don't know where this drain goes, but it seems to work well. Hopefully we aren't flooding something else.

We had a very simple Easter. Homemade sticky buns for breakfast, then off to church where Edmund joined a couple of the other boys in singing "He Reigns" by The Newsboys for the congregation. Back at home we got a fire going in the fireplace and Jaired and I relaxed with our books while Edmund and Nathaniel watched a Curious George movie. In the evening we had an Easter egg hunt. This was Nathaniel's first hunt and the first one Edmund has had in a long time (since we lived in Virginia). Because of the rain we had all the eggs inside. I am really bad about taking pictures of these kinds of things because I am so focused on them and making sure they know what is going on and that they are having fun. They did have fun and they didn't have any trouble figuring out what to do. (Sometimes I wonder if I worry too much?) They opened their eggs by the fireplace and seemed to be as excited about the new cars and bouncy balls as they were about the candy.

Spring is Here

Spring has pretty decidedly arrived now. We are having the usual mixture of sun and rain, cold, warm, and hot. I like it. It isn't likely that we will get many, if any, more frosty mornings, but even if we do they will certainly warm up to be quite lovely by lunch time. There is some heat, for example, on Saturday we went over to the family's for dinner and they got the pool out for the boys to play in. But the heat isn't too bad either, and the evenings cool off.

The boys and I are spending more time outside now. All three of them love to be outside, so it works out well. I am able to get some yard work done while they play and even when they are cranky they will play happily, then when nap time comes they are ready to lay down and take a good long nap. Sometimes when Jeremiah is having a fit at lunch and refusing to eat I will sit him out on the stoop and he will eat up all his food with almost no complaint.

Right at the end of February we bought a John Deere garden tractor. That, along with an extra wagon the family had from one of their old garden tractors, has been a great addition to our spring yard work. We have been spending the last several Saturdays outside working on a lot of the neglected aspects of our property. We still have work in the basement that needs to be done, but I am glad that we are spending these weekends outside. There will be plenty of time to work in the basement when the weather gets hot. In the past we spent a lot of days not doing anything because of not being able to work on the basement for various reasons, but at the same time feeling like, if we were going to be working we should do the "important" projects, instead of stuff like yard work. But now we are really enjoying the spring and getting work done.

I have been working on trimming plants, pruning dead branches, and in general cleaning up the place. I am at war with the wisteria, which is trying to take over the garden. Jaired has been mowing the field, tearing down fences, and building things.

I love this time of year.

School with Edmund Part 2:

After about two months we moved on from letter recognition to phonics. Jaired’s family used Sing, Spell, Read, and Write for their children, and Jaired still remembered the phonics song that is used in that curriculum. We taught Edmund how to sing it, and, using images from the Internet, I made a visual for him to look at as he sang it. At that point I was able to use the same letter flash cards I had already made to drill him in his phonics. For each card he would tell me the name of the letter and the sound it made. I also started him writing the alphabet, usually a letter a day, first in uppercase and now he is doing lowercase.

Around the same time that we started phonics, I started him on other memorization besides just songs. We are working on both Scripture verses and various poems.

Throughout all of this I keep up with regular reading to him, from picture books as well as picking up chapter books and educational/informational books on topics that interest him (like castles).

As Edmund becomes more familiar with everything he learns he starts, of his own accord, to use it in his every day play:

Ø He writes his name on his own, practices writing random letters and numbers, or he draws a picture, then asks me how to write what the picture is.

Ø Once he learned the concept of counting past twenty he taught himself to count higher, just asking for help with the tens.

Ø He likes to sing to himself or recite nursery rhymes as he plays, so all the songs and poems he learns go into his repertoire.

We started using Saxon Math K in January. Both Jaired and I grew up on Saxon Math. Back then their lowest grade was 4^th, but now they have down to kindergarten. For the most part the books are non-consumables, so Jaired’s parents were able to save all of Saxon books once their children were done using them, with grandchildren in mind. For Saxon Math K we are able to borrow their teacher’s guide and only had to buy the booklet and manipulatives package that goes with the program. (And the manipulatives are used all the way to 3^rd grade, so they are well worth the 60 something dollars they cost, not to mention we can use them with the other children as well.)

Edmund and I both really enjoy the Saxon Math. Though it is a kindergarten book they start out with very easy concepts, much of which Edmund already knew. The book is designed to be used three times a week, with reviewing past lessons on the off days. I didn’t notice this until after we were a few weeks into the book, but, because Edmund was easily understanding each lesson, we have continued going through the book at a lesson a day.

The math book is designed to take up a full school year, but since we are doing a lesson a day we will be done with it in less time. I haven’t checked how many lessons there are, but I don’t plan to take off any official summer break, so we will just go until we are done and then probably move on to the next grade, keeping pace with what Edmund is able to understand.

Back to reading and writing, Edmund now knows all the initial sounds each letter makes and recognizes both upper and lowercase letters, though I have not yet taught him when to use which case.

Last month we started reading three letter words. I just use a notebook and devote each page to one type of words. So far we have done words ending with –an and –ot. I don’t know yet when I will teach him letter combination sounds, but once I do I can always go back to each page and write down the longer words that have those same endings.

I love the challenge and flexibility of home schooling. I can go as fast or as slow with a concept as Edmund is able to understand and not worry that he is going to “fall behind” or “get ahead.” If he is not in a very teachable mood we can skip our sit down school and just play. I don’t have to get stressed out trying to make him learn, and he learns that school is fun.

I learn and understand more about what I am teaching as I have to look at the topic/concept from different angles trying to find the way Edmund will understand it. And it is not just the way I explain things to him, but the way a lesson is presented to him.

For example: as I gave him new words to read he began to be overwhelmed by all that was going on. He would look at the list of words, which probably appeared long to him, and his mind would shut done, so much so that he would not even be able to tell me the sounds of the letters. You may think I am making excuses for him being stubborn and not wanting to read, but I think that it really was just too much at once for him to handle. My approach now is: each day I tell him if we are going to just do a review of the previous day’s words or if we will be learning new words. Then, I make sure that he feels confident with reading each word, and at least understands the basic meaning of the word before going on to another one. Finally, even if I want him to read three or four new words I write them down one at a time, that way he can concentrate on each new word one at a time, instead of seeing all of them at once and wondering how in the world he is going to be able to read them. This approach has worked really well. We are both much more relaxed about reading, and he is excited and confident about reading. He even gets the notebook out at other times during the day to read the words to himself.

I look forward to sharing more of our home schooling journey with you. I would love to hear your comments.