Settling down into a routine
It has been a while since I have written. There are so many things that I have wanted to write about and so little time to actually sit down for any length of time in front of the computer! I tend to write at night after the little monsters are in bed but, for the past month, by the time we get the boys to bed we are pretty close to passing out ourselves. It reassuring to read other posts where other moms/parents are facing the same thing!
Finally this past week, I feel like we have settled into a semblance of a routine with Woody and Buzz. When I mentioned this to my good friend H, she retorted that this was a good thing since we are almost at Fall Break and Christmas! There are a couple of things working well this year and a couple of things that are not working as well and I thought I should jot them down here more as a reminder to myself:
What’s working…
Buzz is settling down well into preschool. He loves the teachers and already has a horde of friends. There is a little girl there who calls him her boyfriend. He is having a blast which is really nice to see. The only downside is that my laundry loads have increased tenfold since he has started. He comes back home with his clothes covered in dirt, mud, play dough, paint, shaving cream, wood chips. One day he came home with his pockets filled with small rocks and he had painstakingly named each rock!
In Woody’s 1st Grade class the kids get to learn a poem each week and also have to recite the poem in front of the class. This actually is a really good idea and is working really well because it exposes kids to the wonderful world of poetry and importantly, it gives them an invaluable lesson in early public speaking in front of a very safe audience. They get to learn 30 poems by the time they graduate to 2nd Grade! In addition to the poem, we also make sure to look up the poet and learn a bit about them. Woody really enjoys these and Buzz is also learning the poems and gets to recite them at home on Sunday when his grandparents come to dinner!
Another routine that is working well is a Reading Record that the school is asking the kids to maintain. This is a log of the books that they are reading at home each day. They sent a blank schedule home and I have found that Woody is quite motivated to read so he can fill the schedule out! You get to choose the book which is also really good. This should help me keep better track of what we are reading at home. I plan to add a page to the blog to capture this.
3 sessions a week of EPGY for Woody is going gangbusters! I will be talking to the teachers at the parent-teacher conferences next week about perhaps pulling him out of class to do this. Fingers crossed that they let him do this!
What is not working…
We were ridiculously over scheduled for the first few weeks of school. I took a long hard look at the activities on our plate and it was a choice between cutting back to one piano class a week OR stopping swim classes and picking them back up in the Spring. Piano won because Woody so enjoys it and absolutely loves his teacher!
I am also looking into how to augment science learning at home. Woody’s school covers two topics on science this year: insects and animal habitats. Earlier in the year, I asked the teachers how these topics got picked and she replied that this was what the kids tended to be interested in at this age. While I like the idea of this being interest driven, I was not completely comfortable with that answer but was not able to articulate why until a few weeks ago. Let me see if I am able to explain my thinking here:
Science to me almost consists of topics that are very related, almost like overlapping circles. The the reason I was not completely happy with the teacher’s answer was that the topics picked seemed a little random and lacked an overarching guiding framework. I was not looking for a textbook (or even a set of textbooks) because that would be way too confining. But rather what I was looking for was a broad framework of topics that would serve as more of a guide for me about the topics and how they overlap. Now this is likely just me being neurotic but I feel that with this framework in my head, I would feel a bit more confident to then have the topics be guided by the child’s interest. So I have been researching augmenting science for Woody and will have a longish post on this soon! Would love any thoughts you might have on this!
I am off now to build a scarecrow with Woody’s class! The theme the kids picked is WICKED WITCH. The kids and parents have been collecting stuff to build the witch and today is the day that we actually get to build this! At the Halloween party, the different class scarecrows are evaluated on different criteria. Everyone ends up getting a prize. It is tons of fun!
Which way is faster?
For many weeks now Woody and I have had an friendly debate on our morning commute to school. He has claimed that taking Route B was the faster way to get to the freeway and I have argued that Route A is actually faster. Buzz, in training for the diplomatic service, claimed that both ways were the same!
It struck me a few days ago that we could actually convert this into a rich lesson for both boys!
First we talked about the idea of a hypothesis as a proposed explanation for some observed phenomenon. And that hypotheses needed to be tested. This was a concept that the boys got immediately.
Woody’s Hypothesis: Route B was faster than Route A
Mommy’s Hypothesis: Route A was faster than Route B
Buzz’s Hypothesis: Route A and Route B were equally fast.
And so we started our test of this hypothesis. On Thursday we took Route A and it took us 6 minutes and on Friday we took Route B and it took us 7 minutes. So I turned to them and declared myself the winner.
“But wait a minute”, Woody said “on Friday, Route B had a lot of construction that slowed us down a bit and we stopped at more red lights than we normally do”. And so, I pointed out to them gleefully, one data point for each road was not a fair test of which was faster.
We needed more data.
Woody then pointed out to me that ideally we would need to compare the time taken on each road at the same time and on the same day because on Fridays there tend to be fewer cars on the road than on Tuesday or Wednesday. Which led to a discussion about the best ways to design the test. We finally have decided to gather at least 3 data points for each route or 6 days of data in total.
We have started to put the data collected in a table and have also started a graph of the time taken on each road. We will be calculating average times from this data. And my DH has promised them that once the data is collected and the graph done, he will help Woody put it all in Excel and produce a professional looking table and graph. Woody is thrilled at the idea!
So much learning….and from such a simple but Woody initiated idea. Priceless!
Unique and that’s absolutely OK
Buzz and I are at home sick. We are in bed all snuggled up watching (for about the 100th time) Liberty’s Kids. You know you have had waaaaay too much of this series when you start to hear this theme song in your dreams.
And perhaps because I am sick, I am being more than usually introspective…
I realized again this morning how different Woody is from the rest of the kids in his class. We walked up to class and there were kids everywhere. The boys were playing ball or chasing each other. The girls were talking together in small groups. Woody walked up to the Four Square area and starting pacing and measuring the sides of the square. He was there all alone and so Buzz and I walked up to him and asked him what he was doing. Turns out he thought that the square wasn’t really a square and two of the sides were slightly longer than the other two. And so he was measuring. And if he was right, he claimed that the game should be renamed Four Rectangles.
Remember a couple of days ago when the teacher thought he really wanted to play Four Square, well it could be that he was actually just was interested in measuring the square! I’ll ask when he gets back home today.
And here is the thing that I have to keep telling myself, it is completely OK for him to be different and unique. When I was in school I worked so hard to belong and I was such a chameleon, changing personalities for the different groups I interacted with. It got to a point where I wasn’t really sure who I was leaving high school. And it wasn’t until college that I felt that I could be myself and be appreciated.
So unique is good. Woody will just be who he is and he is wonderful. And while I will always worry about kids teasing him for being different, I also know that he will (and is) making friends who will appreciate the unique and the quirky. And who also happen to be unique and quirky in their own way!
Ok, I will stop now. I can always blame the NyQuil for the rambling in this post !
Historic Farms
Woody’s school is scheduled to go to Ardenwood Historic Farm. And I have been scouring the local library trying to find books related to historic farms. There are many books that talk about farm animals but Woody has never really been into farm animals (”too smelly”). (Buzz on the other hand loves animals and so I have picked up some of these for him.)
But I have been trying to figure out what about historic farms would float Woody’s boat and think I stumbled upon an angle that I can use with him based on a conversation we had over dinner a few days ago. Woody’s class had been discussing the trip at school and he was fascinated by how they did laundry back in the 1800s! The idea of big buckets of heated water, a wash board, the wringer and hanging clothes up to dry on a clothes line was the topic of conversation over dinner. And so I got thinking that perhaps he would like it if we talked about other “then” and “now” experiences of farm living in the 1800s.
Here are some questions that we came up with together:
- How did they know when to get up in the morning without alarm clocks?
- What did they get the cooking done? What did they eat?
- What tools did farmer use on the farm?
- Did they go to school? What did the schools look like?
- What did the family do for entertainment? What games did the kids play?
Here are some resources I will be using with the boys to answer some of these questions:
Pioneer Farm: Living on a Farm in the 1880s.
A Pioneer Sampler: Daily Life of a Pioneer Family in 1840
Our recent trip to Columbia Historic Park in the Gold Country also helps bring this era to life a bit. We ate at the local saloon…
And we boarded stagecoaches…
Got held up by bandits…
We could also dust off the Little House on the Prairie DVDs that we have and have a series marathon but I suspect that will be more for Mommy and less for the two brats! Hey, maybe I can convince DH to do just this tonight once the boys are in bed….
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
The book has always been an early favorite in our house along with Goodnight Moon and the entire Dr. Seuss Collection.
Buzz loves to talk about living in the town of Chewandswallow and then lists the things he would like to see descend from the sky…cheese pizza, hotdogs, ice cream…Woody, the more practical of the two, worries about the calories contained in the mega sized portions and wonders if everyone will get fat!
Both boys have been eagerly waiting for the new Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 3-D movie that opens today Sept 18th. It has been getting decent reviews.
The plan is for DH to come home somewhat early today and then we will be headed to the movies after dinner. And for dinner? Spaghetti and meatballs, of course. a la Barefoot Contessa.
Hopefully this should tide the boys through the movie….
Update: We loved this movie. It was 1.5 hours of lighthearted fun. Watching it in 3D was especially amazing. DH and I remember sitting through some of the early 3D movies and were marvelling at what they are able to do now! DH is a movie buff and he was able to identify many many movie references through the film. Kids had a blast!
Timed Math & Four Square
We have never really tried timed Math with the boys. Woody gets mathematical concepts intuitively and plays around with his math. We have gravitated towards programs like EPGY when it comes to picking a more structured curriculum. So I waited with some trepidation for Woody to come home since yesterday he had the first one of these time Math tests.
The conversation went something like this:
Me: How did the math test go?
Woody: Fine
Me: Did you manage to complete the test in time?
Woody: Yup.
Me: How did you do?
Woody: Just fine.
Not knowing what fine meant and not wanting to push him any more than he wanted, I casually emailed the teacher asking how he did, all the while trying hard not to sound like an anxious mother hen.
Turns out he did “just fine.” They work on Mastering Math Facts a couple of days a week. He got 40/40 in a minute and she will now be moving him ahead up to the point where she feels he is being challenged. Hurray!
It was also good that I emailed because she also let me know that she senses that Woody desperately wants to join in the Four Square game and watches the kids play it during recess. She asked if we could play the game with him at home so he could practice and therefore feel more confident about playing it at school.
So we will all be brushing up our Four Squares skills this weekend!