ThadenPierce School

When setting up Ben’s speech therapy for the fall they asked if I was interested in a group program. We planned for 30 minutes of individual speech therapy 2x a week but we could do that and then immediately afterward and with the same therapist he would attend a one hour speech based preschool program. They would have themes, story books, pre-literacy skills, games, etc. (I explained he’s been reading for a couple years and they said they would absolutely adjust and adapt that segment so that it challenged Ben and focuses on reading skills & articulation instead.) I worried it was all younger children than him but three will be kindergarden age but waiting another year so it is his peer age group. Five kids total and each will have a speech therapist with them.

I think this will be wonderful! Christopher had a year of one day a week in home preschool that his best friend’s mom ran and that was when we had Bennett newly home from the hospital and were in lockdown for RSV. It gave him some structured social and academic time with friends when we couldn’t get out of the house much. Moira had a year of one day a week in school preschool that was run by two speech therapists and was focused on her articulation skills but with the added element of social development of her speech – and she loved it. I thought Bennett would enjoy and benefit from something similar but had no clue how we could possibly manage that and then this fell into our laps!

My concern was Kit’s work schedule (but the time slot is manageable and he says we can do it) and the price. We’re paying for two individual therapy sessions a week but those PLUS an additional two hours a week of group therapy? Ouch, but much to my surprise and delight the group fee includes the individual fee and it’s less – LESS!!!! – than the individual therapy is alone! It’s speech based preschool 2x a week with his own designated therapist for the same price as individual therapy?? And 1.5 hours each day which I think is just about right for his attention span (since this is a more intensive, therapy focused program vs. preschool with free playtime and such.) Could it be more perfect??

I feel really, really grateful. I think this will be wonderful for Bennett

Now that we have it I’m feeling reassured. She is where we thought she was as far as peer comparison, though the supervisor told me she was far beyond with her comprehension (and they were testing her at 6th grade level, she said) but we’ll be focusing on decoding skills and sight words because those are two areas she needs work.

They are advising reading therapy but since we’ve not actually formally done any reading program with her and are inconsistent with our Spell to Write & Read (I was waiting for her results before I pushed that further and was just doing reviews of what we had already covered) I’m feeling confident that she does NOT need therapy. She’s within typical range for her age and since she taught herself to read and she’s there, imagine if we actually sit down and get serious about teaching her to read? But I wanted to focus on her gross and fine motor skills and speech before I worried about pushing the read. She’s still so young but now that she’s graduated from speech and the reading test says there are no underlying indicators of a reading issue, I’m confident it’s READING TIME! We’ll be sitting down daily for some practice.

I’m really, really impressed with how C’s cursive is progressing. He’s getting faster with practice whereas at first the cursive took him a long time as he tried to remember the various letters. We did a relatively brief overview for him with Cursive First since he was already writing in print and sometimes he’ll need me to remind him of a specific letter but his cursive is now far neater than his print.

We have him do a bit of daily cursive writing – the scripture he’s memorizing, new spelling words, spelling tests, grammar lesson work, etc. We don’t have a set handwriting time with him anymore but we do encourage him to use cursive in these other exercises.

I’ll post Mo’s sample cursive later, she just got back from speech with HUGE NEWS!

We assembled a bin with a variety of things to make it easier for kids to write friends or family. Stationary sets, paper of all sizes, envelopes of all sizes, stickers, return address labels (though I’m not letting them near the stamps, they still have to come to me for those!) There are also some cards for different occasions and some craft stuff to make cards. If I trusted my children more I would include crayons, markers & pencils as well but we still keep those out of the toddler’s reach.

I didn’t buy anything in particular for this set, I just went around the house collecting items and assembled them in one place. On Sundays we try to write a letter to a friend or family member (near or far, since even local cousins have fun exchanging drawings & letters.) The little kids can doodle or draw, big kids can write, and it encourages me to remember to take the time to include a handwritten note to people we love as well. If I were more creative I would let the kids decorate the box but we’ll have to wait until I have some more energy to tackle that.

I’ve noticed that having the box down and easily accessible has encouraged the kids to grab some paper when the urge strikes and get started. We try to always send thank you notes and this makes it a bit more fun and gives them some control over their medium as well. I’m optimistic this will get all of us into the habit of writing letters more often and in our instant contact world of IM and texting, I think these notes are something special we should preserve. I have boxes of letters from penpals and family over the year and I love to see their handwriting and have that written record of our discussions and our relationship over the year. I hope my children will have that experience, too, so I’m trying to foster their penpal friendships.

Instead of memorizing the poems in the First Language Lessons books we’ve been using scripture mastery cards for C and primary songs for M. I decided I needed to be more consistent about it. On Mondays we’ll pick the scripture mastery and song for the week and each of the kids will write some of the scripture/song as part of their handwriting practice for the week. I’ll also write out the words and hang it on the fridge so we all get the reminder to work on memorizing those and to have something we can refer back to for later review.

I think all of us are suffering from memory loss these days because there’s so little we have to memorize – we can always look it up quickly online or on our laptop or in the iPhone, right? But I think memorization is good for our brains and necessary for some things in life so I hope we can make this a relatively fun way to develop this skill.

We got a cool surprise in the mail today, a package from the Mealer grandparents filled with eight double sided placemats. The kids LOVE, love, love them and are sitting around the living room now reading them! They are heavily laminated so we can use dry erase markers on them and wipe them off and use them at mealtimes as well – these are fantastic, we’re so excited about them.

Topics include the presidents of the US, the solar system, multiplication tables, world map, US map, shapes, numbers and letters. The backs have games and more information for the kids and they are all entranced, from the 8 year old (telling me who is on each bill or coin as he looks as the presidents) down through the 1 year old (yelling, “W! One!” as he identifies things.)

C’s officially starting 4th grade! Well, as official as we get. He’s finished his 3rd grade grammar and that was his lingering non-4th grade level work.

I decided instead of saving the “bonus” lessons for the end of the book like we did this time we’ll intersperse them with the rest of the book. Their lesson schedule has 3 lessons per week for 36 weeks (a standard school year) but since we go year round I’m changing the format to do grammar lessons 2x a week.

Will we actually follow this? Unlikely, but it lets me see where to add in the bonus lessons and if we take off a week here or there I like having a reference point to go back to and pick up again. Plus since we’re starting next week, even with several weeks off over the course of the year we should be able to finish up this grammar book by Sep. 2011 and C can start 5th grade then. (Note to self, find grammar/writing program for 5th grade!)

1. 1, 2
2. 3, 4
3. 5, 6
4. 7, 8
5. 9, 10
6. 11, 12
7. DS 1, 2
8. 13, 14
9. 15, 16
10. 17, 18
11. 19, 20
12. 21, 22
13. 23, 24
14. 25, 26
15. 27, 28
16. 29, 30
17. WL 1, WL 2
18. WL 3, 31
19. 32, 33
20. 34, 35
21. 36, 37
22. 38, 39
23. 40, 41
24. 42, 43
25. 44, 45
26. 46, 47
27. 48, 49
28. 50, 51
29. 52, 53
30. 54, 55
31. DS 3, DS 4
32. 56, 57
33. 58, 59
34. DS 5, 60
35. 61, 62
36. 63, 64
37. 65, 66
38. 67, 68
39. 69, 70
40. 71, WL 4
41. WL 5, WL 6
42. 72, 73
43. 74, 75
44. 76, 77
48. 78, Contractions
49. 79, 80, 81 (Reviews)
50. WL 7, WL 8
51. WL 9, WL 10
52. 82, 83, 84, 85 (Reviews)

Note: we just started our first lesson and it was very much a review of concept he’s learned in the prior 3 years. The entire book appears to be a repeat of prior concepts in more depth, which is great! Things he still needs help with are reiterated and those things he’s already mastered we can just move quickly through. This does involve more writing & dictation, both areas we need to focus on since he’s developed the fine motor skills for lengthier writing assignments. Before now we’ve let him narrate instead of writing everything but he’s 8 and I think he’s ready for some more practice in that area. We still keep it brief because before 10 years of age I question how much they have the fine motor skills/patience to do lengthy compositions but we’re working that direction. (And that will depend on each child and how much I see them struggle or get worn out by the handwriting.)

I’m NOT good about reading aloud to the kids or having them read to me. Fortunately Kit’s really good about it and always has at least one story he’s reading to the kids but me, not so much. I can manage a story or picture book but otherwise, I struggle with reading aloud. (Kit says it’s because I read too fast and I think he’s right, my tongue cannot go as fast as my eyes and I find myself reading ahead even while still forming the words to say to the kids. Confuses my brain.)

I’m working on this, I know there is value in reading aloud as a family and I’m resolving to do better. Plus I know the kids need to read to me. C’s been an independent reader well over a year now and B’s reading silently to himself but he’s still young enough that I want him to read to me so I can see how much he’s comprehending and make sure he’s not just gliding over words he doesn’t know. M’s reading assessment confirmed to me that we need to dedicate more time to building her reading confidence. My testing shows she’s comprehending everything and she’s at grade level for her reading decoding skills but her speech hesitation is holding her back (and we’ll get more details after we finish her reading assessment today and receive their final report.)

SO, goals for the next year. Fridays are our literature day and I will read a story aloud to the kids and do our story charts at their various levels.

C I don’t have to set any sort of minimum amount of reading, I have to STOP him from reading to do other things. And he loves to narrate what he’s reading so that’s not an issue. Focusing on (a) formal story chart such as plot summary, main characters, themes, etc. (b) variety in what he’s reading independently, encourage him to check out at least 2 non-fiction books each week at library.

M will read a chapter from a book with assistance as needed, we’re going for just above her independent reading level to push her a bit. We’ll also focus a lot on her SWR work this summer because I can see how the Spell to Write and Read program is helping her reading (decoding) skills a lot. After she reads me a chapter from her book & narrates then I’ll read her a chapter from the same book or another of her choosing.

B will start chapter books but he needs to read them aloud to us so we can discuss and have him start simple narration. We’ll work on the phonogram cards with him to prepare to start SWR formally next year. He’s ready for spelling but I don’t want to push him on the fine motor skills needed for the handwriting that goes with the program. He’s too little, so we’ll focus on the sound cards, reading & narration, and some basic handwriting. We’ll reassess in January because we may opt to wait until next fall (2011) when he’s 6 years old before we worry about the handwriting and spelling program. I’m leaning towards that.

So, Friday read aloud and do literature program as a group (Teaching the Classics) and each day have Mo & Ben read aloud to me and narrate, with C narrating to me whatever he’s reading independently.

This morning Moira did a couple hours of a comprehensive speech and reading assessment. We’ll get results later after scoring so more on that to come.

This afternoon after she spent hours doing that testing I didn’t want to subject her to any intensive lessons, but I wanted to get a lesson done. I grabbed our fables book, it includes a picture and one page summary of various famous ones. I read it aloud and then we did a story chart on it – main characters, setting, plot. Then to make it even more fun I read it again while the kids took turns acting out the various parts and narrating back for me what happened. We were out in our newly converted sunroom/studio so there was tons of run around space after our morning dance class. I didn’t imagine they would have so much fun with it but C then read various fables to them while they acted out more and more of them.

So, fun way to narrate and cover story charts. It kept them all involved from the 8.5 year old down through the not yet 2 year old (though they did have to prompt him to recite his lines.) When Kit came home I asked the kids to tell Kit about it, giving them another chance to narrate and cement the stories in their minds.

We found a TON of classic novels at the various thrift shops while on vacation and I snagged them all, along with a couple more modern ones of different reading levels. C’s into dragons right now so I found a couple for him and I was eating a belated lunch and trying to do some of my own reading when he sat next to me and started to talk about his latest novel. While selfishly I wanted to keep reading my book, I also realized that he was seeking a chance to talk with me (one of his love languages) and he was narrating a story to me (always a good lesson) and me connecting with my 8 year old son was much, much more important than me reading to myself. I know, duh, how obvious is it that he takes precedence? But I think when I’m focused on my own reading I get tunnel vision and it was humbling to hear the prompting, “Put your book down and listen to your son.” I’m really, really glad I did and I resolve to be more in tune with when my children are seeking those moments to connect with me.

Post here and I was happy to see we own three of them & our library has another six so we’re only missing one. Neat, I’ll post about them later.

We own (and love) Ferdinand and Horton Hatches a Who. (In fact Kit was given Ferdinand by an old girlfriend – it has an inscription. I love books with inscriptions even if it’s not to me, such stories that come from asking about them! Both when I ask and when the kids ask who, “Who gave you this?)

Leo the Late Bloomer – Kit says, “This is mostly a message to the parents to quit stressing out, it’s not a message to the kids.” He also said he’s seen more visually engaging books with the same message. In this case Leo’s father gives up on him blooming and goes off to watch tv. Nice.

Snowflake Bentley is a nice book about a true story, a photographer-scientist pursuing his dream and how his family & community support his passion (though he did have skeptics, of course.)

Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs is a lovely book about a 4 year old boy and his relationship with his grandmother and great-grandmother. Despite them both passing away (one when he’s a child, she’s 94 and the other when he’s an adult) Mo described it as a “fun” book because of the boy’s interactions with Nana Upstairs. It was a sweet book.

Henry Builds a Cabin we all loved, based on Henry David Thoreau building a one room cabin while writing his book and his simple recycling and conservation efforts and focus on nature. Very Charlotte Mason, and one that launched some great discussions about big vs. small, living space, and needs vs. wants. The kids are looking through Material World now with Kit and discussing some big topics, such as where America falls in the financial global scene.

William’s Doll I actually thought was sad. He wants a doll to love and nurture and his older brother and neighbor kid both mock him and his father keeps coming up with stereotypical boy activities to do to break him of the desire to have a doll. Finally grandma grows up and gets him one and chews out dad (kindly) by saying William wants a doll so he can grow up to be a nice father someday. Implication being that William’s daddy totally failed on that parenting front since he didn’t support his son’s nurturing desire. (Go, Grandma, but boo for dad and older brother.)

The Little House was depressing, too. The home is abandoned by the family and suffocating in the city alone and unloved until a descendent of the original owners comes back to replace it. But really sad rendering of urban life.

So some were great, some were not fantastic.