ThadenPierce School

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.

List from The Pioneer Woman’s blog. Enjoy!

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!

I’m consolidating all my prior posts and adding some new traditions we just learned about.

- back to school cake & special dinner.
- kindercones (Schultute) w/treats and new school supplies.
- new composition book/journal and let them decorate it (modpodge it.)
- Kit suggested buying some easy lunch stuff for the first week back into school so Mommy will eat.
- new school year blessings at FHE.
- breakfast of ABC pancakes.
- let them pick whatever they want for bfast, lunch or dinner.
- go out for a special lunch or pack a picnic lunch.
- go have school pictures taken.
- pick special new outfit for school pictures.
- go shopping for school supplies (best sales are in fall) & let them do a scavenger hunt to find them or pack into backpacks.
- have a “teacher” meeting to go over curriculum, goals
and routines with both parents. August & January.
- plan a special back to school fieldtrip to a location like the park, zoo, or a museum. Most PS don’t have fieldtrips in the first of the year so those places are empty.
- make “All About Me” sheets at the beginning and
end of school year, including self portraits and list of favorites.
- have a family conference and let each child pick the areas of focus they want for the next year. With young kids maybe pick one special topic. With older kids this needs to be a much more in depth special date to go over their areas of concern, what they want to focus on, having them establish their schedule, setting up time to review with them, etc. But for grammar stage, just picking a couple special topics to get library books or coordinate field trips around.
- write a list of books to read aloud as a family
- “NOT back to school” picnic with other homeschool families.

New Ones:
- Russian Day of Knowledge on September 1st, students bring flowers to teacher (that would be me, right? ) Make tissue paper flowers or get real ones.
- Japanese nyugakushiki, formal celebration: dress up for a candle lit family dinner the night before school starts.
- Maori haka: show children “primary school haka” on internet and let them create their own new school year dance.
- Indian Praveshanotsavam (admission day) is during monsoon season. Make a fruit smoothie with marshmallow “rain clouds” and paper cocktail parasol.
- Israeli kita aleph (first grade) walk under canopy or arch of older student’s arms, release balloons. Create an arch of balloons or tissue paper, etc at home and take photos under it, write new school year wishes on rainbow arch, get balloons to keep around home and cheer up first new week.

This was fun, from our first back to school picnic with friends in 2007:

J’s picking up on the hand cues we do and learning the lyrics. This is a Blue’s Clue’s song and you know how he feels about those. (Yes, it includes Pluto, I’m okay with letting Pluto be a planet still.)

Mo was demonstrating to the little kids how to do the superman pose. We try to do exercises from Ready Bodies, Learning Minds on M/W (and PE T/Th and swimming F.) Move those little wiggly bodies.

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.

Joseph mostly ran around watching, Emy watched (and occassionally shimmied) and for the first time Bennett really got into it! The older three all learned most of their routine for our at home recital next week. I’m impressed at how quickly they picked it up!

Interesting article link my sister sent from an art program she’s attending this week.

- Don’t tell someone to be creative (too much pressure/expectation.)
- Get moving (increase activity level.)
- Take a break, switch between projects if you hit a wall.
- Reduce screen time, decreases creativity.
- Explore other cultures (adaption, flexibility, awareness of another way of thinking.)
- Follow a passion (finding the zone.)
- Ditch the suggestion box (encourage individual action, not waiting for someone else to implement change.)

I found this at our library, What to Do When You Worry Too Much: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Anxiety. (Probably good for adults, too.) The intro is for adults/parents but the book is geared towards kids reading it could be read to kids as young as Ben (5) but easily readable by C (8) on his own. I found him exploring it this morning and the older three are all working on it now. It discusses in kid friendly terms what anxiety is (worry) and has them write or draw pictures as it goes throughout discussing what worries are, why people seem to have more than others, how it makes our body and mind feel, and then coping techniques. The kids seem to be really enjoying it and it’s prompting some great discussions. So far I highly recommend it, anything that engages the kids this well and helps them discuss their concerns and gives them an emotional vocabulary is a win in my book.

Pictures of the kids’ artwork to come, they want to show off their drawings. C’s is cracking me up.

These are three different sources of worries. The worry bully makes the worms to go inside of you & the worry worms make the worries. (The bully has no hands but uses the grappling hooks to get on your shoulder and get inside of you.) With the worry worm it burrows inside of you and if you don’t listen it uses its slapper to slap you! (He saw some science show about parasitic worms, I’ll spare you that explanation, it was gross.) The worry gas is what makes the Worry make you worry.

Ben’s worry (spelled “worey” down the side.) This is a bad house and a dream catcher to catch his bad dream and there’s a pea shooter coming to help and it killed the bad guys.

Table of Contents:
1. Are you growing worries?
2. What is a worry?
3. How do worries get started?
4. Making worries go away?
5. Spending less time on worries.
6. Talking back to worries.
7. Re-setting your system.
8. Keeping worries away.
9. You can do it!

Exercises:
- draw something you worry about
- do you know someone else who worries?
- how does worry make your body feel (stomach, heart, etc)
- what is something you can say or do to help you worry less about your fear?
- set up worry time (15 minutes) and make a worry time sign
- imagine a worry box & draw a picture of it; put your worries there until worry time
- imagine a worry bully & draw a picture of it.
- What will you say to the worry bully?
- What can you do to stay busy while ignoring the bully?
- Draw the worry giving up and going away.
- Draw a list of activities you can do to reset your system.
- Write a list of relaxing things you can do to reset your system: meditation, deep breathing, tense & relax muscles, warm bath, massage, visualize happy memory.
- Draw a picture of a special memory or place.
- What do you do to take good care of yourself? Draw it.
- Draw yourself doing something you are good at.
- Draw yourself without your worries.

Key Points:
- Logic is when you think about what is really true instead of what you fear.
- Resetting your system with activity or with relaxation.