Tuesday, August 24, 2010

starting off with a whimper

Well, I'd hoped to start the year off with a BANG, but it is turning into more of a whimper. Sprout has been sick since Saturday night, we were up from 3:30 to 5:30 Sunday morning, I didn't sleep at all Sunday night, and the fever/crankiness continues. Yesterday was one of the worst days in memory. Not because of the kids, really, just because there were enough little things that I couldn't handle in my sleep deprived state. We did have a nice walk along the river trail, though.

Last night's sleep wasn't much better, so when Tina came in this morning to take Sprout, I slept until 10. Then after I got out of the shower I saw that I'd missed a call from a friend. I called him, and he told me that our neighbor had been killed this morning in a plane crash in Nepal. The kids and I went over to hug them and give them our condolences. It's devastating.

So, we've started some things this week, but a lot of it will probably wait until next week. I ordered Explode the Code book 1 for Spud, and I think he will like it. He seems to really like doing the same stuff that Noodle does. He is enthusiastic about his math work, though, so far, so I hope he keeps liking that. I wish I could help him feel strong in this whole learning to read process. He is so worried about making mistakes that he gets worked up about even trying sometimes. It's hard.

Today they were both working on their math assignments (yay!) but then started fighting at the table. I thought, "Seriously? This is how it's going to be?" ::sigh:: Their fighting drives me to the edge. But they seem less affected by it than I am, and I need to figure out how to keep it as their problem.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

update

So, in case you are curious, what we ended up doing for summer was this:
Noodle continued reading aloud (some Encyclopedia Brown books and others) a few days almost every week, did a couple weeks more of Writing With Ease and a couple chapters of Math. Spud kept working on his Progressive Phonics flash cards and stories. Other than that, we've had a lot of unstructured time, so it's been good.

A few months back, we started checking out books on tape/CD for the kids to listen to at night, which Noodle absolutely loves. I think Spud falls asleep too fast most of the time to enjoy the stories much. Noodle just finished listening to all four books in the Dealing with Dragons series, and she told me last night that when she is ten, she wants to read all the books by herself. I think she chose age 10 because it seems far enough in the future that she feels like her ability will be up to it by then. I thought that was great, and I was so happy that she is so excited about the books. Books on tape have been great because I have a hard time carving out read-aloud time with them. We can usually get two or more picture books in during the day when we are "in school," but after history and the other reading I do with them, I'm tired. David typically reads a chapter to them at night from a book (they've done all the Chronicles of Narnia a couple times in Noodle's lifetime and are presently reading the 3rd Alcatraz book). But, her love for these Dragons books has really shown me the power of books on tape. She is so interested in them, which is awesome!