| Profil de Adventures in U...Child's Play!PhotosBlogListes |  Outils  Aide |
This list is more fun than it sounds.
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Child's Play!"Games are the most elevated form of investigation." Einstein 9 juin The Blog Has Moved!I've decided to move over to wordpress...you can find all these entries (and more!) at: http://childplay.wordpress.com/ See you there! 29 mai "But how do you KNOW?!"I get one particular question a lot, when I open my big mouth to gleefully announce that not only do we homeschool, we don't even use a curriculum or do state testing! The one question that follows from people is: "But how do you know they're learning anything?"
It wasn't too long ago that I wondered the same thing...if I take my kids out of public school, then how can I make sure they are learning what they need to know? If I can't compare them with what other kids are doing at their age, in their grade, then how do I know they are learning up to par with everyone else?! It caused no fair amount of stress and anxiety in my psyche, I can tell you.
But here's what Brooke taught me: Kids learn best at their own speed and in their own time. And comparing their progress against one another with standardized tests negates any unique strengths and pigeonholes kids into 'smart', 'average', or 'dumb'. Brooke tested average/below average on state tests--and I believed it for a while. The teachers believed it. They didn't expect any more from her because of it, and denied her any services for her dyslexia/LD because she was performing according to the results. Imagine my surprise that in the battery of tests the neuropsychologist did, Brooke showed as very gifted. When I brought the results to the school, they told me I had an average child who performed average on tests. End of story. She didn't spell well, but that was to be expected from an average kid. They never once considered her aptitude--state testing is all about comparing and ranking. Nevermind she can name dozens of birds native to Colorado and whistle their calls. That's not on any test. Nevermind that she couldn't spell or do math to save her life and broke down into anxiety filled fits when she had to do either...she did well enough on the tests to be within average range for a 3rd grader. Nevermind that she spends hours pouring over a Nature Encyclopedia, even though the dyslexia made it difficult to make sense of the words. Nevermind that her visual perception/short term memory were in the 2%. None of this made any difference because to the school district, she was an 'average kid' with 'average scores' (the quotes are theirs). They had defined her in a box that didn't fit her. So, standardized tests lost their cache with me.
Here's how I 'know' that my kids are learning, and what they know: I listen to them. When Brooke and Carter were cleaning the kitchen after dinner, and Brooke accused Carter of being "Pope Julius" and then fumed that now she "knows how Michelangelo felt while painting the Sistine Chapel" because Carter kept pointing out all the dirty areas to clean...I learned what she knew.
When Carter wanted Blackberry Izze, and I only had Pomegranite left so gave it to him hoping he would go by color and not by the label, and he totally called me out and said, "Hey, this says Pomegranite!" then I learned what he knew.
When Brooke announced to me that "people didn't have to be married to have babies"--which is how we had previously described procreation--"in fact, mom, they don't even have to LIKE each other to get pregnant!"...well, I learned a lot then, and even more about her new friend's family.
When I offer to share 1/4 of a piece of cake, and keep 3/4 for myself, I learn just how well they know fractions by their reaction. When I give them back $1 in change when they should really get $5.75, I learn a lot about their money skills if they notice or not.
Kids are an open book--it's not hard to figure out what they know or don't know by what they talk about and notice. It's easy to become focused on test results instead of the child...all I've done by homeschooling is take out the public school middle man--who was w-r-o-n-g wrong about my daughter anyways--and go directly to the source. 24 mai Somewhere Out There...Somewhere, there is a 10 year old girl on a farm/ranch. Brown hair, blue or brown eyes, a little bit tall for her age. She likes to sleep in, go out to eat at restaurants, wear cute clothes that she doesn't like to get dirty, and brushes her hair more than a few times a week. She probably doesn't like farm animals all that much and gets freaked if a horse or cow looks sideways at her. She is an anomaly in the community and people marvel that such a strange girl comes from such hardy farm stock.
If you know of a girl like this, or have one in your midst, email me. I think our daughters were switched at birth and I have your real child.
Brooke was supposed to be born on a farm/ranch (what is the difference?!). She wakes up before dawn, antsy to get outside and DO something. If we had eggs to collect or cows to milk she would happily do that. Instead, she moons around my bed, looking at me and waiting for her lazy mom to wake up. Actually, now she goes in to watch Animal Planet and live a vicarious life through other people who live in Texas.
Horses are her passion, and if she could ride all day to wrangle up cattle she'd be in heaven. Last summer I enrolled her in a 'horse camp' where I paid an obscene amount of money so Brooke could hang out at a farm all day and do 'horse work'. I realized they were having her do all the dirty work like mucking the stalls, filling the troughs, redistributing hay, and brushing the horses. My first thought was...'Shouldn't they be paying HER rather than the other way around?' followed quickly by my second thought which was, "I've never seen Brooke happier". She was surrounded by horses, farm dogs, chickens, pigs, and cute little lambs; working her tail off from sun up till sun down without a complaint. It was one of the best weeks of her life.
She also is an explorer. It's hard to have an idealic 'Daniel Boone' upbringing when you only live on 1/4 of an acre, in the middle of a subdivision. However, she makes the best of it and has found an oasis of nature in a creek that runs on the outskirts of the houses here. I think that if we actually lived on some land, Brooke would hitch up her horse, pack a sleeping bag and ride off to explore the far corners. I probably would only see her again when she ran out of food.
When I started bawling in "March of the Penguins" because all those penguin babies were being picked off by the seagulls, it was Brooke who comforted me by explaining that "that's just the way of nature". When I walked blindly through a sidewalk full of earthworms that had become stranded in the sun after a downpour, it was Brooke who stopped long enough to pick each one up and place it gently in the grass. "They are important to the energy cycle, Mom! They may be little, but they do a lot!" she gently scolded me.
So, you see, she obviously is not my child. I mean, I think cows are adorable and they make me all melty inside, but that's only when I'm standing on the other side of a fence from them. I am horribly allergic to most animals, and really REALLY like to sleep in. If you have a child that fits that description, then we may need to make a trade. 22 mai Does a watched garden grow?It's that time of year again, when the danger of frost passes by and the kids and I look longingly at our barren garden box. Last year we planted corn, squash, cucumbers, peppers, celery, & strawberries. The best producers were our cucumbers & squash...the celery grew OK but ended up with a horrible taste that I can't account for. (A hot July?) The stawberries sent runners all over the place, bloomed prettily, but only produced a few puny fruits. The corn was ruined by a freak hailstorm, darn it....they took up half the space in our box, and we didn't get to enjoy any of them!!!
This year shows promise for the berries--they're already in the early stages of bushels of strawberries. We're skipping the corn and Brooke has staked out what veggies she wants on her side. Onions, peppers & carrots. I'm growing cukes, tomatoes & more peppers.
We spent Mother's Day out measuring & planting....is it too early to expect green shoots? We watch for them every day. I don't have the greenest thumb, and just the fact that I bought the seeds almost dooms them to die a tragic veggie death under some dry dirt that I forgot to water properly.
7 mai "Unusual Learners""One of the great unrecognized dramas of childhood has been the struggle throughout history...of the unusual learner to find his best place in life. What has gone unrecognized for centuries is that this unusual learner is not stupid, neither is he bad. Indeed he may be gifted. He carries within his mind the cognitive equivalents of genetic mutations, the ability to recombine elements of experience in new ways. For centuries, the word stupid, combined with various internsifiers like bad, lazy, wilfull, or weak has been used to create a moral 'diagnosis'. That moral diagnosis has ruined millions of lives. It turns out these kids have a lot to offer. At last we are beginning to understand."
--Dr. Hallowell, in the forward to "Learning Outside the Lines" by Jonathan Mooney & David Cole.
I'm just beginning to read the book I've quoted above--so far it has been a worthwhile read. The tagline is "two Ivy League students with learning disabilities and ADHD give you the tools for Academic success and educational revolution". And you all know what a sucker I am for anything having to do with an educational revolution! The two authors--one with dyslexia, the other with ADHD--first give their own personal accounts of enduring elementary, middle, & high school with learning differences, and then devote the rest of the book to helping kids succeed by 'learning outside the lines'.
I have come a long way since Brooke entered kindergarten. Like the stages of grief, I think there are stages to acknowleging a LD. Confusion, denial, anger, more confusion, self doubt, anger, shame, denial with self doubt....this cycle can endlessly repeat for both the parent and the child. Some never recover, and it becomes a shameful thing that defines them (or their children) negatively for a lifetime. But a lucky few find support through online support groups, a timely book, through someone who has already been through it, or an intuitive teacher. It only takes one person believing that a LD kid is capable and important to change that child's life for the better.
At the beginning of 4th grade, Brooke would often refer to herself and stupid. She encountered every problem with defeat and resignation. She developed panic attacks when thinking about going into a group of her peers. Not knowing much about LD, I had personal fears that Brooke was broken mentally somehow. However, I pushed these doubts to the backburner and chose to actively trust in Brooke--trust that all kids are learners if they can be reached in the right way. The story of Helen Keller became my source of hope...and then I added more stories to my list. Edison, Einstein, DaVinci, Charles Schwab, Richard Branson, and countless others.
Learning differences do NOT mean that a child is not a capable learner. It means that a child is an unusual learner, and that is a big difference.
24 avril It's Raining! It's Pouring!Is there anything better than sleeping in a warm, cozy bed while it's raining outside?
The morning broke with gusty winds, rainclouds, and a constant drizzle...I remained nestled in bed while the kids got up and started their 6:30 am routine--watching Animal Planet and then Mythbusters that we have TiVo'd. Dakota snuggled up with me until she noticed Todd going downstairs, and then she hit him up for waffles.
Once everyone assembled for waffles, I tidied up while Brooke and Carter made Tinkertoy boats to float down the rivers that had appeared in our sidewalk gutters. Dakota watched Little Einsteins on Disney for a while, and then she and I snuggled back up in my bed again so she could sit in my 'boat' (what she calls the space in between my two legs...so cute...) and we read a pile of her favorite books.
Brooke and Carter came back inside after being buffeted by strong and rainy winds...had some hot chocolate...went back outside after constructing some Balsam wood boats they remembered that they'd bought at the DMNS store.
Dakota went off to play with her toys, which left me some quiet time to whip up some shea butter for a client of mine.
Brooke and Carter decided that the winds and currents were too strong for their balsam boats outside, so came back inside to set them to sail in our bathtub. Being very cold themselves, they both got in the hot bath and are now directing the jets in the tub into different gulf streams. Dakota is hanging around the outside of the tub, because ever since her last 'bathtub incident' when she pooped in the water, she has been forbidden by the older kids from bathing with them. It's so hard to be 2.
I have a streusel coffee cake made from scratch cooking in the oven, and when that's done I'll get some hot chocolate made from milk (in glass bottles!) that was delivered this morning from the milk man. Aside from the fact that I used the computer to get the coffee cake recipe, and I wasn't the one actually milking the cows this morning, I feel like a pioneer mom today.
I anticipate this afternoon will see Dakota taking a nap (pleasepleaseplease!) and the kids and I snuggling up in my bed so we can listen to the rain while we finish Robinson Crusoe and "You Wouldn't Want to be a Colonist". May 11-13 is the celebration of the 400 anniversary of Jamestown being settled, which is a perfect fit into what has become an early American focus of interest for both Brooke & Carter.
Later on in the day I'll have to change out of my pajamas and ship some orders out, go shopping for Todd's birthday tomorrow, and run a few more errands....but other than that this has been a very enjoyable, slow paced, old fashioned kind of happy day. 14 avril DyslexiaI was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race. -- Winston Churchill -------------------------------------- Our History: We were given an official diagnosis of Brooke's dyslexia in the middle of her 3rd grade year. Interestingly, it did not come from the school district's tests-- they expressly denied any learning disabilities or language based disorders--but came from outside and independent testing we paid for ourselves. Even WITH a dyslexia diagnosis confirmed and reconfirmed by no fewer than 3 doctors/neuropsychologists, she was denied any remedial services or even an acknowlegement of the learning difference by 2 different school districts (comprised of at least 12 'specialists' in each district.) How It Affected Our Daughter: I anticipated Brooke would do well in school--she had always been bright, curious, creative, confident, and enthusiastic. However, she struggled from the first day of Kindergarten. She cried every day before school in K-3. She cried every day after school, doing homework, from K-3. She developed stomach aches and headaches. She became increasingly quiet and withdrawn. She stopped being curious (except for her interest in animals and nature). She started second guessing herself and calling herself 'stupid' and 'dumb' and she believed it. She developed a pretty significant eye twitch or tick. She developed anxiety and phobias. She became unresponsive and angry towards learning. Although the school refused to acknowlege or accomodate her for any learning disabilities, they suggested we medicate her for anxiety and ADD. Why Does This Matter? Aside from the obvious feelings that a mom has towards her child that is being neglected & abused by a system put in place that has a duty to help that child...there are societal implications that go far beyond the people and families dealing with dyslexia. The fact is, everyone is affected by dyslexia/learning dissabilities. The price we pay as a society is high: teenage pregnancies, high school drop out rates, juvenile deliquencies, illiteracy, and the lost potential of these unique minds. What Needs to Happen? Understanding and awareness about dyslexia on behalf of the schools. Across the board training of teachers who need to understand that up to 20% of the kids in their classroom any given year will have some kind of learning disability. Flexibility in the school curriculum to accomodate these unique learners. Widespread change in how dyslexia is classified and tested for. Understanding and awareness about dyslexia on behalf of parents who have kids that are getting lost in the system. ----------------------------------------- 8 avril Happy Easter!Honestly, what I'd like to title this is "Happy freaking Easter. Whatever." But I'm trying to rally for the occasion. I love holidays, but I especially love Easter. After a long, dark winter, I usually am really receptive to the feelings of rebirth and hope that come around this time of year. However, I have a few things going against me this year.
1) It's snowing outside. TONS. After 4 blizzards this year, I'm done with snow. I hadn't even gotten out the kids Easter outfits...but if I'd had, they still wouldn't be able to wear them because it's 30 degrees outside. We bundled up in our winter wear to get to church. Ba Humbug.
2) My dogwoods & crabapples haven't bloomed this year, and after this storm I don't think they will. BOO!
3) I'm pretty sure this storm is slowly killing any new hydrangea blooms that survived the winter, as well as my tulips (which were just starting to bloom!). I'm still holding out for the colombines...they're used to this, right? You'd have to be, if you're the state freaking flower, right?!?
4) Dakota is sick, and I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with it too. Aches, chills, sore throat, headache. BOO!
5) My tradition is to put on a dinner with lamb, lots of sides, and a special themed cake. This year? Costco steaks from last week, and maybe hot potatoes if I can rally enough to get them in the microwave for 8 minutes. Green beans from a can. Pastel M&M's for dessert. Served on paper plates with a big side of cranky.
6) Did I mention the snow?
I think I'll soak myself in a hot bath until next week.
While I'm soaking, I'll post some of my 'Easter Greatest Hits' pictures to remind me of how things used to be.
7 avril Rip Roarin' Readin'The kids and I have read our way from Benjamin Franklin to Daniel Boone and on to George Washington, but we've taken a detour to Davy Crocket, Pecos Bill, & Paul Bunyan. We're finishing up a few more biographies about Daniel and also are having a great time with the book 'American Tall Tales' by Mary Pope Osborne. In the book, she retells some of the classic and most outlandish stories from the people in America's home grown myths.
It is, hands down, the most fun book I have read aloud to the kids. The colloquialisms and spirit of the characters really come across in her writing and I've developed a really low, gravelly, southern twang-like speaking voice to say phrases like, "Hello there! I'm Davy Crockett, and I'm real hungry! Which means bad news to any little warm-blooded, four-legged, squinty-eyed, yellow-bellied creature!" For his wife (Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind) I've got a slightly higher southern twang-like speaking voice full of sassiness: "I'm a streak of lightning set up edgeways and buttered with quicksilver. I can outgrin, outsnort, outrun, outlift, outsneeze, outsleep, outlie any varmint from Maine to Louisiana. I like to wear a hornets nest for my Sunday bonnet!"
The kids even got into the act and did an impromptu reenactment of Davy Crocket meeting up with 'ole Mike Fink and trying to start a fight. Brooke was Davy, Carter was Mike, and there was a lot of crowin', neighin', roarin', flappin', shakin', thumpin', & howlin' goin' on. Needless to say, after all that to-do, Davy and Mike were too tired to actually fight. And after laughing so hard, the kids and I were pretty worn out, too.
 6 avril Must See TV for Friday NightsFriday night, 7pm. Dogfights on the History Channel.
"The men and aircraft behind the most intense air battles ever waged...
The new series DOG FIGHTS recreates famous battles using state-of-the-art computer graphics. With up to 25 percent of the program consisting of animation, viewers will feel like they're in the battle, facing the enemy. First-hand accounts will drive the story. Rare archival footage and original shooting supplement the remarkable computer graphics." Carter discovered this show in a hotel room while we were travelling back from a trip to California. Todd and I were in our room, and the kids were in the main area, on the couch/bed on the other side of some french doors. Noticing it was getting late, I walked in to tell Carter it was lights out time (the girls were already asleep despite the sounds of warfare from the TV set) and he was transfixed with the reenacted dogfights he was watching. So, I sat down to watch a bit with him and became equally as engrossed. Now, it's a Friday night tradition! This show set in motion Carter's fixation on aviation warfare. Particularly those that happened in WWII. I've watched his interest bloom in so many areas because of his focus--geography (particularly in the Pacific but also the locations of the nations fighting in WWII), history (general warfare, also the dates of major battles of--you got it--WWII), math (comparing strengths and weaknesses of different planes, measuring distances between armies), & strategic thinking. It's even the subject of a nerdy ballad that Todd had on his itunes and that I always teased him about. Please, link through and scroll down to the sample of "Sink the Bismark" by Johnny Horton. It's worth your listen. Here's a link to the lyrics. And remember that yes, Todd has sung this for years and had it on his playlist for as long as he's had a playlist. Who can't fall in love with that?! (also, here's a random link I found while searching for lyrics: A very modern video/song about sinking the Bismark. Kind of like a cross between a song from the group 'Midnight Oil' and a cool high school history film.) |
LD, visual spatial, dyslexic, 2E friendly games. Which means they are low on frustration & high on fun! Comes with my kids seal of approval!
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