Category Archives: Natasha

About our oldest

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Controlled Vocabulary

I am working on a short fairy tale to submit for publication (sort of a breather from the novel, you might say).

Naturally the language is how I would tell it.

So I’ve begun to go through it with my “Children’s Writer’s Word Book” checking the words I guess to be more challenging than the others.

I was thinking I was doing alright, most of those words were acceptable at a 3rd- or 4th-grade level, until I got to enchanted.

As in, “enchanted castle.”

Enchant is designated a 6th-grade word.

I called Natasha over and asked her if she knew what the word meant.

“Um, magic?” Good enough for me.

I told her, “This book says you have to be 12 to know that word.”

She looked at the ceiling and laughed quietly.

“You can be four too,” she said.

I’ll check the rest of the manuscript, but if that’s the most challenging thing we’ve got in there, this thing’s ready to look for a publisher.

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Natasha’s Kindergarten

I’ve gone through the FNSBSD “Curriculum Guide for Parents” and compared objectives for K and 1st grade, making a new set of objectives based on where NJ is currently at (she *so* has K Language Arts smoked. And half of 1st-grade’s, I’d say.)

Under this new organizing the only things she is doing exclusively at the the guide’s kindergarten level are Art and Science.

Each grade has a theme for art and a trio of artists loosely based on that theme.

e.g. Kindergarteners focus on self-portraits, and they “study” Van Gogh, I suppose because he had a famous one. Not too closely I hope. His is far from a G-rated story.

Three scientists are listed for each year, also.

Anyway, for this year at least, we’ll try to match these that her cousin will (in theory) also be learning since they’re the same year in school.

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All the Kids are Sick Today

Melody’s fever seemed to break last night, but she’s still coughing and emotional/clingy today, along with other symptoms.

Elisha has a low fever and isn’t keeping anything down.  We keep feeding and watering him “against orders” because Jay figures if the boy’s going to be throwing-up anyway we might as well make it less painful.

This is a new symptom that we hope doesn’t mean he’s got a different virus. We really don’t want a whole other round rotating through the kids.

Natasha registered a mouth temp of 104 when we took it this morning, but the Ibuprofen seemed to manage it and she’s almost normal again.

It’s interesting how she and Melody seem to feel fevers differently. Melody feels cold and shivery, wanting snuggled, while Natasha was irritable and hot, kicking off the blankets and complaining.

She, too, wanted Mother near, but not particularly to snuggle.

Elisha fell asleep again partway through the morning and while he was resting the girls and I got to play some memory (from some of these printed cards I pasted on purple cardstock) and started teaching them how to remember by cumulatively reviewing after each pair was turned over.

It was challenging at first, because the first 10 or so cards were all different. But that turned out to be a good thing once we started turning over duplicates, because everyone remembered where the matches were.

We didn’t keep score and we helped each other with what we were close to. So it was a neat time.

It was devolved by necessity after Elisha woke up. He’s getting better about not messing up games on-purpose, but now he’ll try to play and confuse things that way (the larger cards cover so much ground it’s easy to mess them up once they’re about half paired-off).

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Valentine’s Day, and Other Victories

Jay got all his ladies flowers back on Friday night, so it was really fun they made it to (and through) Valentine’s day.

A few days ago I sent him a link to a blog post under a “For your not-to-do list” subject line.

I thought the post was funny. I never guessed it would actually inspire him to write me a poem of his own. He sent it to me in French and Spanish both. The meaning seemed still fairly intact and I enjoyed it.

He keeps telling me he’ll send me the original…

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I noted on my other blog that I was doing really well in the home-keeping department, then the post-ovulatory phase of my cycle began and I totally crashed— physically useless for about 36 hours.

The change was so big I called Jay before he came home to apologize and prepare him.

He reassured me that he wasn’t surprised when he came home to a messy house, just really pleased when he came home and it looked nice.

This is nice on one level, of course, but I had to pretend a pout as he’s been coming home to a clean house more often than not for a several weeks.

I blamed my cycle at first, of course, but looking at my other habits I acknowledged it would probably help to continue taking vitamins and reading my bible.

It’s not (physio) “logical,” but I have tangibly higher energy- and motivation-levels when I’ve read my bible. I remember to read more often than I remember my vitamins, so I’ve seen the difference between the two.

So yesterday, Valentine’s Day, was very nice in several ways.

Having done what I could do (my reading and vitamins), despite feeling *blah* at first, I tackled the house and got a fair amount done.

When the kids got clingy and fussy and weren’t playing together as well, I shifted gears and read with the three of them in my lap for almost an hour.

Seriously. Elisha only got down twice in this time.

Nap went peacefully, and Natasha even fell asleep— with Thorin for her pillow. Very sweet, and *again* I was my most productive with everyone else in the house asleep. Just, it was for life/schooling stuff this time instead of my novel.

I have another pseudo-organizing activity to prepare for while I play clay with the children today, and if it goes well I’ll be describing it later in greater depth.

Have I mentioned that Natasha has been doing “quiet time” for an hour of napping time instead of sleeping? It’s made an earlier bedtime much more natural and effective.

Natasha sacks amazingly fast, and Melody, having no one to talk to, soon follows suit.

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After nap we all went to Fred Meyer and Melody got her first panties.

Yes, she’s completely out of diapers, at least for the days.

I asked her earlier in the week if she was ready to go, but she kept saying, “Not yet,” or “Two more sleeps.” Then, when I asked after nap yesterday, she said “Yes!”

In our conversation on the way she clarified, No, she is not a “big girl” now. She is a little girl who can use the potty.

Have I created another literalist?

Then for our Valentine’s Day dinner I made tomato soup (because it was red) and heart-shaped grilled-cheese sandwiches (with a cookie cutter; and everyone still got their piece of crust too). Dinner was very peaceful and sweet with the girls alternating declarations of love for different family members, pop-corn style.

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Medicine Maturity

Natasha has had a cough for a few days, and yesterday it was more persistant.

When she started complaining about it I offered to give her some medicine designed to inhibit coughing.

I went and got it, and when I came back she recognized it.

“That stuff tastes weird,” she said.

I suggested having her water bottle ready for as  soon as she finished, and she agreed.

About four hours later the cough threatened to return.  I asked Natasha if she’d like some more medicine, and while making a face she said “yes.”

Then she asked my to have her water bottle open and ready.

Both the taking of the medicine in the first place and agreeing to take it a second time seem to me to be little milestones of maturity:

Seeing past the yuck! of the medicine (and I’ve always thought cough meds taste *the worst* of all kids’ over-the-counter stuff) to its purpose.

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Today’s “Funs”

Natasha (commenting on the shape of the syrup she just poured): Look, it’s like octopus tentacles grouped above its head!

Interesting that a girl who still says “muquis” instead of “music” can articulate “Octopus tentacles.”

Melody (at breakfast): Mommy, can you scoot me in the proper way?

And when I went down the hall to learn what Elisha was up to, I saw him sitting quietly on Natasha’s bed, “reading” his opposites board book with a stuffed seal under one arm.

I’ve got such sweet, fun kids.

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Beginning Homeschooling

So I did my first “concurrent” lessons today.

One thing I’ve wondered as I think/plan for this new job (homeschooling) is how I will prepare different things for different needs.

While the girls were napping today I read some more of a homeschooling book and took a couple ideas from there to make some “Language Arts” games.

Natasha has fabulous sight-reading skills, so I used some 3×5 cards to write some sentence components. I woke her up “early” from her nap to practice making sentences.

One word to a card, things like “My name is Natasha.” And a couple punctuation and Capital-opening cards.

Each name in the family was on a card, along with Thorin, and a half-dozen cousins. And the words “cat” and “cousin.”

We probably spent 20 minutes building sentences with exchangeable parts like, “Abby is my cousin.” and “Elisha is a boy.” We did lots of sillies too, and included the card “not” in its proper place.

When Melody got up I had a “game” waiting for her too.

I’ve noticed recently she doesn’t have all her letters memorized, and (again following a suggestion from the book) I made little “matching cards.”

I cut some 3x5s in half and made five each of B,b,M, and m.

The idea is to help her recognize letters that are not at all alike, and gradually introduce letters that are more similar when she’s ready for finer distinctions.

She adored the matching and sorting and pairing (big with the babies). Took it with her to show Grandma, even. Natasha brought hers too, but she had forgotten to put the “not” in the game-bag, so the sentences weren’t as fun as they had been earlier.

This evening I printed off some nicely illustrated sight-word lists to go over with Natasha.

We did the first four pages before bedtime story, and she was surprisingly eager, considering they’re just *random* words, but I guess when you’re doing well at something that’s its own motivation to continue.

She got more than half right on the first go.

Currently I’m vaguely concerned about her reading orientation, and don’t know if this is something to look at “early intervention” on, or just let it “work itself out.”

I wonder if she could be dyslexic or else just not trained enough to focus first on the first letter. The wh-words she “sight-read” as th-words (where became there, when was then), and no came out as on.

Natasha also “read” us a (very long) story right after dinner. She went without a pause and I finally gave up on trying to transcribe, because I couldn’t keep up enough for it to be coherent. I just have this opening. (She was reading from a book where the pictures of animals and birds are made of numbers):

Once upon a time in a land no one had ever seen a farmer named Bill Dutson went out to his garden….”That must be a bird who can find easily where numbers belong.” [farmer speaking after seeing a bird made of numbers]
1-9-9-3-6-4-7—

Ah! That wasn’t the proper way!

Boy, he had never seen such things, but he knew a duck should never see such a thing.

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Failed experiment?

Well that was a total shot in the dark.

Our girls have been staying awake more than an hour after being put to bed. Whenever they are put to bed.

Granted, we haven’t put them down before 8 p.m. (and one book I have says you have to have littles down by 7:30 or they hit their second wind), but they’ve never been to sleep less than an hour later.

I find this highly irritating. And I’m sure they do too.

I’m out here, working on my novel or reading a book that takes some thought, and these poor kids wander out every 20 minutes or so to remind me they exist and they’re bored out of their skulls.  (Really, 20 minutes is a long time for kids this young to do nothing, so relatively speaking they’re doing well.)

Tonight I offered to let them read in bed while they were awake, hoping it would wind them down, and give them a way to occupy their minds until they were tired.

In the back of my imagination I knew there was a chance they could fall asleep while reading, but I wouldn’t bank on it, because I know I *never* fall asleep reading something of my own choosing. My eyeballs dry up and I finally choose to put the book away before sleep will come.

And here we are 2-hours after I gave them their reading lights and they’re both awake and asking for the end of their bedtime routine (snuggles before I become the ogre and growl at them for being out of bed).

As preschoolers they really have no concept of the amount of time that has passed, but I do, and it’s more than the time they would have had awake in the dark.

I guess we’ll try again tomorrow (I’ve started waking them in the morning and from nap) with a *much shorter* time of reading aloud, and see if they sleep sooner or not after solitary reading.

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Homeschooling in Alaska

Dude. I am going with Option 1. (PDF)

Talk about simplifying my life.

I found some more teaching materials yesterday (reference and textbooks were half-off at Forget-Me-Not this week). Just went through that and what I’ve already collected, organizing them into an Excel sheet so I can find and keep track of what I’ve got and what I need.

Woefully short on anything math-related, but that’s okay, considering that what I want won’t be in the used book stores I’ve been collecting from. I’m very excited about the things I do have, and 60% ready to make my own curriculum rather than go with a premade pack.

The reason for this is mainly the hugeness of choosing a curriculum.

There are *so* many options I get frozen up, whereas the 1-3 books I’ve collected on a subject I brought home because I *loved* already.

My “next step” is to find a way to compare the actual content of a Kindergarten year and a 1st-grade year, to decide which Natasha should be doing.

I’ve reserved two books at the library to help with that.

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Words and Writing

Natasha wrote her first Thank-you notes today.

She and I practiced the letters in “THANK YOU” (She only wanted to do caps) until I felt they were recognizable, then I drew a straight line in a blank card and she wrote her thank-you on it. Then she decorated all the rest of the inside with stamps and markers.

The writing wasn’t easy. I coached her through each letter— where to start and which direction to move, how to space, and so on— four times.

But she was *very* proud of herself when she was done.

I don’t know if she would have been willing to try if she hadn’t just seen Mr. Rogers write a thank-you yesterday.

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During snuggles tonight Melody was telling me a story and used two “big” words– a couple times, like she was practicing. I didn’t write them down immediately so I lost one. The one I remember is “horrified.”

“He was just horrified,” she articulated, mouthing the word as if it were delicious. There was a huge smile in her voice.