Polishing Those Pearly Whites :)

Fortunately I am happy to report the dentist went MUCH better than the pediatrician. Carter loves going to the dentist and asks to go all the time. This was Julia's first trip and she has been waiting to be old enough for a long time. Dr. Stephanie and her team are great with the kids and their office is jungle-themed which makes our little 'Diego' and 'Dora' very happy.

Carter went first to show Julia the ropes. And we are happy to hear he has very healthy, clean teeth and fabulous spacing. Though they were surprised to hear he already has a coffee habit (from his coffee flavored milk supplements), though his teeth aren't stained- yay!
Julia was next and they didn't expect much from a two year old. They do the first exam with the child in your lap, and stop when they get uncomfortable. She opened her mouth for the exam and climbed right up in the chair for her cleaning and fluoride treatment. They were all so impressed. She will usually comply in most cases and if Carter did it, she's definitely going to. She got a clean bill of health, too and has great space in all her teeth. We can always hope for no braces right?
When they are finished the kids get to play sports games on the touch screen computers. There favorite is the mini golf......

Everything's Under Control

I went upstairs the other day and this is what I found in Carter's room....Apparently, the Marines have landed on the Island of Sodor. You can rest at ease they have everything under control.......

Well, speaking of control. On Friday I was reminded that I have very little.

I think as parents we have this illusion that we can control our kids behavior, especially when they're young and can be moved and removed at our whim. When in all truth we are influencing their behavior, but not controlling it. They choose the behavior, we only choose the consequences. This became blazingly obvious at Carter's 5 year well-check last Friday. He is very familiar with doctor's and what happens there. He knew he was getting a shot, but not too upset about it. He actually loves having his blood drawn and watching the blood go up the tube.

The nurse comes in to start the appointment with his hearing test and he refuses. She took the time to explain it to him, encourage him- no luck. Now note that this kid has had 3 ear surgeries. He's had a dozen hearing tests, no biggy, he thinks its like playing a game. Well not today. We gave him the stern, "You must cooperate." No luck. We made three trips to the bathroom for a talking to and loss of privileges and still nothing. (And you can't spank them with the doctor standing right outside the bathroom door.) He finally did do it, barely. And things just got worse. He refused to open his mouth, take deep breaths, touch his toes, lay on the table. By this point he is pretty much restricted from everything except eating and sleeping. Even the doctor was shocked and told him he was not getting a sticker or goody bag (everyone does). I was waiting for the floor to open up and just swallow me. We were at an absolute loss and never saw this coming. He has never acted this way. In fact I have never had a child act this way. I have taken dozens of children to over 200 appointments, of all kinds, and I have never had a child act this way. So what would you do?

It was a long drive home. I couldn't help but feel defeated and a failure as the tears rolled down my cheeks. What could I have done differently? It just drove home for me how little we can actually control.

The next morning Carter had another appointment for an eye recheck. This time, absolute angel. Did everything the doctor asked, used all his manners, and was as pleasant as could be. I couldn't believe it was the same kid less than 24 hours later.

So I guess we all have bad days sometimes, I sure have. We all just hope no one sees them, but sometimes it's bound to happen with our kids, and with ourselves.

Well, Monday is off to the dentist with both kids, so wish us luck :)

Dear Diaper Dudes....

To the makers of Huggies and Pamper's products,

I am grateful for diapers and the ease and cleanliness they have brought to my life. It's been five years, two kids, and we're almost done :) (I don't really want to know how much I've spent, please.) You guys obviously know kids well and adorn your products with cute characters of all kinds. Carter loved his Cars pull-ups and Julia likes her Mickey diapers at bedtime, but you have made a serious oversight. The same way kids become obsessed with this characters, they become obsessed with 'certain' characters. With Carter is was the pull-ups with the piston cup trophies (who doesn't want the trophy?). He wanted only those at night (which is every other one). Some nights he would get up in the middle of the night and change a dry one, just for the picture! With Julia it's the Mickey and Minnie diapers, she does not want to wear the Pluto and Mickey ones. If it were up to them they would throw away half the package.

So please, pick one design and use it all the way through. You know kids are creatures of habit, that's why you make the designs in the first place. Save all us parents out there one more battle with our kids. We can use all the help we can get :)


Thank you.

Demo Day!

(forgot to post this earlier)

Clearly dismantling (and snacking on) the gingerbread house is much more fun than constructing it. And they even got to use their tools! I can see 'demo day' quickly becoming a favorite tradition in our house :)

School Days

I get lots of questions about what we're doing in homeschooling, so I like to post about it every once and a while. Carter is now five which just boggles my mind still, but I'm getting used to the fact. Today we have that infamous well-check, the one all kids talk about and dread. One of the nice perks about homeschool is there is less of a time crunch to get shots done which works great for us because we only do two per visit, but it will make for a series of unpleasant appointments :(

Anyway, now that Carter is five and more than developmentally ready we are completing more of our kindergarten requirements. With kids preK-1st grade, schooling is a lot of hodge-podge piecing together and many people have asked me how to know what they should be teaching. One of the best resources available are the Department of Education sites for each state. I use the ones for VA where I taught and am licensed. You can reference each grade level and subject and pull up the corresponding Standards of Learning. Not only that they include enhanced Scope and Sequence with free lesson plans, worksheets, and activities for teaching them. This makes a great checklist for evaluating gaps in your child's education.

We typical do formal schooling three to four days a week, on average, for 2-3 hours each time. We stick to the days that work best for us, sometimes weekends, to work with our schedules and how everyone's feeling. I use a lesson plan book with divided subjects: Calendar, Bible/ Emotional Intelligence, Art/ Music, Literature, Phonics, Beginning Reading, Math/ Logic, and Social Studies/ Science. We don't necessarily hit every subject every day, but do over the course of a week.

CALENDAR: I love the Learning Resources calendar and we use it for the date, weather, holidays, days of the week, predictions, abbreviations, calendar math, scheduling, and skip counting.

BIBLE/EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: We do a short devotion together during breakfast. We just started using Jesus Wants All of Me which is a year-long devotional for 3-7 yr olds and love it! Thanks Amy for the recommendation. We also do Carter's weekly Awana book and verses during this time. I keep all the verses in a box on index cards so we can review easily. We're also working on emotional intelligence which is often neglected and actually more essential to success in life than IQ. Carter is hesitant to talk about his feelings anyway, so it's definitely good for us. Right now we are using 20 facial expression cards with corresponding questions to talk about our feelings, the feelings of others, and how we would respond in each situation. We also use God's Mighty Warrior Devotional Bible (for boys) by Sheila Walsh.

ART/MUSIC: This is kind of self explanatory and varies depending on what we feel like doing. I love the Kindermusik program and do their activities with the kids. The Kindermusik website and Oriental trading are great (cheap) places to get your own instruments for home. Art can be almost anything.

LITERATURE: This is where the hundreds of library books we check out every month come in to play. These include picture books, nonfiction, and chapter books- almost anything. Carter loves the Matt Christopher sports series (just check the subject for age-appropriateness) which I read aloud.

PHONICS: Essential to being a strong reader. We use lots of workbooks and wipe-off books. I also love Flipping Over Making Words (TCR) which emphasizes word patterns (for this crazy language of ours called English!). There are many more books in this series as they progress. This is also where we do handwriting and copy work. At this age it's important to practice their writing without much correction. I am in love with the Expos student wipe-off boards from WalMart (primer lines on one side, blank on the other, and really cheap). When he gets bored or resistant to practicing writing on paper, we switch to a shallow dish of rice, much more fun :)

BEGINNING READING: We use the Scott Foresman readers, but any will do and practice our sight words. We also just started The Reading Lesson (thanks Kim) which makes daily lessons very easy with no prep needed. We also like to play ABC Sound Bingo and What's That Sound?.

MATH/LOGIC: This is by far Carter's favorite subject and obvious strength. I am using the Horizon K Math to give him the repetition he needs and to get him use to 'testing style' worksheets. This series has a great spiral sequencing built in to ensure the kids have mastered each concept. We also do pattern blocks, Brainy Blocks, Quiz-a-tron (I love this thing and it's a Sears product that was mine as a kid- still works!!), Castle Logix, wipe off workbooks (LeTrend), a 100s chart, and Kumon workbooks In the next few months we will be adding the 'K-1 bundle' (includes core subject areas) from The Critical Thinking Company. I used many of these same materials in logic class when I was in school, as a teacher, and can't wait to do them with Carter. In addition it will force him to think outside the box which is something we are both naturally resistant to and the sooner he can practice, the better off he will be.

SOCIAL STUDIES/SCIENCE: If it were up to Carter we would spend most of the day here. He loves geography and will read an atlas over a book any day. (He actually announced last week he was finished with math and reading for the year and would just be doing geography now. Sorry kid!) We do sometimes work with an atlas. We also use wipe off maps to do states, capitals, oceans, and continents. He loves to do experiments of any kind and measuring, data collection, and graphing. We also started a new book My Big Book of 5min Devotions Celebrating God's World (Kennedy) which selects a different animal each day to explore scientifically, but also connects it with a virtue (2 for one!, really cool way to do science!).

We also supplement activities in all of these areas with activities corresponding to our 'topic of the week' from co-op preschool. You have seen many of these in the lapbooks I've posted previously. All of this is free on the internet. Before you take the time to make a chart or worksheet always Google it first. Some of our favorite websites are:
Homeschool Share
The Crafty Crow
Making Learning Fun
Lapbook Lessons
Nearly Free Homeschooling
Donna Young Printables and Resources

And probably the most fun part for all of us is playing games. Such a great learning tool for math, reading, social skills, etc. Our current favs are chess (Collector's Chess Teacher), Othello, Uno, Sequence Dice, Parcheesi, Whose Home? Domi-Knows, Izzi, Kanoodle, Cat in the Hat I Can Do That!, Castle Logix, Elefun, Jam Pack Jam, Armor of God, and HiHo!Cherry-O. Carter also loves to play computer games, the Wii, the PSP sports games, and Leapster (Get Puzzled, LeapFrog Kindergarten, I Spy, Diego Animal Rescuer, and Talking Words Factory).
Now I am by no means saying this is the right way, the only way, or the best way of teaching your kids. This is just what works for us right now. I put it out there to give you ideas, share resources, and to encourage you to have fun learning with your children- even if you are not homeschooling. And just in case you're thinking we have it all together..... It has been a very interesting month for us. We spent the bulk of December doing Christmas-related activities, then took off 3 weeks during vacation when we went on day trips instead. It was a rocky transition when we started up again. We just weren't clicking. Both of us we're getting frustrated. We had a two bad days in a row. I actually threatened to send him to public school- it was that bad! (Not that I have anything against public school, but I was at a loss.) It was not my proudest mommy moment by a long shot, but God was working on my heart as a mother and teacher. Through prayer, Bible study, and some 'divine appointments' with friends I was given a better insight into what Carter needs and what kind of learner he is designed by God to be. I was reminded that...

• one size never fits all,
  
• what works for one family can be totally wrong for another,
  
• we need to slow down in some areas and jump ahead in others,
  
• God knows what's best,
• this is supposed to be enjoyable,
  
• and our learning needs change over time.

This is one of the blessings of homeschooling that we can be so adaptable and tailor our program to our child's needs. Things have been going along great the past couple weeks. This is another area of life where it is vital to abide with Christ, face to face, and listen to His guidance in our hearts and interactions. And sometimes the answer is right in front of your face. All that really matters is......

Training Success

Julia has done a great job with potty training. I'm honestly shocked how easily she took to it.For the first few days whenever we were at home I left her pants off to make it easier for her. Carter decided to join her in a show of solidarity. Those two little bums are so cute...
Apparently all this training wears a girl out. She was one pooped princess.....
I can't believe how big she's getting. She'll be three before we know it! She wore her first ponytail last week and suddenly looked all grown up.....

We Need a Plan

I know the truth in my head. If you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there? If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. Every ship needs a course. Choose your paths wisely. etc, etc. It's all true. Parenting definitely falls into all these categories.

We've been going a long without too many parenting speed bumps (dangerous, right? here it comes). For the most part our parenting lives have been relatively easy. Our kids are generally compliant, agreeable, cooperative. Carter's biggest hurdle these days is talking back- he always has something to add. We're working on it though. Julia has literally just coasted from babyhood, to toddlerhood, to preschooler with hardly a tear or 'no'. She's famous for saying, 'okay mommy' (to the envy of many).

This week something changed. I swear I'm wearing a sign that says don't listen to me. Julia screams "NO!!!" even at the things she wants to do and carter is unphased by time out, spanking, discussions, and loss of privileges. What gives? It was getting almost comical. Even Billy said, I don't understand why they're doing this to you?

After a drawn out discussion with Carter over putting away the silverware with a joyful spirit, we got into to talking about work before play and rights and privileges. As I prayed about it later I remembered a documentary I had seen on the Dilley family who raised and homeschooled sextuplets. They had a 'Dilley Discipline' ladder on their kitchen wall with 10 steps- the top being full privileges, the bottom chores and thinking time only. Each step had pre-determined privileges and punishments determined by the family, such as friends over, TV, games, family outings, workbooks only, stay in your room, etc. That way when someone needed discipline, no discussion was needed, just move your peg (each child was a different color) X number of steps. And the parents don't have to remember who at which level at all times. It hit me that we are getting into this realm now. As we work on deciding what ours will look like I decided to go back to the teacher's staple- the traffic light (Thanks for the reminder Bekah!) where you simply move your clothespin. I told Carter about this the next morning and even though I'm just getting around to making it (3 days later) it has worked like a charm! He has not needed to move his (hypothetically speaking) in 3 days, though he has put Julia on yellow light twice :)

So, once again I've discovered what I know is true- our ship needs a course and our kids need a plan. They need to know we're watching all day everyday and what they say and do matters. Even if it takes a while to roll it out, just our intention has made things much sunnier around here.