Saturday, September 11, 2004
Okay, let's talk about school-ish issues.
SWIMMING: He swam underwater so much, it was impossible to hold a conversation with him. Now that he has goggles that work well, he's underwater all the time. He's mastered breathing so that he doesn't have to hold his nose or anything -- just jumps right in, goes down to the bottom, swims around like an eel -- no problem. Now that we're home, we're going to put him in group swimming lessons. We think it'll be more fun and motivational for him to have other children to "race" and be with. Working on his own in the pool he's more likely to just swim around and be silly, which is fine and wonderful in itself, but I want him to learn to swim across the pool without stopping. So he'll start group lessons on Monday. When Dad came down to the beach to visit, they played with diving rockets in the pool -- Benny eventually got so he could dive down to the bottom of the EIGHT FOOT DEEP END and retrieve these rubber rockets -- amazing! Initially he hitched a ride on Dad to get down to the bottom, but by the end of our stay he was just swimming straight down, all by himself. And he was SO much stronger in the ocean this year -- he swam underwater a lot in the ocean too which made me insane with worry, but what can you do?
VIOLIN: Mrs. Ford gave us permission to go through Perpetual Motion. We ended up stopping at Allegro, since I wasn't sure or confident teaching him to use finger 4 on the A string in Perpetual Motion. He learned Song of the Wind, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, O Come Little Children, May Song, Long Long Ago, and Allegro. He's doing AWESOME!!!! He has had some little issues that we've had to work on, but I'm doing my best to keep practicing fun by switching things up. I have had to crack down on him somewhat because in the songs that he knows well he gets very sloppy and wants to play very fast. All in all, his progress has been amazing. When we got back to Virginia he went up to a 1/8th size violin. The guy at the violin store said he'll probably stay on that size for a while.
MATH: My goal right now is to get him automatic on sums up to 20. He can MOSTLY do sums up to 10 from memory, but needs the number line on some things. I want him to be able to say 5+11=16 without using the number line. Right now he can do a lot of it, but not all. So that's just repetition, and we're working on it, with very low intensity. He understands addition and subtraction in positive and negative numbers... now it's just working on his memory a little for the easy ones to become automatic, so we can move on to two digit addition and subtraction. I'm not in a big hurry though -- I think he's doing really well and we'll just take our time at this point. He's working in a first grade book right now.
READING: His reading is SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!!! He's sounding out all kinds of stuff that I didn't know he could read -- amazing. He's learning somewhat to get words from context if he doesn't immediately know them, and he's mastering a host of sight words... fantastic! He loves to read aloud to us -- his favorite right now is The Cat in the Hat, which he reads with amazing expression and gusto. Very entertaining. The other night I had put him to bed and he was quiet on the monitor. Two hours later I went upstairs to nurse Sadie back to sleep and I noticed his light was on and his door was shut. I went up to his room and he was sitting in the middle of the floor, painstakingly working his way through "The Magic School Bus Gets Baked in a Cake" sounding out each word -- I almost fainted! He's definitely reading at least on a first grade level and improving daily. He loves to read! WHEE!
SPELLING: I have a book now that goes systematically through every phonetic sound and combination in English. I knew I needed to do this, because there are plenty of vowel combinations and other things that we've only addressed haphazardly. Every day we have a new sound. We each write a story using as many words as we can think of that have that sound in them. Then we illustrate our stories and each others' stories. Then Benny does a spelling test with 10 words using that sound (he gets to pick one of them). It's going REALLY well, he loves writing the stories and getting people to draw illustrations with him. Very charming. Very dear.
KARATE: We started karate YESTERDAY at the Norfolk Karate Academy which happens to be right down the street from us. Mr. Odom and his wife were very patient with Benny who is the youngest child in the class. He absolutely loved it and did GREAT following the bigger kids and doing for the most part what he was told to do. He did way way way way better than I expected, and it's just so good for him to learn to go WITH the group, stand in his spot and be part of the team, so to speak. I know this especially after witnessing his first group class for the year in violin, where he raced everyone to the end of every song -- NAUGHTYPANTS! :) Here's a link to the Karate school: http://www.norfolkkarate.com
PRESCHOOL: Benny started preschool last week. All the teachers are new this year!!!! No more Ms. Moneek and Ms. Clodea and Ms. Jesika! (Spelling is Benny's.) Of course I was VERY VERY curious about the new teachers so I was pumping Benny for information and being the small male person that he is, he gave me one word answers only. They are nice. They are good. He had fun. I asked him who his favorite teacher was and he said Ms Claudia -- that was his answer last year! Made me wonder if he even NOTICED that they were all CHANGED?! Oblivious to all but the almighty KIDS no doubt. Anyway we'll see how that goes. His little friend Zoe now goes to Preschool for the Arts also, so that's awesome, and of course Gabe is still his little buddy and they go together to preschool and to "pipes" at McDonald's afterwards on Tuesdays.
Right, I'm posting.
SWIMMING: He swam underwater so much, it was impossible to hold a conversation with him. Now that he has goggles that work well, he's underwater all the time. He's mastered breathing so that he doesn't have to hold his nose or anything -- just jumps right in, goes down to the bottom, swims around like an eel -- no problem. Now that we're home, we're going to put him in group swimming lessons. We think it'll be more fun and motivational for him to have other children to "race" and be with. Working on his own in the pool he's more likely to just swim around and be silly, which is fine and wonderful in itself, but I want him to learn to swim across the pool without stopping. So he'll start group lessons on Monday. When Dad came down to the beach to visit, they played with diving rockets in the pool -- Benny eventually got so he could dive down to the bottom of the EIGHT FOOT DEEP END and retrieve these rubber rockets -- amazing! Initially he hitched a ride on Dad to get down to the bottom, but by the end of our stay he was just swimming straight down, all by himself. And he was SO much stronger in the ocean this year -- he swam underwater a lot in the ocean too which made me insane with worry, but what can you do?
VIOLIN: Mrs. Ford gave us permission to go through Perpetual Motion. We ended up stopping at Allegro, since I wasn't sure or confident teaching him to use finger 4 on the A string in Perpetual Motion. He learned Song of the Wind, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, O Come Little Children, May Song, Long Long Ago, and Allegro. He's doing AWESOME!!!! He has had some little issues that we've had to work on, but I'm doing my best to keep practicing fun by switching things up. I have had to crack down on him somewhat because in the songs that he knows well he gets very sloppy and wants to play very fast. All in all, his progress has been amazing. When we got back to Virginia he went up to a 1/8th size violin. The guy at the violin store said he'll probably stay on that size for a while.
MATH: My goal right now is to get him automatic on sums up to 20. He can MOSTLY do sums up to 10 from memory, but needs the number line on some things. I want him to be able to say 5+11=16 without using the number line. Right now he can do a lot of it, but not all. So that's just repetition, and we're working on it, with very low intensity. He understands addition and subtraction in positive and negative numbers... now it's just working on his memory a little for the easy ones to become automatic, so we can move on to two digit addition and subtraction. I'm not in a big hurry though -- I think he's doing really well and we'll just take our time at this point. He's working in a first grade book right now.
READING: His reading is SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!!! He's sounding out all kinds of stuff that I didn't know he could read -- amazing. He's learning somewhat to get words from context if he doesn't immediately know them, and he's mastering a host of sight words... fantastic! He loves to read aloud to us -- his favorite right now is The Cat in the Hat, which he reads with amazing expression and gusto. Very entertaining. The other night I had put him to bed and he was quiet on the monitor. Two hours later I went upstairs to nurse Sadie back to sleep and I noticed his light was on and his door was shut. I went up to his room and he was sitting in the middle of the floor, painstakingly working his way through "The Magic School Bus Gets Baked in a Cake" sounding out each word -- I almost fainted! He's definitely reading at least on a first grade level and improving daily. He loves to read! WHEE!
SPELLING: I have a book now that goes systematically through every phonetic sound and combination in English. I knew I needed to do this, because there are plenty of vowel combinations and other things that we've only addressed haphazardly. Every day we have a new sound. We each write a story using as many words as we can think of that have that sound in them. Then we illustrate our stories and each others' stories. Then Benny does a spelling test with 10 words using that sound (he gets to pick one of them). It's going REALLY well, he loves writing the stories and getting people to draw illustrations with him. Very charming. Very dear.
KARATE: We started karate YESTERDAY at the Norfolk Karate Academy which happens to be right down the street from us. Mr. Odom and his wife were very patient with Benny who is the youngest child in the class. He absolutely loved it and did GREAT following the bigger kids and doing for the most part what he was told to do. He did way way way way better than I expected, and it's just so good for him to learn to go WITH the group, stand in his spot and be part of the team, so to speak. I know this especially after witnessing his first group class for the year in violin, where he raced everyone to the end of every song -- NAUGHTYPANTS! :) Here's a link to the Karate school: http://www.norfolkkarate.com
PRESCHOOL: Benny started preschool last week. All the teachers are new this year!!!! No more Ms. Moneek and Ms. Clodea and Ms. Jesika! (Spelling is Benny's.) Of course I was VERY VERY curious about the new teachers so I was pumping Benny for information and being the small male person that he is, he gave me one word answers only. They are nice. They are good. He had fun. I asked him who his favorite teacher was and he said Ms Claudia -- that was his answer last year! Made me wonder if he even NOTICED that they were all CHANGED?! Oblivious to all but the almighty KIDS no doubt. Anyway we'll see how that goes. His little friend Zoe now goes to Preschool for the Arts also, so that's awesome, and of course Gabe is still his little buddy and they go together to preschool and to "pipes" at McDonald's afterwards on Tuesdays.
Right, I'm posting.
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