Amber 4 month Milestones

Chunky Monkey is growing fast.  At four months she weighed in at 14.8lbs and 25 3/8in.  She's keeping pace with Titus' statistics at the last few milestones.

Shortly after turning three months, she started to roll, not roll over, but actually roll (back-to-front, front-to-back).  Then a week later she either forgot or ate too much and couldn't for a few days.  Now she's back to rolling and scary as it is, scooting forward in focused efforts to reach toys.  She's one strong little girl.

Walking the dog.

She has definitely found her voice.  However, she's done so differently than her brothers, she prefers to allude soft cooing sounds in different pleasant ranges, they just liked to scream all out or belly giggle.  She's apparently too dignified to belly giggle.

She's already out grown the usefulness of her bouncer and play-mat.  She's happily graduated to the exer-saucer and big stroller.  However, she still continues to enjoy holding court while her brothers eat their breakfast at her feet.

We are working on properly brainwashing her brothers on how to treat a lady.  That they are always to be gentle, never rough, give her deference at all opportunities, protect her and most of all love her.  The best part of this training is that it seems to come naturally.  Now I just need to lose my baby weight so I can change my wardrobe to a more lady like collection myself.  I always knew having a girl would be expensive :-)

 

Smile Mile - Time to Train

The "Smile Mile" is a popular local "kids only" race that is conveniently located near my home.  The race is separated by age and sex, and as you probably guessed, they run one mile.

Last year we convinced our boys swimming coach, who is also a triathlete coach, to run a nine week training camp to prepare the kids for the "Smile Mile".  Eight kids participated and seven ended up competing.  All the kids beat their best time and had a great time.

This year Coach Hanif was already running a "Fit Club" for the kids.  The "Fit Club" is basically what Physical Education used to be.  The kids learn and play a different sport every four to six weeks.  So instead of forming a separate club to prepare for the "Smile Mile" it was decided he would spend the month before preparing as part of the "Fit Club".

However, me being me, I decided that Lance needed to start earlier.  So I enlisted the help of Chris and Sgt. Block.  We needed Sgt. Block because Chris is a biker, not a runner, or least he wasn't before I started messing with him (a personal pastime/wife privilege I like to invoke).

I got this idea from reading a funny blog about a program called "Couch to 5K".  When I read this blog it was conveniently ten weeks till the "Smile Mile" and it was a nine week program.  Perfect, right?  The program is very simple.  You dedicate 30 minutes, three days a week and they say at the end of nine weeks you'll be running a 5K.  Each day they tell you exactly what to do, basically combinations of walking and running.  You can print out the schedule from their website or you can buy the app.  We bought the app and that's where Sgt. Block comes in.  Sgt. Block is one of the three personalities you can choose from to walk/run you through the program.  Nice part of the app is it does all the timing for you and tracks your mileage.

My theory was that if Lance could run a 5K, a mile would be simple.  I've since been told my theory is a little flawed but I'm sure Coach Hanif will fix that this month.  What I do know for sure is that its been great bonding time for Lance and Chris.

If you are looking to loose a little weight and spend quality time with your kids, this program just might be the ticket for you too.  There are lots of fun 5Ks all over the country.  Chris and Lance are aiming for the "Watermelon 5K" on July 4th for their first 5K, who can say "no" to free Watermelon.

Boys racing a bulldozer down the block the other day.

XTRA Math

I believe very strongly in the mastery of math facts.  Mastering basic facts makes the upper levels of math easier and more enjoyable.  When a person has complete mastery, new concepts are not as daunting and don't take as long to learn. 

Mastery is complete and immediate recall.  If someone asks you your name, the answer is immediate.  Basic math facts should be the same, recalled instantly.

I believe flash cards and speed drills are a key component to attaining mastery.  Some studies have also shown that it's best to do math twice a day about four hours apart to really solidify the facts in the brain. For this reason, we use the CLE Math Curricula as the first assignment each day and Calculadder Drills as the last assignment.

Now I've found something new to add, not replace what we are already doing for mastery.

Its a FREE website called XtraMath  www.xtramath.org

This site is very friendly to parents, teachers and students alike.  The videos on the main page are well done and explain the details of the program. It allows easy sign up of multiple students and if the student uses the same computer used during sign up, all they have to remember is their name.  If a different computer is used, a password is needed to allow the student access.

Once sign up is complete, the program has a teacher named "Mr. C" to walk the student through the day's lesson.  "Mr. C" clearly worked at Disney in a past life, he's extremely bubbly, but the boys don't mind.  The first lesson is an evaluation.  The software assesses their strengths and weaknesses to create a customized program.  The goal is for the student to consistently recall their math facts in under 3 seconds. Surprisingly, my kids did not cringe at another math drill each day and are genuinely enjoying the program.  The creator of the site suggests using it between dinner and bedtime, so that's exactly when I plan to use it. The sessions are kept very short, under 10 minutes.

For accountability, they send the parent a weekly progress report for each child.  They also send reminders if the child (or parent :-) is forgetting to do the program.  Each report has a color coded summary level of how the child did each day, from there you can drill down to exactly what they did for each day.  For homeschoolers, these reports can be printed out at year-end.

I found out last night its one of the few educational websites that can be used on an ipad.  A touch keyboard appears on the screen when you access it from an ipad.  However, Lance says he prefers the computer.  He says the touch pad is too sensitive and he misses hearing the teacher talk (not sure why there's no sound on the ipad).

Best Valentine Ever!

Today's journal word was "fancy".  However, Jared decided to go off and do his own thing.  What he wrote is the best Valentine ever.  Brought me to tears.

"It is Valintine Day.
I love Valintine day.
Its a day we love.
We had fun.
I love you all.
Jared Otto by."

We love you too Jared!  More than you can ever imagine!

Strange part is Chris and I have never celebrated Valentines Day and yesterday was no different.  Perhaps we should next year.

Charlotte Mason meets Fred

Homeschooling seems to be a never ending search for perfection. I constantly tweak the boys programs and try to share how things are working for us.  However, one area I have posted very little about is Language Arts.  The reason is I have never been fully satisfied with what we were doing.

Overall, we are moving towards incorporating ideas from the Charlotte Mason approach in all subjects - more living books, less workbooks, more narration, and less testing them on what they don't know.  I also like her idea of keeping school to 20 min blocks, although with toddler and baby in tow, I've had to throw the more rigid time based schedules out the window and keep to more flexible task based schedules, hence the "stack system".

The "living books" idea is an easy one to run with for us.  There are many great resources to find books, including the simple pleasure of perusing the shelves of the library to see what you find.  Some of our favorite books have been found this way and when we find an author we like, I'll do a search to see what other books they have written.  Sometimes the author is a one hit wonder and sometimes you end up with a bundle of neat books to read.  Soon I'll be adding a separate page to my blog to include all our favorite books, authors and resources.

History is an easy subject to do with living books and we have really enjoyed this approach.  We do have a core curricula for history study, but it just serves as a backbone for which living books we are going to read.  We started our study of U.S. History with Columbus.  My goal is to make it through the Civil War by year-end.  However, since we are only on the Revolutionary War, we may not make it because there are many, many interesting books to read.  The rewards to the this immersion into living history books approach is that my boys are remembering what happened, the people it happened to and God's providence through it all. 

Applying Charlotte Mason theories to Language Arts has been little less intuitive.  My understanding is she believed that a child will learn how to write well by reading well written literature, while also incorporating narration and dictation.  Not being the best writer myself (you may have noticed), I was/am worried this approach may be too simplistic.  I moved around often as a kid and as a result, never took a grammar class, never diagrammed a sentence and have only just started to learn the parts of speech since starting CC (prior to that I only knew the Saturday morning "SchoolHouse Rock" version).  Therefore my concern is that not having that background has hindered my writing ability over the years.

Yet we went ahead anyway and dropped Lance's Language Arts Curricula all together.  Lance was really pushing back about not wanting to do it.  When he chose not to do it one day and miss running with his father, I knew we had a serious issue.  This program was the latest in a long line of Language Arts curricula I have purchased.  Chris and I sat down that night to reevaluate what we were asking him to do.  We discussed whether or not it was important for an eight-year-old to be able to diagram sentences, to know and be able to identify the different parts of speech. Our conclusion was that someday he'll need to know them to become a proficient writer, however that day was not now.  Chris looked at the curricula we were using and reminded me that it was testing him on what he didn't know and that I'd said that wasn't the direction I wanted to go.  That's why we've scrapped his language arts curricula and are not replacing it with anything for now.

The following is what we are doing for Language Arts and how it relates to the Charlotte Mason approach:

• The "All About Spelling" program utilizes a multi-sensory approach which includes the dictation of sentences, not just word lists.  Dictation is a big part of the CM approach.  Bonus is that Lance enjoys doing this, especially putting the "desperado" words in jail i.e. ones that don't follow the rules.
• "Pentime" to practice his cursive writing.  After the letters are learned, practice is done through the rewriting of poems and bible verses.  This aligns with CM in that she believed that rewriting proper literature is how children learned punctuation.  Lance has the most beautiful handwriting, I only have him do one page a day for practice and he really enjoys it.
• For narration, we will continue using the "Christian Liberty Press Nature Readers", he reads a portion and then closes the book and narrates what he just read back to me.
• For writing practice, he is continuing to do his daily journal entries, an activity both boys are really enjoying.  I have recently added an additional element of fun to this activity.  According to CM, vocabulary is learned not by memorizing lists but by using new words in speech and writing. One suggested way of doing this is a game called "Apples to Apples*".  In addition to playing this game, I now use it to choose the "word of the day" that they have to use somehow in their journal entries.  The boys like this new challenge and its helping to expand their vocabulary, making their writings more interesting.  I have also added a "banned list", which includes any word they use way too much; fun, cool, etc.  If they have spelling errors in their journals I don't point them out directly but I do add them to their next spelling word review.  The idea of the journals is first and foremost for them to express themselves and not have to worry too much about grammar and spelling.  Hopefully, over time they will improve their sentence structure and spelling as they experience more of both in their reading and "All About Spelling" program.

Lance is also devouring books.  A friend recently game us a set of children's encyclopedias and I think he's read half of them already and looked through the rest.   He and his brother believe going to the library is like going to a theme park.  For now I am comfortable that what we are doing is sufficient for his study of language arts. 

As a bonus, I've recently added a living book component to his math curricula, called "Life of Fred".  A while back, I looked through one of the upper level algebra books in the series and knew Lance would like it once he reached that level. When a friend recently informed me the author had just completed a 10 book elementary series, I quickly bought it.  "Life of Fred" is both entertaining and educational, the perfect balance for teaching.  Ironically, we introduced the new books the day after we told him we were taking a break from his language arts curricula.  After reading the first chapter he had two questions: 1) Is this my new language arts curricula? and 2) Can I read the rest of the book?  The answer to both questions was "no", but I was thrilled by this response.  I am letting him read chapters as rewards for completing his other math work or on days when he has a quiz or test.  Math is the one subject I can't do completely without workbooks but its nice to do a little of both.  I hope it will help him understand math from a relational standpoint, since for Lance if its not relation-based he's really not very interested in it, that's just who he is and I love him for it.

To find out what is so neat about Fred, sample chapters are available from the site.

When he gets a few years older the next curricula I will probably try is "The Write Foundation", here's the review I read that made me interested in it but its geared for the 11 and above crowd.

*Note:  Be careful of the adult version of "Apples to Apples", it has some situations I didn't feel appropriate for my children's age range.  Because of that we went ahead and just started with the "Apples to Apples 7+" version, which may be a bit too simple but everyone still enjoys playing.

Ch - Ch - Ch - CHANGES!

Ah, name that song.  One my favs in my misspent youth :-)

When we moved into our current townhome, we were 2 adults, 1 toddler and a medium size dog.  Eight years later we are still in the same home but now we are 3 adults, 4 kids, and a 90lb German Shepherd.  Over the years, I've become very creative at finding new ways to organize space and re-purpose rooms.  Before Amber arrived we completed our largest re-purposing.  We sold nearly everything in our formal dinning room and converted it into...

I only had a before pic from selling the table :-)

a combination library, play room, school room, dinning room and father-in-law suite.

Thanks to IKEA, this was a surprisingly inexpensive change. We actually evened out after selling the dinning room table.  I designed the desks so they could be pulled away from the walls, connected together to form a dinning table to sit eight.  The closed cabinets include games, toys for Titus to play with, piles of homeschool curricula and another craft supplies.  It is awesome to finally have everything in one room, instead of having to dig under beds and into closets to find what I needed for school.

However, the one thing I still seldom found in the room was the boys doing their school work.  They still preferred to do their work back on the kitchen table in the family room.  I had posted their new schedules on the Entertainment Center, thinking "how could they couldn't possibly miss them there."  Apparently, they found a way.  A few weeks ago I scrapped the printed schedule and tried something new.

When Titus needed some down time and watch a show, doing their work in the family room was too much of a distraction for the boys.  This led me to realize the boys needed to be doing their school work "out front", as we call it, in our new Library Plus room.  I removed my computer and set-up each boy at a seperate table.  Instead of a schedule, I have implemented the "Stack System". I line their assignments up on the table, and they can do any subject, in whatever order they want.  In theory, they are not to get up till all their assignments are done.  Now, of course, they can get up when an assignment requires my help, they have questions or I call a break to get the wiggles out.  I have to call the wiggle breaks now, otherwise they will spend their days taking breaks and chasing invisible butterflies around the room.  For Jared, it is a complete success. He can now finish all his school work by around 10:30am and have the rest of the day to play, practice piano or do crafts.  Lance can't always avoid the butterflies but even he usually completes his work around lunch time.  Based on that, I'd say the new "Stack System" is working better than any in the past.  Hopefully we've found a system we can actually stick to for a while.

Not sure which changes more often in our house, the layout of the furniture or the way we homeschool. However, that's part of the reason we homeschool; to have the flexibility to constantly improve what we do and how we do it.

Now if I could only find a system to help them to remember to vacuum without being asked...

BTW, thanks to a family friend, a ball pit has been added to the room. Just when we "find" more space, something fills it up. :-)

Amber's "therapy pool" (Hee Hee)

Sheltering too much?

Over the years, people have raised their concern that we shelter our children too much.  My response has always been the same; if sheltering them too much is the worse thing I have done when I get to heaven....I'm alright with that.  

We do our best to keep our children "in the world but not of it".  Now that doesn't mean we are trying to be "Amish", though I have to admit I greatly admire the Mennonites.  It just means we try to let them keep their innocence as long as possible.

This is not an easy task in our media driven society.  We don't avoid technology, actually quite the opposite, but that we try to control its usage in our home.  For instance, broadcast television has been out of our house since Lance was less than two.  When Chris wants to watch sports he does so over the internet which minimizes, if not eliminates commercials, when they do pop up we can just turn off the monitor for a moment or have the boys turn around.  We've never taken them to a movie theater.  All books and movies they watch at home have to be pre-screened by Chris or I.  We look for poor role modeling and negative imitative behavior.

However, even with our best efforts, trouble still sneaks into our home.  Take for instance "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Davy and Goliath" DVDs.  We thought these would be fine, but the formula of 20 minutes of problems and poor behavior and 20 seconds of solution equaled trouble in our house.  The boys missed the solution and started imitating the poor behavior of Davy and the "troublesome trucks".  So much so that we had to get rid of all of them.  Another series we eventually had to get rid of was "Veggie Tales". In addition to Bob's bad attitude, we started to see the problem with mixing the truth of the Bible with the fantasy of the Veggie Tales world.  The boys were starting to get confused which was the true story.  Last thing we wanted was the boys to view the Bible as a story instead of God's spoken work or the "History book of the universe".

We believe strongly that we are completely responsible for what our little ones "see, hear, touch and taste".  Ironically, despite the seemingly extreme measures we take, I'm frequently filled with guilt about all the times/areas we fall short and the world creeps in and we give in a little. 

Despite the won and lost battles, I get my reward daily by how well my boys play together and with their little sister.  My almost nine year old is not too cool to play with his little brothers the way they want to play and to watch the shows they want to watch.

The other day I received a special reward.  A glimpse that we are doing something right.  We checked out a "Blue Planet" DVD from the library and the boys were all excited to watch it.  Lance opens it up and gets even more excited shouting, "Mom! Look at how beautiful the blue is on this disc!".  He then proceeds to run around the house showing the disc to everyone for them to see how beautiful it is.  I look at the disc, smile, nod and I think to myself "No, YOU are beautiful".  

It may seem like a silly story to other people but the preciousness of this moment nearly brought me to tears.  It makes up for all the days when I feel like giving in completely.  The path is narrow but its worth traveling.

 Just a funny pic I found of Titus at one in a cupboard, reminds me of a Godzilla movie :-)

Mighty, Mighty Titus Turns Three!

Ode to Titus

You may be small in stature but you are powerful in spirit.  

Your strength lies not only in your muscles but also in your mind.

Your smile could light up a city and your laughter fuel a country.

You are my number one helper and daily chore companion.

You're calculating and compassionate, a friend to family and stranger.

May the Lord always turn his face toward you and bless you all the days of your life.

He started his third year so big!

And then he just kept growing!

First time petting sting ray.

Pizza with friends a favorite treat.

Chillin' with Roofus.

Titus the magnificent!

Hunting for Dinosaur bones.

Born to play baseball (or model).

Communing with nature.

Exuding joy!

Fort building connoisseur (especially for kitty).

Addicted to water.

Always around to help with any job.

The wild side.

Just one of the guys.

Ready to take on anything.

Leading his brothers to new heights.

Sliding into the new year.

The new three year old on the block. Large and in charge!

Happy Birthday Titus!  We love you more than you can ever imagine!