Rutabaga Dreams

I highly recommend reading this article - How Not to Talk to Your Kids from the New York Magazine.  You don’t need to register or anything in order to read it.  What I thought was particularly interesting were the experiments the researchers conducted on the children, and how quickly they were able to see the results of their words in the children’s actions.

I’ve always detested how people will praise a child as being so smart just for getting something right, and now I feel like I have some good information to back up that gut reaction!

Me: Emma, why don’t you pick out a few books and I’ll read to you for a bit.

Emma: Yay! That’s better than a hat full of food!

Update - Gregory came over with a book too and while looking at the cover started blowing air out of his mouth in big puffs.  The book?  The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs.  I was impressed!  He seems just as attached to books as his sister - he insisted on holding the book while he nursed, and then we all read it together after he was done.  He continued to make the blowing noises while we read it.  I don’t think I’ve ever made that noise to him with this story…  I think he just figured it out from looking at the picture!

Matt set up a new blog for us last night and it is called Building a Home for Our Family.  It is about - yes, you guessed it - our home building adventure.  Matt and I will both be posting on this new blog, and we’ll try to keep all the home related stuff over there from now on.  So if you’re interested in keeping up on all the latest as we build our house, go check it out and add it to your RSS feed list!

We made this tonight and it was delicious.  All you have to do is take a pork shoulder (watch for it to go on sale - every other month or so it gets really cheap) and put it in the crock-pot covered in a jar of salsa.  We used half a jar of chipotle salsa and half a jar of regular medium salsa (about two cups worth) because that’s what we had in the fridge.

Then cook it on low all day, until it falls off the bone.  We then shredded it with forks and served it with tortillas, cheese, lettuce, homemade refried beans and homemade spanish rice.  It was really tasty!  And it makes a ton, so we’re going to freeze at least half of it for some other time.  I’m sure it would make a great burrito filling, or even be tasty over rice.  Enjoy!

Homeschooling is going very well around here, I’m happy to report. The Momma is happy, the daugher is happy, stuff is being learned and stuff is still getting done around the house. Really, what more could I want?

As a reference, here’s my last homeschooling update post.

More specifically, Emma is reading now, and has been reading for a couple months. In the last month or so, she’s started reading signs, packages, glasses (our everyday drinking glasses are from various breweries so they have stuff written on them - unfortunately none so entertaining as Dy’s though), and whatever else comes before her. She can comfortably read her daily lessons from 100 Easy Lessons (almost done - only 14 more to go!) and she’s reading other books as well. We’re still working on this book because we took some time spending two days on each lesson, because I was encountering a lot of resistance. Where she was at, she was having a lot of trouble reading the practice words and the story on the same day (this started around lesson 60 or so) and so we slowed the pace down and things improved dramatically. (As an aside, this is where I came to the important realization that it is not a race - learning, and learning without massive frustration, is the goal here, not finishing a set of lessons as quickly as possible!) On Sunday night she read Go, Dog, Go and only stumbled over “two”, “night” and a couple other words. (These words will show up on copywork in the near future - nothing like a tailored education!) She’s not sitting down yet and reading entire books on her own, she still needs a little prompting for that, but she’s reading the titles of books and reading parts of them when she wants to know more about what is happening on a particular page.

Her handwriting is coming along nicely too. She’s now holding her pencil correctly without a pencil grip (hooray!) and her writing is looking quite nice for a five year old. I don’t make her do much writing, and I think this is a good thing. She just writes one sentence once a day, but then she also writes her own words on her pictures and a couple times a week she’ll write one to three sentence stories about a picture without prompting. So I think we’re at a good place with the writing - she’s improving and she still enjoys doing it on her own - so I think we’re striking the right balance.

Math is going well too. We’re on lesson 25 (out of 30) of the Math-U-See Primer level, and she’s still enjoying it. She’s also using the concepts she’s learning in day to day life, so I think it is soaking in too. She likes to look ahead to see what she’ll be doing next, which I figure is a good sign. We’re very pleased with Math-U-See’s program and I definitely plan on continuing with it.

The Bible stories with narration is going well too - she’s still a little reluctant to narrate at times, but it is more because she wants to ask a zillion questions before narrating. Right now I’m having her narrate first then ask questions, because it seems like she can answer some of her own questions that way, but sometimes I wonder if I am stiffling her questions a little too much by doing it in that order.

Saint stories are still going well, we’re reading through Amy Wellborn’s Book of Saints again. We read through some other books for awhile - mostly ones about individual saints from the library - but now we’re back to this book again. I want to put a little more thought into this section for next year though, because I think we could be doing more. It will require more planning though, and I’m not sure how realistic that is going to be with what is on the horizon. Maybe the year after that.

I think that’s everything I set out to do last fall, and we’ve also added a couple of things along the way. My brother gave Emma a small intro to chemistry experiment book for her birthday so we’ve been doing experiments from that nearly every day since then.

We’ve also started listening to a hymn from Hymns for a Kid’s Heart every day in hopes that Emma and I can start to pick up some of songs. I’m not exactly completely thrilled with the book (the Christmas one was a lot better) but it’ll do for now. At what point though do children start being able to pick up the fact that there is a tune - or is it more a matter of innate ability? If it is innate ability I’m afraid that Emma’s a little short on that one. I guess I can’t be too surprised, this is the child who, as a baby, would scream when I put music on in the car.

The other thing I’ve added is some memorization. We’ve done a little scripture (But be doers of the word, not hearers only (James 1:22) - this was suggested along with Amazing Grace in the hymns book) and the Sign of the Cross as well as Our Father. She has the Sign of the Cross down, and the Our Father is almost there - she just trips up in one place now (she leaves out the “as we forgive those who tresspass against us”).

Things I’m lacking in all this? Well, art, for one, and I’d like to be doing more music than what we’re currently doing. We do listen to various classical pieces in the late afternoon, but I’m in despirate need of expanding my music collection. The selection at my local library was laughable (and horrid) so I think I need to start making some purchases. Any suggestions?

But as it stands, we’re making good progress, and I think we’re on target for finishing up sometime around mid to late May… which is perfect because we’ll be moving shortly thereafter! (another reason the moving delay has turned out to be a good thing)

I’m going to start planning next year soon, as I don’t think I’ll be in any position to do that come July/August… so I’m looking forward to that. The main thing I’ll need to do is make sure I can find my notes and materials when we get started again in September!

The kids aren’t feeling well today, can you tell?

I just noticed that I’ve been messing up my links ever since my blog upgrade - it seems that now I’m defaulting to the “visual” mode, which oh so helpfully changes my angle brackets in my HTML code into their text equivalents…  breaking all my links.  Grr.  Don’t you hate it when software makes your life harder by trying to make it easier?

I’m embarrassed that I didn’t notice until now - and why didn’t anyone say anything??  To think, me, messing up on basic HTML code when I’ve been doing  it since before frames were the brand-new hip thing. 

Well, since everyone else in the blogging world (or at least the small corner I travel in) has joined in on this I might as well do so too, since I actually thought of something I could write about *before* Wednesday.

So anyways, here it goes!

We have cheap vinyl flooring in our rental condo. It has a slight texture to it, I guess to make it less slippery. This texture drives me nuts though, because it traps dirt and previously it seemed impossible to truly get the floor clean. I would dutifully clean my floors with various disinfectants and using different methods (different mops, sponges, scrubbing brushes, towels) trying to find the perfect combination that would actually result in a clean floor. While I felt fairly comfortable that my floor was at least no longer harboring too many germs, it never really looked particularly clean.

However, just a couple weeks ago I read something from Marilyn at The Urban Homemaker in her email newsletter where she extolled the virtues of microfiber cloths. I had a few hanging around (an impluse purchase at Costco years ago, previously used only for cleaning windows and mirrors) and I thought I would try it. I crawled around with my microfiber cloth and squirt bottle filled with diluted Lysol… and Viola! Floors that actually look clean with very little scrubbing!

Thanks to Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer for hosting these Works-for-Me Wednesdays!

Well, it looks like our move is going to be delayed a bit.  As I’ve mentioned, we were planning on moving up to Nevada County in mid to late April, but due to some miscommunications and misunderstandings about timing and timelines with where we were going to move to, we’ve decided to change our plans.  I’m glad they are changing, really, I think what we’ve decided to do instead will be a neat experience and will let us get more work done on the house.  I think it will also let me do more on the house, which is very exciting for me.  (remind me that I said these things come July, ok?)

So, the plan - as it stands now at least - we’re going to move up at the beginning of June.  This is (tenatively!) when we think Matt will start his time off and when we’ll be starting construction in earnest.  There are of course some major hurdles we need to get over before we get to this point - permits, financing, final plans, etc. etc. etc. but June seems realistic so long as things continue to progress at a reasonable pace.  When we move up there, we are going to put everything in storage and we’re going to camp on the property for the time that Matt is taking off (4-6 weeks).  Yes, I said camp.  It should be fun, right?  :-)  We’re working out some of the logistics at the moment but I think we’ll be able to make it work.  And besides, it will be an adventure, right?

Um, right.

But really, I am looking forward to this, I think it should be a neat experience.  If it goes well, we may camp the rest of the summer.  If not, we’ll either move to a rental once Matt is working again or we’ll buy a trailer to put on the property and move into that.  I do wish the kids were a little older because I think they would probably get more out of it, but Emma at least is looking forward to it.

In other house news, we have signed off on final structural plans, and now our plans are in engineering.  We should be getting our full size printouts today.  The engineering folks are going to do the energy calcs and make sure the structure is sound, both good and useful things.  We also have a window schedule completed, and barring any changes in window sizes due to the energy calc requirements, we should be set there too.  We’re still working on the cost estimates, but we’re at least making some headway there.  Progress is being made, yippee!

As Dy mentioned in her comment on my second to last post, sometimes when kids slack off in one area, they start picking up in another…  and sure enough, this has been Gregory’s week for new words.  He now says “ophn” (open), “backpack” (very fast and breathy sometimes, but still pretty easy to understand), “bye-bye”, “Matt” (when I’m calling out to Matt, Gregory usually echos me and laughs), and “O’s!!!” (for the Trader Joe’s version of Cheerios).  I think he might also be saying Emma’s name, but I’m not positive.  I’m pretty sure there are some other words, but of course I can’t think of them right now!

He’s also understanding a lot more words now too, which is exciting.  Also, you can ask him to get things for you and he’ll do it with  a few things.  His favorite thing to fetch is the dustpan.   He can nod yes and no, and he’s getting pretty good about doing the right one at the right time.  He’s also starting to give really good hugs.  He came up to me at park playday today, climbed into my lap, put his arms around my neck, tucked his head on my shoulder and started saying “awww”, just like I do when I give him a hug.  He’s such a cute little guy - very watchful and with a great sense of humor already.  He absolutely adores his big sister and she adores him.  I love watching the two of them interact.  Sure, there are occasional squabbles, but nothing major and Emma is really good at handling him with lots of love.  It is so fun to watch Gregory becoming his own little person, and to see Emma grow in her own empathy and ability to care for others!