(translation: this is a post of random ramblings in a lame attempt to catch up a little bit!)
I’m on an energy high today. Susannah randomly slept 7 hours straight last night. Gasp! I know. We’d gotten into some bad sleep patterns on our trip (11 days in Georgia) and a couple of days ago I had hit a WALL. Venting to my friend Crystail helped, and then brainstorming with my Mom helped even more (it’s always nice to hear about what worked when I was a baby… I think Susannah is probably a lot like me, personality-wise) with the result that I tried a less-intense approach when Susannah woke up around 10:30 pm. The current working theory is that she gets overstimulated and needs LESS “stuff” (singing/walking/bouncing/rocking/swaddling/etc/etc/adinfinitum) – so I tried to be gentle and unobtrusive, less eye contact, just got in there, changed her diaper, put her on her potty, offered her the breast – which she didn’t want, loosely swaddled her with her arms more free, handed her a stuffed lamb, laid her on her bed, and walked out. Five minutes of cooing to the lamb and she was out like a light – until almost 6:00 a.m. Who knows, it might be a fluke, but I got some AMAZING sleep last night for the first time in a long time. :0) Yay for small victories.
A cute Jonas-ism: {in the kitchen}
Jonas: Hey mom, you ‘member “hop-flops?”
Me: You mean flip-flops, like the shoes?
Jonas: {look of aggravation} NO, “hop-flops.” You know!
Me: Do you mean, hop scotch? When you jump on the numbers?
Jonas: {now looking really peeved} NO! HOP! FLOPS! You know, it’s like toast! With sprinkles!
Me: {slowly dawning} Ooooooh, do you mean, Pop-Tarts? {note: he has never eaten a pop-tart in his life}
Jonas: {relief} Yeah! Pop-Tarts!
Me: {confused as to what this conversation is even about} What about Pop-Tarts?
Jonas: {dreamily, laying head against his hand} I love that commercial.
School is going really well. We’ve taken a couple of weeks off for the holidays (partly for our trip to visit all the relatives in/around Atlanta, and partly because we just haven’t gotten back into our normal routine now that we’re home) but we’ll get back into the swing right after Christmas. Jonas is reading short-vowel words, and he’s starting to figure out a few of the long-vowel words without any direct instruction on that yet. His sight-word vocabulary is skyrocketing; it just amazes me. It’s funny that we really can’t spell anything we don’t want him to overhear, and he can read a few words off of the news scrolls on TV now, not to mention road signs and store signs galore.
I’m starting to think ahead to next school year already; I am considering using the ABeka K5 curriculum – at least their math and language programs, and possibly the Bible curriculum. I’m still comfortable supplementing my own science, art, and social studies at this grade level 🙂 I think the math might be a little bit of a stretch, but they use a “spiraling” approach that goes back to reinforce earlier concepts with LOTS of repetition, so it would be easy enough to adapt it to suit his needs if it is too much at first. And the phonics program would probably be a lot of review of what he already knows right now in the beginning – but I love the way they cover the “special rules” for phonics. I’m going to have to do a little more thinking & researching about the manuscript vs. cursive question. If I go ahead with ABeka, I will probably try to get my hands on some of the materials used since purchasing the whole shebang brand-new is kind of expensive! But a quick look on eBay today turned up a little bit of everything, so at least I feel good that they’re available “pre-loved” if that’s what I decide to do.
Christmas is only a week away! I still have one more item to shop for and one more sewing project to complete. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh? I’ve never cut it this close before – clearly having two kids, plus a husband working nights, is taking its toll. I’m also going to try to assemble a digital Christmas card, so wish me luck on getting it all done in time!
3 thoughts on “Shoob-i-dee, doob-i-dee….”
we use Abeka! My son is doing K5 this year and flew through the first 3/4 of the book, but he is pretty advanced for 5 years old…already reading long and short vowels.
Abeka K4 and K5 are almost exactly the same material, but the K4 goes a little slower and is younger as far as the look of the workbooks, etc… I would go to a local display when they start doing them again so you can actually thumb through the workbooks and see what you would want for him for the entire year.
Also…. I think it is plain crazy to start teaching kids cursive. Yeah, they CAN do it, but WHY? They HAVE to learn print anyway for EVERYTHING they ever fill out. I think it would make more since to teach little kids keyboarding skills! ha ha! I LOVED Handwriting without tears for early on…my son has the neatest handwriting ever and has transitioned to the Abeka handwriting program flawlessly.
JMO
I realized I wrote “since” instead of “sense” ha ha. it’s late
Hey Carrie! Thanks for the input. I totally agree about checking out the Abeka stuff in person… there’s a big homeschool convention here in April, so I might hold out on buying anything until then. (And I’m trying to convince my mother to come up here for a visit that weekend; she can come along and be my extra set of hands to wrangle the kids while I peruse all the materials displays!)
From what I could see online, I had guessed that about the K4 vs K5 — and since Jonas is already reading short vowels confidently, I think we’d be bored with the K4 stuff. But I’m not sure how he would “place” in the math texts, so I’m really wanting to see those in person too!
You’re so funny about the handwriting — great point about keyboarding. That’s definitely a life skill that has become more important since I was a HS’ed kid! :0) I took a Keyboarding course in high school, and while it was a drag at the time, I’m still a pretty good typist (typetress? haha!) and I’m glad I did it. My dad is a hunt-and-peck-with-2-fingers guy and he insisted that learning to really type would be good for us – smart man!