Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Day 2, Robbie's nine months and other going ons...

Day 2 and no one has been harmed. This morning it took us a little while to get down to business. I first had to play referee between Katie and Emily, the two that seem to be aggravating each other the most right now.


Mary actually settled in and tackled her math first, 90% on her own, while I sat with Katie to write a couple of her letters. We listened to the Latin CD while hanging out on the sofa, then Mary did her translations independently so I could work with Katie and Emily with the phonics/letter tiles.


After this the girls took a break and ran around, and got into more squabbles. Katie is experiencing her first 'grounding' after popping Emily with the (plastic) shovel. At least she admitted to doing it, sometimes she will blame everybody else down to the dogs before I can get her to own up to something. So, she had a time out and lost tv privileges for the day. I got them back to work before anymore blood could be drawn.

We are studying astronomy this 'semester'. Our primary book is The Complete Book of Our Solar System that we used last summer also for our Solar System study. We are starting out with Stars and then moving on to constellations, which we will also use Find The Constellations by H.A. Rey. Mary did a great job reading our page for today, and then we went to the Hubble website, which is awesome, for great images of nebulas to add to the science notebook.

Both Katie and Mary read today from their readers with little problems. In my great plan of keeping things small and slow we will keep reading the same story until the end of the week. Hopefully after four or five days we will achieve fluency and more importantly, confidence.

The phonics site I downloaded a few games from this past week has ended up being a hit. Mary is really enjoying the "Go Read" game. Based on Go Fish, it helps to cement some of the phonetic blends. Since there are also visual clues on each card it wasn't impossible for Mary to play and I think gave her a lot of confidence with her blends which is where we are in phonics. When I finally get all the fish cut out we are going to be able to play a lot of fishing games, not just for reading skills but I also have some ideas for using them for math.

This afternoon Robbie had his nine month check-up. He is still on his growth curve: 4% for weight, 7% for height and 63% for head size. Just a little top heavy. He charmed all the nurses and showed off his quick crawling moves. But, I have to take him back in a month to double check other areas of development. While he crawls around very well and is starting to pull himself up, he isn't very steady when he sits without support. And, he isn't babbling yet. I wasn't particularly worried about either of those, but the doctor wants to see him at his adjusted nine month age to see if he hits those milestones.

Melora, the Omega-3 is supposed to help with concentration and impulse behaviors. It is based on years of research overseas, and could really have some merit. The research is too much to post all the links I looked at, but google Omega-3 and ADHD and loads of stuff comes up. I bought a flavored liquid fish oil thinking that it would be easier for Mary, but she actually prefers taking my larger gel capsules. I am also giving it to Katie and Emily. Well at least Emily takes it with very little struggle. I have a hard time just getting Katie to take one of the multi-vitamin and everyone else considers them candy. I figure it won't hurt me to take the Omega-3 either as I could use all the extra 'brain food' I can get and it raises the HDL Cholesterol levels, which should help my poor ratio. Vitamin B-6, is important for the central nervous system and it also helps people with low blood-sugar issues maintain their sugar levels. Two good reasons for Mary. It takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks to see any affect, maybe I might be writing about a little bit calmer life - Ha Ha!


Mid-week holiday tomorrow. I hope everyone plays it safe when playing with explosives.

Peace,

Amy

4 comments:

Deb said...

Amy,

Can I ask which Latin curriculum you use?

Deb

Amy said...

We are using Prima Latina. I got it to start last year, but Mary wasn't quite ready. She started asking about starting it again in April. We are trying it again this summer to see if she is ready now. So far so good.

Amy

Melora said...

So, when she is doing her translation, she is going through her list of words & prayers and putting them from Enlish into Latin, or vice versa? I wonder if I could get T. to do that on his own. (We do pretty much everything together due to his attention issues, but what with adding K. this year, I need to find some few things he can do alone!)

Thank you for the information on Omega-3! I will pick some up and give it a try!

Amy said...

Melora,

We are taking the Latin really slow, like everything else. So we are taking a week with each lesson (3 days since I am alternating Latin and creative writing). Since she already struggles with her confidence in writing/spelling I only have her do written translations from latin to english and she has a word bank to pick from to aid her spelling. She does english to latin orally at this point. As she gets more comfortable with her skills I will probably alternate. And, we are only going over the prayers together, orally, at this point. I think independent translation of that might be way over the top for her.
Amy

A family of six living and learning. You might catch us outside in the mud or working on crafts. We always seem to be on the go, come on and join us.