A geographer’s son

Yesterday, Peter was playing and he said, “Mommy, let’s pretend you’re Mount Everest.”  He had his little people climb up me.

Only a geographer’s child would say that.  Or maybe a mountainclimber’s.

He can also tell you the name of the only volcano in Antarctica.  Until we read him that book, I wouldn’t have even thought there would be a volcano in Antarctica.

He keeps me on my toes.

Peter’s second day of school

Yesterday was Peter’s second day of school.  It went much more smoothly than the first day.  He and Don waited in the right place and the bus came like it was supposed to, so Peter rode the bus to school for the first time.  He didn’t have any accidents, and his teacher drew three smiley faces in her comments in his parent-teacher communication book.  Don and I felt relieved; we were very worried.  Peter had a great day.  He was excited about doing rest time (he had missed it the first day because he was in the principal’s office while they were trying to get ahold of us) and even more excited about having gym class in the gym.  Apparently they ran a race, and although he didn’t win, he thought it was fun.  He scarfed an incredible amount of food for dinner (a banana, more pancakes than I can count, and two scrambled eggs) and fell asleep unusually quickly.  He woke up with plenty of energy this morning.  He didn’t have school today (this is the transition week–each kid goes for two days with half the class, then Friday the whole class attends for the first time).  We’ll see how tomorrow goes for him at school, then he gets two days off before starting full-time, Monday to Friday school next week.

Peter’s first day of school

Yesterday was Peter’s first day of school.  Unfortunately, his school career did not get off to a good start.  First he missed the bus–we were given the wrong information for his bus stop, so he and Don waited in the wrong place and the bus didn’t pick him up.  I had the car at work, so Don couldn’t just drive him to school.  Fortunately they met a mom whose daughter did make the bus who drove them to the school to drop Peter off.  Peter was upset about the situation, understandably–we had him all prepped and ready to ride the bus and it didn’t happen the way it was supposed to.  Then, during the day at school, he had three potty accidents and they flipped out about it.  They left three voicemails (including one from the principal) and sent two e-mails before they got ahold of Don (I was at a work orientation and was unreachable).  Don was not happy about the teacher’s attitude when she talked with him.  Yes, it’s an inconvenience, but you know what, he’s only four years old.  It happens.  It’s his first day of school, he missed the bus, he’s upset and stressed, and four-year-olds aren’t always perfectly potty trained.  Three accidents in one day is a lot for him.  We’re hoping it was just because everything was so new and stressful yesterday and that he’ll be better about pottying at school from now on.  If not, and/or if we continue to be uncomfortable with the teacher’s attitude, we’ll have to do something.  I don’t know how it’s all going to work out, but we’re feeling stressed about it.  Fortunately, Peter seemed to have a relatively good attitude about his day when he came home (on the bus, like he was supposed to, about 10 minutes late).  It’s 2 pm now and there haven’t been any phone calls from the school today, so I’m hoping things are going better.

This picture was taken while he was waiting for the bus, before he realized that the bus had missed him.

Meeting Peter’s teacher

Yesterday afternoon, we went to Peter’s school to meet his teacher, see his room, and bring in his supplies.  Although it’s a French-language school, the teacher spoke with us in English.  Even so, Peter was rather shy with her.

After Peter found his cubby and put away his blanket and indoor shoes, the teacher showed him the toys in the room and let him pick something to play with while she talked with Don and me.  She asked us quite a few questions and took notes, told us about how she does things (spending a lot of time on disciplinary procedures, which I don’t expect to be an issue with Peter), and answered our questions.  We spent quite a bit of time there–about 45 minutes.

On the positive side, his teacher seems to do a lot of fun activities with the kids.  For example, she described some of the crafts they do for Halloween, and they have different themed dress-up days throughout the year.  It also sounds like she communicates well with parents.  Not only does she have a notebook for each kid to take home every day so parents/teacher can write notes back and forth, she also has a password-secured website where she posts a calendar, vocab lists for the month, photos, and a daily blog with information about what they did and reminders of things students need to bring in or whatnot.  I like to know what’s going on, so that sounds appealing.

We do have some concerns, however.  It really rubbed me the wrong way when she said, “If he doesn’t learn to write his name in the next two or three weeks, he’ll find school difficult.”  Give the kid a break!  He’s four years old!  No four-year-old should find school “difficult”, no matter what they can or can’t do.  It makes me feel pressured to have him learn this one particular skill, which is important for him to learn at some point but not necessarily right now.  This is my kid who can recite the Lord’s Prayer, has completed a kindergarten math program, and can read just about any phonetically regular single-syllable word (none of which I told his teacher), but if he can’t write his name, he doesn’t measure up.   Don felt that she came across as “inflexible” in her expectations of the kids, particularly because of her comments that boys often are slower in developing fine motor skills and take longer to learn to use scissors and write.  His thought is that if she knows they’re slower to develop, then she shouldn’t push them to the point that they ”find school difficult.”

Our other main concern, independent of the teacher, is how tired he’s going to be.  He’s going to be attending full days, five days a week, in his second language, plus bus rides there and home (and a long walk to and from the bus stop–it hasn’t been changed yet).

We’ll have to wait and see how things go.  Peter loved his preschool, so there’s a good chance he’ll enjoy kindergarten also.  Hopefully he’ll get used to the routine and not be completely exhausted every day (they do have a nap/quiet time–he hasn’t napped in ages but maybe he will if he’s tired enough).   Maybe he’ll learn quickly how to write his name and we won’t have a problem with the teacher’s expectations.  Maybe all my nerves and worries are unnecessary.  Here’s hoping.

Weather forecast

Yesterday evening, Don was watching the news on tv and Peter watched the weather forecast.  Don asked him what the weather was going to be like overnight (that’s what was on the screen).  Peter looked at it and said “moony and cloudy.”  If it can be sunny, why can’t it be moony?

Hanging in there

It’s been an exhausting week.  Tuesday was the first day of school, but I didn’t teach–all the French teachers in the school board had a professional development session in the afternoon.  Since I only work half-time, I didn’t have to work in the morning, but just didn’t want to miss the first day of school at my new school.  Fortunately, Don supported me and encouraged me to go, even though it meant he had to watch Peter all day and didn’t get to go to work.  I’m glad I went–I had a productive morning getting resources together and organizing some things–but it was a long day.  Wednesday was my first day of teaching and I was so completely wound up and stressed out, it was ridiculous.  I woke up shortly after 5 and couldn’t get back to sleep.  I looked at the clock at 5:51 and starting panicking, wondering why my alarm hadn’t gone off, then realized that I had set it for 6:50.  (I used to get up at 5:50 for my previous job, so it was a reasonable mistake.)  I made it through the day and came home for lunch, but I was even more stressed out afterwards than before.  Somehow, I managed to take a much-needed nap in the afternoon, but then I had to stay up late working on lesson plans for Thursday.  I had a nightmare (being surprised by snakes in a sandbox) and woke up around 5 am with my heart pounding, unable to sleep anymore.  I couldn’t eat a thing for breakfast; I managed to drink some orange juice and that was all.  Thankfully, things went a little better at work and I felt somewhat less stressed on my way home.  Thursday afternoon, we all went to meet Peter’s teacher and see his classroom (more about that later).  Then another night of staying up late to do lesson plans.  Today, as I was leaving work in a rush to get home so Don could go to his grad student orientation, the secretary gave me a pile of employment/payroll paperwork and stressed how important it was that it get to the board office this afternoon so I could get paid.  Getting paid is a good thing, so I spent a couple hours filling out form after form and driving out to the two nearest schools in my board to find one with a working fax machine so I could fax the stuff to the board office (which was still faster than driving it there).  Thank God it’s the weekend.  I need to do some prep work so I know where I’m going and can stop staying up late to do lesson plans.  I’ve got tons more resources at this school than I’m used to having, but I need some time to look at them and decide what I’m going to do with them.

I am so glad that I’m only working half-time.  I can’t imagine how I’d feel right now if I were working full-time.  I’m worn out and stressed and trying to remember that the beginning of the school year is the hardest and it will get easier.  I have so many things to do for work and I’ve been lacking either the energy or the time to do them (or both).  It will be easier when Peter’s in school; right now Don is watching him in the mornings when I’m at work and I’m rushing home to take over so Don can go to work and try to get something done in the afternoons.  When Peter’s in school, that will give me a couple hours of quiet time in the afternoons to get my work done.  He goes to school three days next week and then starts full-time the week after that.

Homeschooling for preschool

I wrote a detailed description of my homeschooling program for my son Peter in response to someone on a parents’ group who asked for advice in homeschooling her 4-year-olds.  After I sent it, I decided to clean it up a little and post it here.

I tend to research and purchase homeschool materials on the internet.  I research items on the sites of homeschool curriculum providers, but I only use them to buy things I can’t get elsewhere.  My favorite places to buy are eBay, Better World Books, and Amazon Marketplace because I can find used materials for significantly less than new.  I also use the library a lot, including inter-library loan, for materials that I don’t feel I need to own a copy of.
 
Literacy is so fundamental in education and it’s important to give kids a solid foundation to build on.  I highly recommend that a parent who is homeschooling for preschool or primary years read Dianne McGuinness’ book Why Our Children Can’t Read And What We Can Do About It.  Even though I took courses in how to teach reading to elementary students, I learned a LOT from this book.  It has significantly influenced how I taught Peter to read, starting with NOT teaching him the names of letters.  Instead I taught him the sounds associated with letters and letter groups, because that is more important in developing reading skills and kids can be confused by learning letter names first.  He ended up learning letter names in preschool and that knowledge does occasionally interfere with his reading (like reading “hot” as “hote” because he thinks of the letter name “O” instead of the sound “ah” that it represents).
 
My preschool curriculum can be roughly divided into three areas: reading, math, and read-aloud (to expose Peter to literature, history, geography, and science, and expand on whatever topics he shows an interest in).  I started “reading lessons” when he was 3 years old, and “math lessons” when he was 3 1/2; he’s now 4 1/2.  Of course, he’s also learning from cooking, cleaning, running errands, making craft projects, playing with friends, climbing on the playground, and all sorts of other age-appropriate activities, but here I’m describing my formal educational program.  Lest you think I’m pushing him too hard, please note that we don’t spend that much time on formal education.  We do maybe 5 minutes a day of reading (and we miss days when we’re busy).  Math lessons are about 15-20 minutes long, 2-3 times a week.  Read-aloud is pretty much daily, ranging from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on Peter’s interest and what else we have going on.
 
For reading, I use The Phonics Handbook by Sue Lloyd.  It’s the core of the Jolly Phonics program, which is one of the programs that gets high marks from Diane McGuinness.  You could easily drop hundreds of dollars on Jolly Phonics materials, but I’ve only used The Phonics Handbook and I don’t think Peter’s suffering for not having the rest of the materials.  I wish I had the Jolly Readers because I’ve had a hard time finding decent simple phonics readers at a reasonable price, but I’ve made do.  One thing to be aware of is that there are two versions of The Phonics Handbook: “in print letters” and “in precursive letters” (which may also have no specific label, since it was the original version).  This is because the program is designed to teach handwriting as well as reading.  I chose “in print letters” (the more traditional manuscript style of printing) because it looks more like print letters in books.  I introduced the stories and gestures using the suggested storylines and embellishing them (the storytelling and gestures made it lots of fun for Peter to learn new sounds).  Then I would show Peter the page in the book (we didn’t color them because he’s not into coloring but I would have if he wanted to).  We would discuss the picture and he would point out the new sound in all the words on the side of the page.  I didn’t do handwriting because Peter was only 3 when I started (he’s 4 1/2 now and still not ready for it).  What I did do as quasi-handwriting instruction was write each letter really large on a sheet of white paper and have Peter trace it with his finger while saying the sound.  I made little books for each group of sounds (labelling them “Peter’s Sound Book 1″, “Peter’s Sound Book 2″, etc.) and added each sound as he learned it.  We use the little sound books or the full-page letters to review several times a week.  We played lots of phonemic awareness games, as described in Why Our Children Can’t Read.  Once he could blend sounds to make words orally (for example, I would say, “What word is s…u…n?” and he would say, “sun”), we started working on reading simple words with the flashcards.  I made magnets with the sounds he’s learned, consonants in black and vowels in red, and we play a variety of games with them.  A favorite is for me to make a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word on our magnet board.  After Peter reads it, he can change one of the sounds (a consonant for another consonant or a vowel for another vowel).  After I read the new word that he makes, I change a sound and it’s his turn again.  We purposely make nonsense words (like “nif” or “zoip”) so we can laugh at how silly they are.
 
For math, I specifically wanted to start with a program that used plenty of manipulatives and no workbook.  Saxon Math K was the only kindergarten program I found that met my criteria.  Of course, I could have developed my own, but it’s much easier to follow a prepared curriculum that has all the lesson planning done for you.  Saxon is the most popular homeschool math curriculum provider because they have straightforward, scripted lessons and lots of practice to ensure mastery.  I have experience teaching Saxon in the classroom as well and I think it’s good for some kids, but fast learners get bored with the repetition.  I started Math K when Peter was 3 1/2, two years younger than the suggested age, because he was so interested in counting and in figuring out days of the week (two major early focuses of the program).  I fully intended to stop and wait if it got to be too much for him, but the only things he couldn’t do were counting by 10’s and figuring out change with anything other than pennies (those only came up near the end of the year and I just skipped those activities–he’ll learn to do them later).  I feel that it was a solid program and the hands-on activities helped build concepts, but as we got near the end, I started skipping parts of the “math meeting” (the routine at the beginning of the lessons) because Peter was getting bored with it.  Since we finished Saxon Math K, we’re switching to Singapore Math because of its strong emphasis on building concepts and problem solving skills; we’re going to do the Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten Math program.  It might sound strange to do another kindergarten program after he’s completed one, but I don’t want to overwhelm Peter with 1st grade math intended for kids two years older than he is, and the second half of the Singapore program goes beyond what was covered in Saxon Math K.
 
Read-aloud is by far Peter’s favorite part of his educational program.  I use Sonlight Curriculum’s Core programs as a guide.  Their website is a little tricky to navigate, but it’s well worth figuring it out.  Sonlight is a Christian curriculum, but even if that’s a concern for some homeschooling parents, I would still encourage them to check it out.  It is a literature-rich curriculum; most of the books don’t have overt Christian themes but are simply good quality children’s literature.  Peter has enjoyed every book I’ve read him from their list, and I appreciate having specific age-appropriate books to look for when we go to the library.  Also, this summer, I read him a chapter a day of a relatively easy-to-understand “chapter book”.  We read The Wheel on the School (a Newbery Award winner), Little House in the Big Woods, and since it was such a big hit, Little House on the Prairie (although I skipped one chapter near the end about the Indians’ war conference, because I didn’t think it was appropriate for Peter’s level of historical understanding).  Finally, every time we go to the library, we get at least one book on something Peter has recently shown an interest in (ranging from Henry Hudson–when he was interested in Hudson’s Bay on our big wall map–to astronauts to salamanders to constructing a skyscraper).
 
I hope that my extensive research and my experience is helpful to someone who is considering homeschooling for preschool.  I would appreciate any feedback.

Learning social skills

I was very excited when a family with a 4-year-old boy (same age as Peter) and 6-year-old girl moved into our neighborhood in July.  While I still think it’s good for Peter, my enthusiasm is somewhat diminished.  They play together for hours a day, often outside, sometimes at the neighbors’ house, and sometimes at our house.  All of the children have immature social skills (as is quite normal for their ages), resulting in conflicts between them, and their overall high energy and noise can be wearying.  Don and I agree that we will be glad when school starts and they spend less time together.

One of my concerns is that the other little boy tends to hit and Peter has picked up this behavior.  He went through a brief hitting period as a toddler and then nothing until this summer; now he not only hits the other kids when he gets upset, but has been hitting Don and me.  The other boy’s mom responds to that boy’s hitting by telling him, “Peter (or whoever is the victim) is your friend.  We don’t hit our friends.”  I know she’s well-meaning, but it bugs me every time I hear her say that.  I feel like asking, “What if it’s not one of his friends?  Is it okay for him to hit then?”  My response to hitting is to say, “We don’t hit people.  Hitting hurts people.”  My response includes everyone and explains why hitting is wrong.

As much as the neighbor kids’ behavior sometimes gets on my nerves, Peter’s behavior is by no means exemplary either.  His grabbing things from other kids has provoked some of the hitting.  I know they’ll all grow out of it; I just need the patience to deal with it in the meantime.

Some vacation pictures

All of my vacation pictures from this summer got stolen last week, but I got copies of my parents’ pictures when I was at their house last weekend.  So here is a sampling of our vacation near Caseville, Michigan (at the tip of Michigan’s thumb–the beaches are on Lake Huron).

Off to a good start

Yesterday was my first day of work at my new job.  Actually, it was my first half-day of work (it went from 7:45 to 12:30).  It was a Mass for all the administrators and the new teachers in the school board (it’s a Catholic school board).  Going to Mass and being blessed is a nice way to start a new job–it’s easy to see that my new work environment will be a far cry from my previous very stressful job teaching in a charter school in inner-city Detroit.  After the Mass, we had our first NTIP session (Ontario mandates that all teachers new to the province complete a New Teacher Induction Program in their first year of teaching).  The information about the board resources was useful to me; the general hints-and-tips about the first day and week of school were not as useful, as I’ve been through it before.  The first day of school is next Tuesday, but I found out that I don’t teach on the first day–all the elementary core French teachers have a professional development meeting at the board office instead.  So my first day of teaching will be a week from today.

Peter’s teacher called to introduce herself so now we know her name.  We have an appointment to go meet her, see the classroom, and bring in his supplies a week from tomorrow.  His first day of school will be Tuesday the 15th.  He’ll go Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday that week, then start a regular Monday to Friday schedule the next week.

I expect September to be a crazy month.  I’m starting a new job, Don’s starting grad school, Peter’s starting kindergarten, Don and I are both starting PRIDE training (Don switched to the Wednesday evening class that starts on the 30th because he thinks it’ll be easier with his school schedule), and Peter’s starting floor hockey.  In October, we’ll be even busier, as we’ll add Peter’s ice hockey, but hopefully we’ll be getting into the swing of things.  In mid-November, things will settle down as my PRIDE training and Peter’s floor hockey will end, then Don will finish his PRIDE training at the end of November and we’ll be left with just Peter’s ice hockey.  I keep feeling tempted to sign up to volunteer for something at church, but I do NOT need any more commitments this fall.  I’ll wait until the end of November and then re-evaluate getting involved with something else.