Reading goodies

Carrie at The Parenting Passageway is talking about visual challenges and reading in a two part series. I am on the edge of my seat waiting for part 2.

Renee at FIMBY has a child who was a late reader and in this week's post talks about a collaborative approach to learning (and essentially how she works with her kids until they are ready to work on their own).

From my own research on the topics of late reading, dyslexia and vision related reading problems, here are a few resources I found helpful:

http://www.childrensvision.com/index.htm

The Well Balanced Child, by Sally Goddard Blythe

Better Late Than Early, by Raymond Moore

Primary Phonics Storybooks, Sets 1-6

Reading goodies

• More wisdom from Lori Pickert this week on the value of self-directed learning. This is an area I'd like to pay more attention to myself:

I’ve seen parents mention how fun it was to pull together books and activities for their child’s interest — totally oblivious to the fact that their child could have had that fun. - See more at: http://project-based-homeschooling.com/camp-creek-blog/self-directed-learning-neglected-subject#sthash.xj3RkS04.dpuf

 "I've seen parents mention how fun it was to pull together books and activities for their child's interest--totally oblivious to the fact that their child could have had that fun."

•  A Poem a Day!? Does that not sound delicious? My friend sent me this one this week and I read it with tears running down my cheeks. I am going to spend some time reading here.
• Due to a nasty cold that struck me this week, I had to put reading aloud to my kids on hold (a serious tragedy here). My oldest two took over for me and did the nightly reading with the littles. So sweet to hear! Jack and Annie stories seem to be a good compromise: enough pictures for the littles and an interesting story for the bigs.
• And while the bigs were reading to the littles and I was miserable in my bed, I did some reading of my own: The Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. I haven't read that author since before I had my kids. Another little return to myself. 

**As a side note, the study of Rome continues into week #7! THE BEST to see a kid wanting more and more! Loving it!

I’ve seen parents mention how fun it was to pull together books and activities for their child’s interest — totally oblivious to the fact that their child could have had that fun. - See more at: http://project-based-homeschooling.com/camp-creek-blog/self-directed-learning-neglected-subject#sthash.xj3RkS04.dpuf

The cost of perfection

The house is officially on the market. And my well-lived-in house needs to look picture perfect given an hour's notice. The odds are against me. Four messer-uppers in the house and two cleaner-uppers. You can see what I'm up against.

Keeping the house completely clean all the time when there are four kids in the house is challenging. Keeping the house completely clean all the time when I want to support my kids in being active, creative and imaginative.....clean up is my full time job right now.

I know I could put them in front of the TV or the computer. It would minimize the mess. And there are desperate times when I have done this and will continue to do this (like when the realtor calls and says we have a showing in an hour and the kids are doing more fighting about who made the mess than they are cleaning up the mess).

But the rest of the time, when there are no showings scheduled but we are just mindful that at any moment we could get the one hour warning, I just want to keep living my beautiful life. So, the play dough is still out, the paints are still out, forts are still being built in my basement, dinners are still being eaten on my screened porch. And at the end of the day, the two cleaner-uppers make the rounds with the vacuum and the glass cleaner and our home will go back to looking like no one really LIVES here.

I have a renewed understanding of what it takes to keep a house so clean. It means my kids are either not around much or they are watching TV instead of building Lego cities or puzzle museums. It means that instead of reading or doing yoga at the end of my day, I'm vacuuming the kids' dinner off the screened porch floor and wiping their finger prints off the glass door. It means that instead of visiting the farm on a Sunday, I'm pulling weeds or moving gravel around the yard. It means that instead of snuggling with my husband and unwinding from the day, we are running around the house to make sure each room is clean before we crash out, exhausted.

There are times when priorities need to shift to accomplish a goal. My hope for us is that our goal will be accomplished soon and we can get back to what makes our lives rich and wonderful. Because when we are so focused on appearance, much of the substance of our lives is missing and we aren't really LIVING the way we like to.

Reading goodies

Continuing our study of Rome, my son and I read In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid by Penelope Lively. We enjoyed the presentation of the story of the fall of Troy and Aeneas' journey to Italy. The illustrations in this book are incredible!

Through our study of local history, my daughter and I discovered this artist who has been photographing and researching root cellars in the Flint Hills region of Kansas. We had the opportunity to hear him speak today. His photography is incredible and it added to my enjoyment of his artwork to hear him speak about his interest in this topic and the way he sees and thinks about the work that he's doing.

Jim Trelease was mentioned in several books that I have read lately, so I picked up The Read Aloud Handbook at my local library. Because I love, love, love reading aloud with my kids, I got very excited about this book, especially the first chapters where he describes all the reasons why it is important to read aloud to kids and all the ways kids benefit from read-aloud time. There are also many reading recommendations for kids of all ages. This book is worth owning!

In the bedside book basket this week: An Illustrated Treasury of Grimm's Fairy Tales and The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman.

Reading goodies

I was looking for main lesson book examples to share with a friend and I just happened upon this website created by two former Waldorf teachers. I found beautiful main lesson book examples, lots of verses and movement recommendations, reading recommendations, main lesson ideas and more.

Lori Pickert is one of my favorite writers and this week she posted another very inspirational article about how to encourage your kids to to be makers and doers.

I have been following the research of Peter Gray for some time. This article from several years ago about how kids learn to read is one of my favorites. Here is a new one that is a more general overview of his research.

My son's favorite cartoonist gives some wonderful advice in the form of a cartoon! I love this!!!

In my bedside book basket: The Read Aloud Handbook and KISS Guide to Yoga.

Predicting the future

My kids are often asking me to predict the future:

"When is Grandma going to get here?"
"What are we doing this week?"
"When is my friend going to call me back?"

And lately, my standard response is, "I am not very good at predicting the future. We will have to wait and see".

I would like to think there are some things I know about the future. One of the things I thought I knew about my future is where I will always live. I knew when I married my husband 13 years ago that we would always live in our hometown. I have said this hundreds of times: "If there is one thing you can count on, we will always be here". He is such a sweet son to his parents and his family has been in this community for at least five generations. My husband grew up living in the same house his whole life. In fact, we still have the same phone number he had when he was growing up! This man has ROOTS.

My life was not like that. Moving was a pretty regular part of my life. Things were often changing. At first, I wasn't so sure I would like returning to my hometown. I only knew I loved that man and I would follow him anywhere. I adjusted to the idea and we started planning our future together. We both talked about how it would be wonderful for our kids to have a home, one home to grow up in, one home to come back to. We talked about wanting our kids to know our parents, really know them. And we have been living those dreams and loving it!

I can't say for sure when things started to shift, but there have been little hints of impending change over the past year or so. Finally, in the last several months, we could no longer ignore that it was time to consider a different future.

My husband and I both have been doing some big learning and growing this summer. I know this because it has been HARD at times. We have been very attached to our good life here, so thinking about leaving took some adjustment. If I had been reading about my life in a book, I'd have been tempted to skip to the end of this chapter and find out how it was all going to work out. I often tried to predict how things would turn out, and I was wrong every time. So I eventually quit trying to predict and put my energy into patience. I learned that I have a lot to learn about patience.

My husband received an offer last week that will take us out of our little town to a big city in another state. We are excited about a new adventure for our family and sad about all we will leave behind. Whereas before, we tried to plan our "forever", now we're not looking so far ahead.

In fact, right now, we are so busy with moving that I can barely see past this day to the next. It may be quieter here for a while. If it is, you will know what's keeping me busy. But I won't try to make predictions about that, because now I know better.

Rome, Greece and a little Physics

This summer, my son and I read Rick Riordan's "Mark of Athena", the third in a series about Roman mythology. Once we finished the book, we wanted to know more about Roman mythology and history and much more about Archimedes.

My son read "Archimedes and the Door of Science" by Jeanne Bendick. This book inspired some experiments with pulleys and levers (and hours of fun moving rocks and water between kids on the ground and kids in the clubhouse using a pulley system my 6 year old daughter designed). It also led to an interest in building a catapult so we took advantage of a workshop at our library. There, my son built a mini catapult and discovered a book called, "Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction" by John Austin. He found several good projects there and even included his sisters in some of them.

We found "Roman Myths" by Geraldine McCaughrean at our library. We picked up several books on Roman mythology and this was my son's favorite. He read this one on his own and then put together a puppet show to share one of the stories with me and his younger sisters.

"City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction" by David Macaulay was a big hit with my art-loving boy who loves to know how things are put together. We also found a movie, "Rome: Engineering an Empire", created by the History Channel that also describes the building of ancient Rome. No surprise that he is now working on architectural drawings of buildings from ancient Rome.

We are about halfway through "The Bronze Bow" by Elizabeth George Speare, which contains some Roman history and some history from the time of Christ. It is well done, a book we hate to put down.

Today I picked up "Augustus Caesar's World" by Genevieve Foster from our library. I am already loving the illustrations and look forward to reading through this one myself. I imagine I will pick out bits and pieces of this one to share with my son.

Feeling very fortunate to be learning with my kids! This is some really great stuff! Love it!