Article on Education

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a 3 part series on education by Charles Murray. The last part of the series was on gifted education. I found the article very interesting. You can find it here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009541

This is a debate we have - stay in age appropriate grade level and always be so ahead that you gain confidence but you also gain elitism. Or, accelerate to the appropriate intellectual level and then... will you feel average or not be as confident in yourself? I feel that people in certain professions need to be very confident, almost arrogantly so. When D was in the Navy, pilots tended to be extremely confident/arrogant. It could be difficult to handle but for that job, they needed to believe they were the best of the best or they would die. Other jobs require that type of arrogance - surgeons, fire fighters, etc.

C had a good day at school today. He even said he had fun. Grandma took K to a pottery place.

Home again

D came home Saturday night, he left on Tuesday. The kids were so excited to see him. We had a busy time with him gone, they did a good job being home with just me. We were out Friday night for my Mom's birthday.

So, his trip went pretty well and big decisions are coming, possibly a move. I'm not sure what to do. I think it will be better for us in the long run but I am so worried about schools. I say (D says) well we can just homeschool but I guess I'm not comfortable with that. I want to give schools a chance first. I have to try or I'll regret it.

I just got interrupted to go find Spot for K. She was crying. She usually doesn't mind if she can't find him at bed time but tonight was one of those exceptions. Everything is fine now.

Such a helper

Yesterday we had dinner at a friend's house. Her daughters are 10 and 8. K loves to draw with them, they were teaching her how to draw a puppy. She loves it. (Their Dad is something of an artist so they have lots of art supplies around the house). I've been trying to do more art with her at home. K got watercolors and pastels for Christmas but we haven't had time to do them yet. I have to do them with just her so C has to be otherwise occupied, i.e. sleeping. They both love art. We finally joined the Kids Club at the local art museum and did the first tour. They loved it.

Today C and I went grocery shopping. He is so interested in grocery shopping and cooking. He loves it. Hopefully, he'll continue to have that love. He walked the entire time at the grocery and helps me pick things out. He's really a help. He likes to wash all the fruit when we get home and then he puts things away in the refrigerator. He is very opinionated and very comfortable with his opinions. He's a big help when I cook too. He likes to cut things or he'll dip the fish in the panko crumbs. I have to remember to let him help and to encourage him to love cooking. D likes to cook so maybe it comes from him.

K has a new book from school. I mentioned to the teacher the other day that she was getting tired of her schoolbook. Today she told the teacher she wanted to switch so they switched her to The Magic Tree House chapter books. I tried these with her about a year ago and she wasn't that interested. She could read them, she just wasn't that into the story line and there wasn't enough pictures. We'll see if she likes them this time around. She's not that into fantasy books so that may be part of it. She may be a little too rational. The book I had last year had them back in dinosaur time and she couldn't get over that people didn't live when the dinosaurs lived. D and I tend to not read a lot of fantasy either so maybe she gets it from us.

School

C's first week of school has been so different for me. Tuesday when I dropped them off, he refused to let me unbuckle him and cried that he didn't want to go to school. So, I went in and of course he was immediately fine and didn't even notice I was there. That day he was called on for wrestling with another little boy (he already knew him and they play together) but of course he cried. He doesn't like other people to discipline him. Today he had snack with a little 4.5 year old girl and was called on for running in the classroom. K never got in trouble. When she finally talked too much with her friend after a year in school, the teacher and I were ecstatic. She was finally comfortable enough to be talking when the teacher was talking. C must be quite comfortable already.

Since I observed class on Monday, I got a better look at K working. She really takes up a lot of the teacher's time, she's finished with her work and wants more. BUT she is always alone. It's like having a 3rd grader in the classroom. The teachers have been doing their best to work with her. They are throwing math at her, really trying to challenge her. Monday she was doing squares and cubes of numbers. She has not been interested in reading. She has not been reading that much at home, she never wants to read me her school book. I think she may find it boring, the stories are not that interesting but they are short stories with comprehension questions at the end and she really needs that. I'll have to come up with some more ideas on sparking her interest in reading again. I think we've been doing so much Math lately that we haven't had as much time for reading. We went to the library tonight and she jumps around on the types of books. She has been really into playing lately, constantly asking me if she can just play. We did Spanish and math class yesterday and then it was time for dinner and I asked her to set the table. She cried because she didn't get enough time to play. Of course when we were doing class, she kept asking me for more work.

First day of school and Kaya

Today was C's first day at Montessori school. He did so well. I was very impressed with him. He's not shy like K. I remember her first day. (I observed both of them through the mirror/glass). K just sat on the floor and waited for the teacher to notice she was finished. C goes right up to the teacher and asks questions. He really interacted with the other kids too. Of course, tonight when you say did you like school? he says No. Just like I thought he would.

Tonight was Book Club. The book was Kaya and Lone Dog. K has a Kaya like doll so she really enjoys Kaya. They had deer meat, salmon and dried cranberries. K liked deer meat. They also made medicine bags. She really enjoys this group and is slowly starting to open up to some of the girls. It usually takes her some time to open up. Now that we are not carpooling to school - Coleman switched to afternoons - she's finally comfortable carpooling and even went out to breakfast with Coleman and his Mom on the last carpool day.

Snow

We finally have some flurries today. It has been so mild this January and rainy. I like it being mild. Hopefully February won't be as black a month for me this year. We have been so busy with all these decisions and things going on. We've been reading Guiding the Gifted Child, Smart Boys, Smart Girls, Genius Denied A Nation Decieved and on and on. I was reading The Well Trained Mind too. I really liked it but I'll have to get back to that after we figure out everything else.

K spent the night with her cousin at Grandma's on Sunday because of the holiday. She was emotional when she returned. She wanted to stay longer and the crying goes on and on. I'm not sure how to help. I'm supportive and then after hours of it, I start to lose my patience. I know she is very emotional and I have to let her cry it out sometimes but it's hard when it doesn't end.

C had special time with just Mom and Dad. I think he really enjoyed it. He's such a joy. We were watching football and Dad was trying to get C interested and said "Go Bucks!". C said "Dad, the Bucs aren't playing in this game". So true.

I'm so confused about the school situation. I still have not done my resolutions for 2007.

Top Things from 2006

1 Watching K and C grow and learn. Spending time as a family.

2 Getting K tested and starting down that path of doing. Researching and learning about her special needs. Joining a support group.

3 Family reunion

4. Visited my sister and her kids 3 times this year. The cousins have a good relationship.

5 Spending time with cousins and family in the area.

6 Building a relationship with grandparents.

7 Recognizing my own issues and my own baggage from childhood.

8 Painting many rooms in the house.

9 Going to Disney World and having a great family vacation.

10 Swimming laps. K swimming on the swim team. C jumping off the board and gaining confidence.

Back on schedule

I just realized that I have not written in awhile. School started back on Wednesday. C starts school Jan 22nd. I don't think he is very excited about it though. He'll be going 3 days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. K and I have been making more of an effort to homeschool in the afternoons. We did an hour of math on Wednesday. I have the Singapore Math 1B book. I got it in December and she's 1/2 way through it. D thinks it is too easy but I think there are concepts in there that we have not covered. K is still doing lots of math at school too. She's always asking to do math. We are also working on writing a book. I need to work on my resolutions and top ten from 2006.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve was with my parents. My Grandma came over for a couple hours too. She gets anxious when she's out for a long time. We went to brunch and then opened gifts with Gigi then had dinner, finished the gifts and went to mass. We had 10 p.m. mass for midnight mass. We arrived at 9 because D was singing. He had a small solo in Ave Maria and was very nervous. The carols started at 9:30. It was a very nice service and the kids did pretty well, sitting in a pew for 2 hours since we were an hour early. Both sets of grandparents were there. The choir ended with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. It was awesome. We didn't see a Messiah this year. Most years we try to go see one and we've seen them all over the country depending on where we were living at the time. Last year we saw one in a local church. K loved it and C slept in the stroller the entire time so it worked out pretty well. We usually go see the Nutcracker every year too but that didn't happen this year. It was a scheduling issue. Last year we saw it twice, once in NYC and once in Cincinnati so we were covered for this year. After the Cincy production, K said it was good but it wasn't New York.

Christmas Day was with D's family. Everyone was in town for it. It's fun but busy. 12 adults and 15 children ages 10 to 4 months. K and C love all the playing. It seems we are always eating, feeding, cleaning up, etc. We have to eat in shifts b/c there's not enough room for everyone to eat together. All the cousins exchanged gifts and that was fun. K and C loved their gifts. K recieved Usborne I can draw people and playtime activites. She loves to draw. C received some legos.

Now we are trying to go through rooms and make a pile to give away. D had to work today.

14 years

Yesterday was our 14 year anniversary. K and C went to Grandma's and Pap's for the night. They were so excited. We all needed a break and I needed to do some shopping without them running through the store, trying to hide and scaring me. I got a lot accomplished but still feel overwhelmed. This last week is always so crazy, I don't know how to make it better.

I just reread my last post. I don't think things are as bad as I wrote. Last week the 3 year old was not in school and K had a really good week. Plus, the head teacher has been doing a great job of giving K work and asking her to work with others so she's not always with this 3 year old. I think she's doing better. Her Math work is progressing now.

C is going to start Montessori Jan 22nd. He's excited. I think he's ready for that environment and for someone to ask him to learn all his letters/sounds. He learns so differently than Kaitlin. He really has to want to learn before he will do it. Or show you that he knows it. It's hard to know what he knows. He's definitely more math oriented than K.

I have a lot to get done this morning before Grandma drops K off at school and brings C here.

Chaos

I have not been writing because things have been so chaotic here. D and I have spent a lot of time discussing all the issues with K. Today K's teacher talked to me about her behavior at school. She's been 'mothering' one of the 3 year old girls. She talks about her all the time but I guess it is getting out of control. She's doing things for her and the 3 year old cries for K when she gets frustrated. It's such an odd dynamic and so hard as a parent to know how to handle. K doesn't want to do her work, she wants to just play like the 3 year olds. Yesterday she told her teacher that she forgot her book when it was her time to do reading. The teacher said check your bag and of course it was there. She lied so she could go play. This is not K's normal behavior. We're trying to figure out what is going on and debating all kinds of options. Is she bored? Is she trying to fit in somehow or doesn't want to stand out from the other kindergarteners? She's not playing with them anymore, she's spending all her time with this 3 year old who needs her. I need a psychologist. I knew raising her would be difficult but I wasn't prepared for this type of difficulty. It's a really odd dynamic at school this year with the kindergarteners and maybe we need to pull her out. D talked about me homeschooling her starting in January. I don't know. I don't know what to do. I can't seem to write about it either.

On top of that, she's been acting/talking like a baby. When I tried to get her to tell her teacher about buying gifts for needy gifts, she wouldn't talk. She crawled around on the floor and withdrew. Of course I pushed to get her to talk and that didn't work. So, I yelled at her on the ride home about manners and answering her teacher when asked, etc. She hates when I yell but this has been going on for a couple months and I've had it. I don't know how to handle it. I think she tuned me out.

On the positive side, the son I've been ignoring drew a wonderful picture of himself tonight and did a pretty good job of writing his name.

Our Trip

We left Wednesday for Landenberg, PA. It is a 9 hour drive from here if you drive straight through. We did it in about 10/10.5 both ways. The kids did great. We picked up some new movies from the library on Wednesday and had things to do in the car. Plus, they slept. We left at 6 a.m. on Sunday so they slept a lot on the ride back.

We had Thanksgiving at my sister's - Landenberg is south west of Philadelphia. My parents came too so we had 10 of us. The kids loved getting together and playing.

On Friday we went to Philadelphia. We went on a DUK ride, through the streets and then on the Delaware river. Then, we went to the National Constitution Center. D and K spent the time together learning about the Constitution. She took the oath of office, etc. She loved it. We only spent 2 hours there. I wish we would have had more time. Of course I had the 2 3 year olds so maybe we didn't need more time.

On Saturday my sister's 8 month old daughter was baptized. My brother in law's family arrived for the event. It was fun to see everyone and we had a nice dinner. Here's a picture of K with her new cousin.


It was great getting out there and visiting family but we didn't have much of a break here at home. We got back last night and now starts the December whirlwind. I'd like more time to just relax, just the four of us.

Holiday cards

Today we worked on our holiday cards. They arrived while we were gone. Here's the picture we picked. It's not as good as some from the previous years.


K writes the address on certain envelopes and adds notes and pictures to some of the cards. It really helps for me to give her some penciled lines to keep her writing confined to the envelope area and not too big. She also sticks on the return stickers and the stamps. This is my working on her printing and writing. She LOVES pen pals and writing letters. We have so many now but not many people write back as frequently as she writes so she starts to get down about it. D has even told me to just fake a return letter but I can't do that. My sister (who has a 3 year old daughter) does a good job of sending things even if they aren't written by my neice. Otherwise we have enough "pen pals" that we should get enough mail.

The Parade

Saturday was the parade in our town. The town has an annual Christmas festival with a parade. This year K's French class had a float and she road in the float. I walked alongside and handed out candy/pencils/flyers.

Here's a picture of her in the float


It was fun. More work for me getting the float ready on Friday. But I met some of the Moms from her class. A couple of the kids have been taking French for years and they take another class on Saturdays for 2 hours.

We had a party on Saturday for the game. Good thing Ohio State won. The party went well, better than I expected. We had 9 kids and that can be overwhelming, especially when the parents are busy watching TV but they were great. K and C loved it.

Questions

Today at dinner (D was at choir practice), K started talking loud about silly things. What if there were no animals and no trees and no people. I said like when there were dinosaurs and she said No. There are no dinosaurs and no North America. And she's giggling and having fun. And, no water and no sun. And she kind of stops the silliness. Then it would be very dark all the time and there would be nothing. And then she says maybe God would be there. How old is God? 15? 4? but who made God? Was God there when it was dark? How did God get there?

I'm thinking of how to answer this and wishing D was home to handle this one. But then when I start with how old do you think God is? she starts giggling again and kind of moves on to other things. During this time C is being loud and silly too so it was easy to jump back into that.

This reminds me that on Sunday after church we stopped at the grocery and I ran in. While I was gone C told D that "maybe when you are at work, Mommy can explain to me who God is".

Why do I get all the God questions?

books/music/schedule

K is reading Samantha's Surprise now. It's an American Girl Doll Book. She's also reading 2 books on Picasso. She has been doing portraits lately and I thought they were looking like a Picasso. She loves reading about him. She made a book with a portrait of a lot of her family, us, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.. They are both reading
Tripper's Travels: An International Scrapbook
and they LOVE it. D reads them one country a night and they talk about the country, practice talking in the language, etc.. Even C loves it. This was just a grab at the library so it's a nice surprise.

They have been listening to Laurie Berkner a lot and a CD from K's religion class. It's a Childrens' Choir CD and K really loves it. They may start a childrens' choir at the music store near us and I'd love for her to try it. C loves Irish music. I got a CD at the library b/c I enjoy it and he loves it. K, not so much.

Math

We've been really working on math lately. Both at school and at home. I'm going to buy some math books for K for Christmas and I'm probably spending too much time trying to decide which ones to buy. I had her do a placement test for Singapore Math books yesterday. I had her do it on the computer and I kept hurrying her. She would write the question and practice writing her numbers rather than write the answer and move on. One whole section she messed up b/c I kept telling her to stop playing around and do the problem. It was taking so long we were running into her ballet class. Since she has learned Math in the Montessori setting, she hasn't really seen a lot of math worksheets or word problems etc. So, she made mistakes on things she knew b/c she didn't understand how they were being asked. I'm going to buy a couple workbooks and see how it goes.

Can't seem to write

I can't seem to write in here. It's been a rough couple weeks and I'm not ready to write about it yet. We did fix C's room, we had to use a primer on the areas with permanent marker and then we painted his room blue. It's OK, I don't love it yet. We'll see, I need to hang things, buy curtains, etc.

We've not been practicing piano and K seems to have lost some interest in it. I don't want to make her practice right now because we are just trying it out. We seem to be so busy that we don't have time for piano right now.

Last night was the second meeting of book club. K read Brave Emily. She did most of the reading herself, except for the letters that were written in cursive. I have not taught her to write in cursive yet. She reread it many times so she could get all the meanings. We made a time line from about 1850-2006 with birth dates and major events so she could better understand time. Of course Brave Emily is during World War II so we had lots of discussions on war. The other day I told her someone had died and she asked "did he die or did someone make him dead?" I guess that's one way of saying murder. K is so sensitive that I'm worried about talking about evil things too much. She has nightmares. Anyway, she loves book club. It's still a little advanced for her. The game was unscrambling about 15 words and then using the numbered letters to write out the answer. We haven't done too much unscrambling but these were bigger words for her; victory, courage, etc. First one done got a prize. An older girl was helping her. Next month is movie night and a book club meeting. They are reading Samantha's Surprise and watching Samantha's Holiday movie. Of course they moved movie night to Friday the 8th which is the same night as K's cousin's 6th bday party. This is one cousin where she would definitely love to go to his bday party b/c he's her age. What to do?

Halloween & A Sharpie

I just came in here to try to calm down. I put C down for nap an hour ago and then he had to go the bathroom and then he was up playing and then... I got busy with K's piano practice. Even though I could hear him in his room talking, I decided I'd go up in a minute. Well, I came up and he had crawled on top of his dresser, found the Sharpie pen I had hidden there next to a stack of hand me downs. I was marking initials on the clothes. (The pen has been there for months, he's the 7th grandson on D's side of the family and as the seasons are changing we're getting clothes from 3 cousins and passing down to a cousin.) He marked all over himself, his dresser, his walls. I'm not sure where else b/c I lost it. He started crying and I put him to bed and closed the door. I'm just not ready to deal with it. What's the proper punishment? I left the pen there. The dresser is about 4 feet high but he can climb up on it from his bed BUT he's never done that prior to today. Tonight is Halloween, should he have to stay in? That seems extreme but he knows not to draw on the walls. It's quiet in there now. The only good thing is we're planning on painting his room in the next month or so. I'm still trying to pick out colors and sheets.

Halloween starts in an hour. I'm ready for it to be over, we've had so many parties and costume wearing occasions, I'm worn out.

Ballet and Religion

Today K's ballet class did a little Halloween show. They wore their costumes to class. It was very cute. It was nice to see that they are learning since we don't get to see in the classroom very often. K loves ballet.

We've switched to these new books at school. They have short stories and then questions at the end. They are older and the stories are more historical - about Chicago, magicians, etc. It's great for comprehension practice. I think her ability to read is fine but comprehension is the next step.

On Sunday K asked about religion. Why do we go to one church and other people go to other churches - mainly cousins. I think part of it was our discussion about religion when we went to visit the Catholic school. I tried to explain about schools attached to religions and how they work. So, I had to explain about different religions. I don't feel that strongly about Catholic school. I went to 2nd grade in Catholic school and then we moved. I loved it though. It was more challenging than the public school. And I got along with more of the kids. Those are the two main things I remember. Right now I'm leaning toward home schooling or private school. I don't like the lack of accountablity you get from the public school. (not that I've had that much experience...) But with the screening, I had to call and call and call to get things done. It took 2 months to get it resolved. It reminds me of dealing with the DMV or something. It's not really what I want to do with respect to my kids' education.