Neighbors

A large part of the reason I've been too busy to post this school year is that one of my dear, dear friends moved in two houses down from me in September. She and her husband were searching for a house in Minneapolis, and, so, they've been renting on my block. They found a house, and now they're renovating. In a few weeks they'll be moving away (still within biking distance, though). So, this blog has suffered while we've had morning coffee/tea together and while I've been taking care of her daughter so that she can house hunt, and then paint, and then tile.

...and having my friend's little daughter around has provided an experience for both girls (Mane and my friend's daughter) that I hope will solidify their relationship for life. It's been an experience for Mane...learning to share space and toys and time with someone who's small and doesn't know how to share space or toys or time, to take care of another person, to know what it is to be followed around and admired and to get totally worn out with that. It's been a time for her to grow in her understanding of people and the world and how we all work together to make things "work." Mane has grown a tremendous amount in her ability to be responsible for people and things, though it's sometimes been a painful sort of growth. A few weeks ago she invited our friends to come have lunch with us after Bible Study. I approved the invitation, having no idea what I'd be making for lunch. And, then, a wonderful thing happened! MANE made lunch! Yep. She did.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. We took care of our little friend all day and I sat back and smiled...

 

Flat Stanley

We began "rowing" Flat Stanley this week. Aurora made her own "flat" people:





We're going to use the flat people as we study more geography and family history. You see our geography wizardry book in the photo, along without our newest homeschooling gadget, the Samsung Galaxy Tablet!

Mane is a strong auditory & kinesthetic learner. This is, in part, because she struggles with reading. I, in turn, have been struggling with homeschooling her because it's very time-intensive to have to read everything to her. SO, the tablet is part of the answer to easier homeschooling for us. We have Story of the World on audio. We downloaded a FREE audio Bible from Faith Comes by Hearing. And we received, as a gift, some of the Your Story Hour Bible Story CDs.

We use Math U See for our math curriculum, and we ordered the song CD that goes along with the curriculum. We didn't use it for adding and subtracting, but we are using it a LOT for multiplication. Mane can learn almost anything that's set to music!

For English grammer, Mane has been listening to The Case of the Missing Parts of Speech, which is a musical I was in as a child and is the reason I know all my parts of speech!

We check audio books out from the library all.the.time.

We use Hooked on Phonics (HOP) for a reading curriculum. This year's HOP has a CD-ROM, and Mane both hears and sees her reading lessons and activities.

All of these things have helped take some pressure off me and moved Mane toward greater independence with her learning. Except for the Hooked on Phonics, all of these things can be uploaded to the tablet, and Mane can use them independently. As she becomes more of a reader, we'll also be using the tablet's Kindle application for e-reading.

Backwards Alphabet

Contrary to what this blog might lead you to believe, we've been busy here at Peregrin House. Of note, we began using some new reading strategies to help Mane with her reading struggles! Among the exercise: Learning the alphabet backwards:



Mane made the alphabet backwards and forwards out of clay, upper and lower case, and she practiced saying the alphabet backwards for 3 days until she had it! This is to help her stop singing the alphabet and think of each letter as in individual entity. It is also to give her hands-on interaction with letters, something Mane has always needed as a kinesthetic learner.

After playing with clay for several days, Mane decided that reading lessons are a whole lot of fun! I'm hoping that decreasing the pressure surrounding reading and giving her some new "hooks to hang things on" will free her to read more easily.

Next step: Spell-Reading. Mane will be spelling words before she reads them, also in an effort to help her see letters individually and to slow down when she doesn't know a word.

I'll keep ya'll posted!