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Jan. 10th, 2007 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mommydamaI need to do a good, long update post about the girls. They do and say wonderful things everyday and I'm missing them. I don't know if I have time to do it right now, but I could at least get started.
Maria recently went through a reading strike. She was loving reading, it was her favorite part of our school day when I would sit down with her and let her read to me. But suddenly out of nowhere, she seriously balked. She looked like I was about to torture her when I'd ask her to read to me and started getting teary eyed in the middle of it. I don't know what happened. It lasted about a month and I was about to despair and get really frustrated with her so I totally backed off and didn't even mention reading for our entire Christmas vacation. When we got home, I showed her the little phonics books that came with the Calvert stuff. They are insanely simple and totally phonetic. We haven't gotten to them in the curriculum, but I wanted her to be aware they were there. She looked through one, experimentally reading the first page...and kept going. She hasn't hesitated to read to me since that moment. She reads them TO HERSELF! She loves those little books and I think they are restoring her confidence. The are simple and she doesn't have to struggle with unfamiliar "rules" and exceptions to the rules. I don't know if that is good or bad, as I don't really feel that she is learning anything new by reading them over and over, but it is definately restoring her confidence and drilling the rules she knows...maybe I was just pushing too hard too fast. She is very self motivated if I let her be, but I'm very much NOT self motivated, so I keep thinking I have to urge her along with praise. That, I'm discovering, may actually be harmful to her personality. A smile and just time spent with her is all she really seems to want and exuberant praise seems to make her pull into herself. It seems to derail her own internal motivation if I say too much or push at all. These things are so hard to knock into my thick skull.
Mari is also seeming to make a lot of progress in dance lessons. I think she has become a lot more graceful in general in just the few months she has been going. That could be a coincidence with some developmental stage, but I really think dance is just forcing her to be aware of her body parts and what they are doing in a way she was not at all aware before this. She used to just fling herself around all over the place, the most destructive person in the house, breaking things right and left and hurting herself constantly. It was not clumsiness, in the way I am clumsy. It was...being so "into" whatever she was doing that she had absolutely NO awareness of what her arms and legs were doing or where she was in the room. Funny how a simple kindergarten dance class could help with that so much.
She still needs some friends. I'm not doing a very good job of making that happen. She is six now and needs more socializing. She enjoyed her cousin Bennett so much. They had so much fun, running and shrieking and laughing. I have no idea what they actually did. I've noticed in the past that Mari seems to gravitate toward kids that are younger than she is, more her sister's age. The girls Mari's age out there are really getting into Barbie and Brats and I've sheltered Mari pretty heavily from that stuff, so I worry that she is a little "weird". It is a good weird and I plan to keep it that way, but it makes finding friends for her a little more difficult. She is very much the "princess" of the house and plays dress up with total abandon. The more sparkly and froufrou, the better.
Her hair is ridiculously long.
************
Zoe has grown up so much this past year it is a little scary. She is tall and thin and her face looks so much more mature all of a sudden. She is still my little theologian and asks me all the hardest questions. Yesterday, on the way home from the doctor's office, she asked me "Mom, is Jesus up there?", pointing to the sky. That was the opening to a semi-long conversation about the nature of heaven and where God "lives" and how Jesus could possibly live inside us. Somehow we got on the topic of how we get to live in heaven. My answer hinged on loving and obeying God. So she asked me "Do you ALWAYS obey God?"
Me: Oh goodness. No. I wish I did, but I don't.
Zoe: Why not?
Me: Well, ummmm...because...ummmm
Zoe: Oh look, there's a kitty.
This is how conversations with her often go. And I feel intensely grateful to the cats, birds, and bugs out there that take the pressure off of me!
She is still showing some interest in learning to read, but not liking the more systematic approach to phonics I used with Mari. I'm not sure how to hold her interest. She gets really upset that Mari can read and she can't, but doesn't want to put in the concentration and effort it takes to do it. She is like that with a lot of stuff. She refuses to do puzzles of any kind because of this principle, but gets really angry that "Mari can do it!" This is a personality trait I recognize in myself. I'm a "give up-er", so I get this and I'm afraid I let it bother me too much. I don't want her to give up. But, on the subjects that interest her (nature in general, automobiles of various sorts, fantasy) she can be very devoted and single minded. I just have to figure out how to channel those interests. Beginning readers about dinosours, perhaps?
Zoe is 44 inches tall and 42 1/2lbs (I don't think she was standing up very straight though). Mari measures 44 inches tall and weighs 44lbs. Heh. They crack me up with the see-saw effect of their heads. One is slightly taller one week and then the other catches up and surpases. No wonder people still ask me if they are twins. I think it is still a weird question, but when they are dressed alike or coordinating and are almost the same height and weight, I'm sure it is a little confusing.
***********
Luci. Ah..Luci. She is such a funny little bird. Lulu as she is increasingly being called around here. Her self control in the last few months, compared to the past, is nothing short of phenomenal. We did change a lot of things in the way we handled her tantrums, but I think some of it has to do with maturity. She tries so hard. I can tell she is struggling with anger in a lot of situations though. She has become much more verbal about it, so I'm learing some stategies to cope with the name calling, spitting, and "NO! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!"s. We'll get there. She has started getting too physical with her anger too, hitting her sisters a lot. Working on that one pretty hard.
She is so smart. So smart it is a little scary. As Brad says, she stays one step ahead of you all the time. She is smarter than me, by a long shot. I can't out-think her, ever. I have to just "be a wall" sometimes. This strategy which works really well for me, unfortunately baffles Brad. I don't think daddy's get the "ignore and conquer" strategy. I think, lately, I worry more about homeschooling her than either of the other girls. I hope I can offer her enough to keep that ragingly busy brain involved. If you sit down and teach the child something, she gets it within minutes and doesn't forget. I guess I should start teaching her to read. I think she knows more phonics already than Zoe does....
I love to cuddle that child. Zoe and Mari cuddle too. We all love cuddling, but Zoe and Mari are getting so big. They don't feel like babies in my arms anymore. Luci still feels like a baby. She curls into a ball and burrows into me and is so soft and fragile. Her legs are getting longer by the second though and this won't last long. My elf baby is disappearing before my eyes. She loves to announce to any passing stranger "Hey, I'm four!" This thrills her somehow. She is still the only one of the girls to play with baby dolls much. She will spend hours caring for her dolls and playing games with stuffed animals. I love to stand outside the door where she can't see me and listen to her scold and comfort and hear my own words repeated to her babies and animals (good and bad!)
She is doing really well in preschool, by all reports. I'm getting the subtle impression that she is a "favorite" of one of her teachers. This teacher told me she dreamed that Luci was moving and left the class and she, the teacher, was devastated about it. And she always tells me Luci is "just so funny and sweet." So far no real behavior problems, except the one time she had to "sit Luci down to get herself together", as the teacher put it, because Luci refused to clean up her toys and join the group when she was supposed to do so. Could just be Luci's teacher sharing things with me, but I still get the impression that Luci is kind of "special" to her. I hope I'm not just being a "pround mommy" and it is a subtle thing, but not surprising. I KNOW from my experiences in daycare, preschools, and nannying, that a child like Luci would have been one of my "favorites". A little mischeivous pixie. She is a suprise comedian, she has the greatest sense of humor and great timing, and she is sweet and soft at the same time. An introverted, female version of Dennis the Menace. Or maybe, and her daddy thinks more appropriately, Curious George. What's NOT to love?
Whew. That was long. I think I'll stop now.
Maria recently went through a reading strike. She was loving reading, it was her favorite part of our school day when I would sit down with her and let her read to me. But suddenly out of nowhere, she seriously balked. She looked like I was about to torture her when I'd ask her to read to me and started getting teary eyed in the middle of it. I don't know what happened. It lasted about a month and I was about to despair and get really frustrated with her so I totally backed off and didn't even mention reading for our entire Christmas vacation. When we got home, I showed her the little phonics books that came with the Calvert stuff. They are insanely simple and totally phonetic. We haven't gotten to them in the curriculum, but I wanted her to be aware they were there. She looked through one, experimentally reading the first page...and kept going. She hasn't hesitated to read to me since that moment. She reads them TO HERSELF! She loves those little books and I think they are restoring her confidence. The are simple and she doesn't have to struggle with unfamiliar "rules" and exceptions to the rules. I don't know if that is good or bad, as I don't really feel that she is learning anything new by reading them over and over, but it is definately restoring her confidence and drilling the rules she knows...maybe I was just pushing too hard too fast. She is very self motivated if I let her be, but I'm very much NOT self motivated, so I keep thinking I have to urge her along with praise. That, I'm discovering, may actually be harmful to her personality. A smile and just time spent with her is all she really seems to want and exuberant praise seems to make her pull into herself. It seems to derail her own internal motivation if I say too much or push at all. These things are so hard to knock into my thick skull.
Mari is also seeming to make a lot of progress in dance lessons. I think she has become a lot more graceful in general in just the few months she has been going. That could be a coincidence with some developmental stage, but I really think dance is just forcing her to be aware of her body parts and what they are doing in a way she was not at all aware before this. She used to just fling herself around all over the place, the most destructive person in the house, breaking things right and left and hurting herself constantly. It was not clumsiness, in the way I am clumsy. It was...being so "into" whatever she was doing that she had absolutely NO awareness of what her arms and legs were doing or where she was in the room. Funny how a simple kindergarten dance class could help with that so much.
She still needs some friends. I'm not doing a very good job of making that happen. She is six now and needs more socializing. She enjoyed her cousin Bennett so much. They had so much fun, running and shrieking and laughing. I have no idea what they actually did. I've noticed in the past that Mari seems to gravitate toward kids that are younger than she is, more her sister's age. The girls Mari's age out there are really getting into Barbie and Brats and I've sheltered Mari pretty heavily from that stuff, so I worry that she is a little "weird". It is a good weird and I plan to keep it that way, but it makes finding friends for her a little more difficult. She is very much the "princess" of the house and plays dress up with total abandon. The more sparkly and froufrou, the better.
Her hair is ridiculously long.
************
Zoe has grown up so much this past year it is a little scary. She is tall and thin and her face looks so much more mature all of a sudden. She is still my little theologian and asks me all the hardest questions. Yesterday, on the way home from the doctor's office, she asked me "Mom, is Jesus up there?", pointing to the sky. That was the opening to a semi-long conversation about the nature of heaven and where God "lives" and how Jesus could possibly live inside us. Somehow we got on the topic of how we get to live in heaven. My answer hinged on loving and obeying God. So she asked me "Do you ALWAYS obey God?"
Me: Oh goodness. No. I wish I did, but I don't.
Zoe: Why not?
Me: Well, ummmm...because...ummmm
Zoe: Oh look, there's a kitty.
This is how conversations with her often go. And I feel intensely grateful to the cats, birds, and bugs out there that take the pressure off of me!
She is still showing some interest in learning to read, but not liking the more systematic approach to phonics I used with Mari. I'm not sure how to hold her interest. She gets really upset that Mari can read and she can't, but doesn't want to put in the concentration and effort it takes to do it. She is like that with a lot of stuff. She refuses to do puzzles of any kind because of this principle, but gets really angry that "Mari can do it!" This is a personality trait I recognize in myself. I'm a "give up-er", so I get this and I'm afraid I let it bother me too much. I don't want her to give up. But, on the subjects that interest her (nature in general, automobiles of various sorts, fantasy) she can be very devoted and single minded. I just have to figure out how to channel those interests. Beginning readers about dinosours, perhaps?
Zoe is 44 inches tall and 42 1/2lbs (I don't think she was standing up very straight though). Mari measures 44 inches tall and weighs 44lbs. Heh. They crack me up with the see-saw effect of their heads. One is slightly taller one week and then the other catches up and surpases. No wonder people still ask me if they are twins. I think it is still a weird question, but when they are dressed alike or coordinating and are almost the same height and weight, I'm sure it is a little confusing.
***********
Luci. Ah..Luci. She is such a funny little bird. Lulu as she is increasingly being called around here. Her self control in the last few months, compared to the past, is nothing short of phenomenal. We did change a lot of things in the way we handled her tantrums, but I think some of it has to do with maturity. She tries so hard. I can tell she is struggling with anger in a lot of situations though. She has become much more verbal about it, so I'm learing some stategies to cope with the name calling, spitting, and "NO! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!"s. We'll get there. She has started getting too physical with her anger too, hitting her sisters a lot. Working on that one pretty hard.
She is so smart. So smart it is a little scary. As Brad says, she stays one step ahead of you all the time. She is smarter than me, by a long shot. I can't out-think her, ever. I have to just "be a wall" sometimes. This strategy which works really well for me, unfortunately baffles Brad. I don't think daddy's get the "ignore and conquer" strategy. I think, lately, I worry more about homeschooling her than either of the other girls. I hope I can offer her enough to keep that ragingly busy brain involved. If you sit down and teach the child something, she gets it within minutes and doesn't forget. I guess I should start teaching her to read. I think she knows more phonics already than Zoe does....
I love to cuddle that child. Zoe and Mari cuddle too. We all love cuddling, but Zoe and Mari are getting so big. They don't feel like babies in my arms anymore. Luci still feels like a baby. She curls into a ball and burrows into me and is so soft and fragile. Her legs are getting longer by the second though and this won't last long. My elf baby is disappearing before my eyes. She loves to announce to any passing stranger "Hey, I'm four!" This thrills her somehow. She is still the only one of the girls to play with baby dolls much. She will spend hours caring for her dolls and playing games with stuffed animals. I love to stand outside the door where she can't see me and listen to her scold and comfort and hear my own words repeated to her babies and animals (good and bad!)
She is doing really well in preschool, by all reports. I'm getting the subtle impression that she is a "favorite" of one of her teachers. This teacher told me she dreamed that Luci was moving and left the class and she, the teacher, was devastated about it. And she always tells me Luci is "just so funny and sweet." So far no real behavior problems, except the one time she had to "sit Luci down to get herself together", as the teacher put it, because Luci refused to clean up her toys and join the group when she was supposed to do so. Could just be Luci's teacher sharing things with me, but I still get the impression that Luci is kind of "special" to her. I hope I'm not just being a "pround mommy" and it is a subtle thing, but not surprising. I KNOW from my experiences in daycare, preschools, and nannying, that a child like Luci would have been one of my "favorites". A little mischeivous pixie. She is a suprise comedian, she has the greatest sense of humor and great timing, and she is sweet and soft at the same time. An introverted, female version of Dennis the Menace. Or maybe, and her daddy thinks more appropriately, Curious George. What's NOT to love?
Whew. That was long. I think I'll stop now.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 04:23 pm (UTC)I always wish I had the stamina and resourcefulness to make whole unit study based curriculums off of childrens' interests. Like with Zoe, you could teach history in a fantasy, storybook way, you could do math through automobiles (maybe science too), this and that. I never seem to actually manage to DO those things, though. I know you can teach every subject through learning about Ancient Egypt, but... There ARE some interest-based unit studies you can find online, though, if you search. I found a great airplane-based one awhile back that I plan to use with Aaron at some point.
The funny thing about Luci is I think she'll be alright, regardless of what you do, if that makes any sense. Likewise I often think how though Ananda would be too far ahead and often bored, and Aaron could never keep up in that environment...I'll bet Isaac could cut it just fine in public school. He goes a mile a minute too, mentally, and I'm really not sure how to school him either. He's already asking me for sit down work regularly, and he's not even 3 yet!
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Date: 2007-01-10 05:14 pm (UTC)