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Also For Opportunity HomeSchoolers: Free Phonetics Program Download
Southern Savers .com announced that Funnix is available for free download until Feb. 16th. All materials must be downloaded by March 1st. This is normally a paid 2 year reading program. I have not used it yet (only downloading it just now myself…) but several homeschoolers (and non-homeschoolers) on the site have used it and recommended the download. Particularly, one of the other commentators, Megan, had this to say:
“I downloaded it last night and my daughter loves it. She is almost 4 and we have started teaching her to read using “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons”… the same book my mom used to teach me when I was little. I was thrilled that Funnix uses the same arrows and ‘say it fast’ tools to teach. It is a fun way to reinforce the skills she is learning in our lessons together.”
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is THE BEST program out there for teaching your child to read. It is simple for the parent to use RIGHT because the instructions are laid out simply and accompany the lesson; no 200 page book to digest with dozens of rules to remember. You read roughly 20 pages before starting the program, then skim the new lesson (2-3 pages) each day just before administering it. It is also superior in its comprehensiveness. Most programs take one approach (pure phonetics) or another (sight-reading) but few run the gambit; Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons covers phonetics, sight-reading, decoding, comprehension, visualization… If there is one flaw, it would be that it is not quite slow enough toward the middle. Your child can bog down around lesson 25-30, so try reading two halfs each session–the last half of what you read last time and the first half of the next part. This seems to cover the gap well (seen this tried with multiple readers). The other complaint would be that somewhere around lesson 50, some small formatting errors and a couple diagraph typos still exist twenty+ years after I first went through the program myself; watch for them, a few do throw your budding reader. However, since they have never reissued a new book and it’s been around for forever, it is exceedingly cheap to buy, which puts it in reach of any parent. Ours was acquired used for $3, and even new it is typically available for less than $20.
If you intend to teach your child to read at home, for homeschooling or to prepare for public school, go with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.
And if you happen to stop by here before January 16th, 2012, you might as well grab the Funnix download too. You can’t beat the price.
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An On-line Education, Now For Preschoolers
My Mom and I were talking the other day and she asked on behalf of a friend, what some child friendly sites and games are for very young children. So tonight the time to sit down and actually summarize what little I’ve come across…
My favorite online educational site for small children so far is Starfall.com. As I understand it, Starfall was designed as an online Headstart-style program aimed at teaching phonetics and basic reading skills to young children. Joshua has used it since about 18 months old and still loves it. The site ranges from the basic alphabet up to advanced letter sound combinations with videos, songs, and games reinforcing concepts. Additional concepts such as counting, sign language, shapes, and more are sprinkled throughout. Think of it as a very cartoonish, interactive Sesame Street. One of Joshua’s favorite areas is the classical Jukebox where he loves to endlessly play clips from Beethoven. Starfall has added a secondary section in the last year that branches out beyond phonetics, but except for a few samples (a math machine, bowling to add up to ten, the color red, etc.) that area requires a paid membership to access. To me, the best part about Starfall is that there are no ads or third party links anywhere that they can click out of the site through. Also, because the site is self-contained, I can lock the single site (Starfall.com) as one permitted zone in their user via Microsoft’s Family Safety software, so they cannot even randomly type their way into internet trouble. This site was a great precurser to our reading lessons in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (the best reading program out there for parents teaching their children). By the time we started reading lessons, Joshua already recognized and differentiated between all of the letters and knew many sounds, which allowed him to better focus on decoding the word (recognizing all the sounds as a whole unit with meaning) and comprehension.
Another site I enjoy is Webkinz.com. The focus is not directly educational and it targets children who are a little bit older (Joshua at an advanced computer savvy for age 4, is probably just about ready for it), but it shares the same
safety component I love about Starfall: it is a single contained site that kids can’t just click out via ads. (Edit: logged Joshua into the site today for the first time in a while. They have started adding some ads that will occasionally take you to third party sites.) While not deliberately educational, most of the games are logically challenging and most of the activities are positively stimulating for young children. You gain access to the site by buying a stuffed animal Webkinz. It comes with a code that grants one year of access (codes will not grant more than a total of one year, so don’t enter more than one at a time). The child then ‘adopts’ an electronic version of the animal and cares for it. They earn funds playing games, most of which are based off of logic puzzle classics such as Pipes, Waterfall, Minesweeper, and more. They can then spend the money to buy food for their pets, decorate the pet’s house, etc, and even purchase more games to put in their house (ex. checkers, battleships). A friend can be specifically invited to play with your child,but only if you both know each other’s username. (Edit: adding new friends has been made easier, which does post more of a risk.) There is a chat zone, but the “chat” consists of pre-filled options, rather than permitting open typing. There is a lot of room for a child to learn computer skills, practice logical thinking, learn about spending, very basic nutrition, and visual organization. Especially if a parent is willing to watch what they are doing every so often and talk about it.Brainpop.com and BrainpopJr.com (an extension of the Brainpop site) have also come to me highly recommended by several people, but I have not yet taken the time to check them out, in part because they are a paid site that was until very recently out of our budget. There is a free trial if you are interested; a paid membership is about $90 for a one year subscription.
If you have updated to Windows Vista or 7, there is another great game for kids that came on your computer. Purble Place has games some great games that, by adjusting the settings, can be either played by the youngest of children or be made challenging even for adults. Memory, a dress-up version of Mastermind, and a copy sequencing game (cake building) are all included inside. Good for basic logic skills and mousing skills.
Finally, I stumbled across a new online resource today for printed worksheets. There are dozens of sites offering these, but they vary in quality and many are virus riddled, ad-plastered, money-making operations with low quality worksheets posted to bait you on to the site. Education.com is something very different. It is a high quality site built by a group of family-oriented entrepreneurs. Because it is already backed by venture funding, it lacks the typical hyper-present ad garbage of other sites that attempt to do what this does. The site is for parents who wish to be involved in their children’s learning process and ranges from pre- pre-school to college prep. There are videos, articles, quality worksheets, and more. These range from pre-writing skills and activity building videos for working with younger children, to science fair projects and geometry worksheets for older kids (including college prep helps), to school reviews and help topics for parents such as bullying or whether homeschooling might be a good fit for your child. Joining the site is free and looks to remain that way for the near future. They appear to make their money via affiliate links and selling premium workbooks for people who do not care to hand select and print all materials onto loose sheets at home.
There you have it. Off the top of my head, these are some great resources for those opportunity-schooling homeschoolers among you.
Do you have a site you love that I don’t know about yet? Please share YOUR recommendations!
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Moving is Crazy, But Also Pretty Much Finished
So we’ve moved. We signed our lease January 14th. January 17th, Mother dear generously watched the kids while Dear Husband, his brother, and I packed the moving truck. Then they went their respective directions (work and home) and I drove the truck to our new place.
We would have gone with Penske (better condition trucks, better prices), but they only had 10 foot trucks. So we went with U-Haul… who only had 10 and 26 footers. Apparently everyone around here decided to move this January. So I ended with a 26 foot moving van, the largest thing you can drive without a commercial drivers license. Once I got over the initial nervous adrenaline rush, it wasn’t much different from driving a street sweeper on the military base I worked at during my High School summers. Except I was going 70 MPH with other vehicles, rather than 5 MPH through empty parking lots. The thing shook so much that the side view mirrors made the headlights of every car behind me look like flashing lights. Hopefully, I won’t have to drive one of those again anytime soon.
The stuff and I all arrived safely, if after dark. Couldn’t find a flashlight, so was stuck digging out the essentials using my cell phone to peer through the gloom. Note to people moving in the near future: hold out a few essentials when you pack the truck–I had clothes put aside, but forgot about dinner and a place to sleep. About 20 minutes of rummaging turned up enough sleeping bags, couch cushions, and bedding to make a reasonable mattress, the microwave, and even a mug and hot cocoa.
The next day, we moved everything in with help from a few local church members then returned to Mom’s and picked up the kids. Then the 19th was spent unpacking most of the boxes. Anna and Joshua enjoyed getting into the spirit of that, and have helped (for better/for worse) hold me to my goal of unpacking at least 2 boxes each day since. We’re now down to the books (which need bookshelves first), office supplies (which had just been stacked at our last place, anyway), tools (which are waiting for a shed to move in to), and decorative stuff waiting to be hung.
I was going to do decorating Monday. Instead, the handyman showed up to install a replacement for the sliding glass door the landlady had order a week or two before we moved in. So I spent the day keeping the kids out of his way while DH helped him remove the old one and put in the new. But there were several problems because the old door was installed improperly, so it took all day, instead of just a few hours. He scheduled to show up the next morning and finish the job. I did have time to start on the decorating, getting a curtain rod up and adjusting the position of the shower curtain (so it would no longer attack when the shower was turned on), but was cut short when Anna pulled out a bottle of bright red, quick drying nail polish, tried to opened it, and end up spilling it across the bathroom. I was able to finish getting it all up, after the kids were in bed. Thus, the day ended.
Since dishes and laundry had piled up, I planned to do those Tuesday, in the morning, then go grocery shopping before DH had work. I woke up nice and early to make breakfast… and opened the small freezer to discover it had thawed overnight. Everything was still refrigerator temperature. So I spent the day processing thawed fruits and raw meat, while the handyman struggled through new problems to finished squaring the new french doors and replace the brick trim he’d had to chisel out the day before to get the door in. Our landlady (bless her soul), went out and replaced the fridge that day; the appliance delivery men brought it about dinner time, just an hour or two after the handyman finished his doors.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I was finally able to get to the mountains of dishes and laundry. Pretty much everything was dirty, so it took the whole day. Joshua and Anna now have an enormous bag of socks they can match to earn pennies, but the rest of it is put away. As I spoke on the phone with my brother, just before bed, I heard a strange sound in the kitchen and went to investigate. The light was swinging around and as I reached up to steady it, I wondered if it might have anything to do with the sounds Hubby thought he’d heard in the wall the night before; perhaps a rat in the ceiling set the light swinging. Then I realized the light shouldn’t be able to swing: it’s ceiling mounted. The screws had come loose from the drywall and the (improperly mounted) light had come totally out from the wall, left swinging by its wires. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it, except remove the heavy glass light cover (so it wouldn’t come totally crashing down), then crawled into bed. Dear Husband re-installed it properly this morning after breakfast.
I finally made it out the door to go grocery shopping today, making it back just in time for DH to leave for work. I’m not exactly sure what I did after that. At one point, I found myself staring off into space while random thoughts rolled around in my head, coming out of it to realize that Anna had been trying for several minutes to get my attention. Not sure how long that had lasted… Zoned out again later, holding Anna, only to realize finally some unknown period of time later that she was sleep and Joshua had gone and put himself to bed.
It’s been crazy. We’ve worked hard, all of us. We’ve tried to play hard, too; taking a little time to meet the neighbor kids and get out to enjoy the yard (We do have a yard now!). We’ve made it to church and a Primary activity. We’ve unpacked way too many boxes. But the laundry is done, the dishes are (mostly) clean, and there are no more sealed boxes. Perhaps tomorrow we will finally be ‘settled in’, able to breath again.
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Bunny-ana and Other Cleverness
Anna is becoming quite quotable in her own right.
During our Christmas visit, in a silly mood, she teased Grandpa by renaming a banana (her very favorite food) a bunny-ana. She was tickled pink both at her cleverness and the amusement it generated. She bounded around the kitchen for a while after, repeating “bunny-ana” over and over. She was also delighted when Grandpa teased her and called her Bunny-Anna. She actually seemed to understand the pun.
The funniest part came about an hour later when she declared she was hungry again. Do you want a banana? She seemed puzzled, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what I meant. After asking a couple of times and getting nothing but confused looks, I figured it out. Do you want a bunny-ana? Recognition lit her face and she accepted eagerly.
Funny kid.She also generated some amusement at church. She ran up to one of the women there. The woman looked down, smiled, and told her, “Oh, you are so cute.”
In response, Anna stomped her foot and declared, “I am NOT cute. I’m BEAUTIFUL!”A short memory span for names also seems to have passed from me on to Joshua. We made tapioca in the slow cooker one morning. Joshua loved the stuff and found the name humorously silly. He keep repeating “tap-E-yoga” to himself while playing, after his snack. But it didn’t last. In a later request, it became ‘tacky-yoka’, later shortened to ‘tacky’, then to ‘my yoga’. That night, in amused curiosity, I asked him again what it was called. “Tammy.”
His misnomers also apply quite amusingly to animals. He has just about matched Anna’s ‘heavybottomus’ with his own recent creation: the buffalump.
Sometimes the renaming is not an accident. Anna, catching on to the spirit of the excited crowd during BYU’s Armed Forces Bowl game, came up with her own cheer. “B-I-E-I-U!” To the tune of “Old McDonald”, of course. Daddy has tried to fix it, but she’s deliberately and delightedly stuck on saying (or rather, singing) it her own way. The name of the college now evokes instant song “B-I-E-I-U”.
You have to watch out for clever kids though. Anna didn’t want to go down one recent night. I put her back in bed and told her, you need to stay here and go to sleep. Please, don’t get up again.
She stayed in bed for several minutes. Then I heard the bump and patter of little feet, then a little voice quietly repeating something. On the way up the stairs, I managed to make out what she was saying: “Princess walking. Princess walking.” I turned the corner of the landing and found her, bending over to carefully walk her new princess doll carefully down the hallway. Anna gave an oh-no-I’m-caught gasp. Thinking fast, sh pointed to her doll and declared “Princess got out of bed!” Then gave a grin, obviously certain she was absolved.
She returned to and finally stayed in bed after being informed that both she and Princess needed to go to sleep and I would give either of them a time-out for getting up again. -
They Learn Fast
Even more kidlum quotables.
Joshua has been asking why things are the way there are. For example, our neighborhood has a highly mixed ethnic background. So he has asked a few times why his friends are brown, eye color, etc.
Recently, Joshua was playing with his tow truck and said something about it’s tail (the tow cable). Since he has lately shown interest in figuring out the purpose of things, I asked him, why does it have a tail.
He answered in a gruff voice for the truck, “Because mine Daddy does.”Most of the milk we buy is for the kids and the kind that meets their dietary needs generally comes in half gallons. A few days after a trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s (DH’s side), Joshua saw me pull a full-sized gallon of milk from the freezer. “Whoa, that’s a big milk!” Then he stopped, thought a moment, and rephrases in a I’m-pretending-to-be-something-else voice. “My, what a big milk you have, dear.”
It seems Grandma must had read Little Red Riding Hood during our previous visit…Our tired little boy plopped himself on the bed, then bounced around some, trying to resist his body’s urge to nap. I asked, you’re tired, aren’t you? He buried his head in the pillow and giggled, then pretended to sleep. A moment later he perked up, obviously having had an idea. He pretended to snore briefly, then whipped his head up and looked around. Evidently, he didn’t find what he was looking for, so he tried again. He looked all over, then declared in a frustrated tone, “Arg. I can’t make Z’s.”
Joshua seems to believe that Mommy has an extra-sensory capability for detecting diapers in need of change and bed-wetting. He has determined it resides in the nose. He has begun to try and claim it for himself. “Mommy, my nose says I’m hungry.” “There is lint in my toes. I can smell it.”
My absolute favorite so far came shortly after an episode of Blue’s Clues: “I smell mail in the mailbox!” -
They Spoil Us Rotten
More quotables, today.
Joshua brings a little snow cap with earmuffs from the dress-up stuff, “Mommy, help me put on my hunting hat for me.”
For what?
“I’m going hunting for chocolate to you.”
We put on his hat and he races off delightedly. A few moments later, he returns with a bag of chocolate kisses I’d had stashed in the fridge. He is obviously tickled pink.Dear Husband often speaks of spoiling me rotten. Both the kids have picked up on it. Now, it has become the daily desire of both to spoil rotten every member of the family. “Anna, I spoil you rotten.” “I’m spoil Joshua ROTTEN.” Which is good, especially since it has transformed the “sorry, this has milk” declaration into a positive opportunity. For example, DH brought home cookies this last week…
Joshua sees. His gasp of delighted anticipation brings Anna running. Joshua asks, “Does that have milk in it?” Yes, I’m sorry, it does. “Oh.” *Disappointment* Then he lights back up. “Does it have food coloring?” No, it doesn’t. “Then you can have it! Can I give you one?” Then, after he does, in tones of absolute adoration, “I spoil you rotten, Mommy.” Then, ”I’m going to spoil Daddy rotten!” Anna, who delightedly insisted on giving a second cookie to Mommy, also squeals “Let’s spoil Daddy!” They race off to find him, each waving a cookie they won’t eat.
I think giving the treats away pleases them even more than eating it themselves. Perhaps that explains why they suddenly resumed Trick-or-treating all over the house shortly before Christmas. Only this time, they are usually the ones treating.Both of the kids have also picked up on the nicknames that pass between DH and I. They have now taken to calling us and each other “dearie” and “darling” on a regular basis. Joshua particularly delights when he is called such in return.
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Recommend: Don’t Carpe Diem
The honestly, clarity, humor and downright style of this article caught me. It’s worth a few minutes of your time. Especially if you are having a bad day. Especially if you are having a good day. It’s absolute Mommy-gold.
My favorite part:
“Anyway. Clearly, Carpe Diem doesn’t work for me. I can’t even carpe fifteen minutes in a row, so a whole diem is out of the question.
Here’s what does work for me:”Warm, real, solid. Read it.
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Sweet Christmas Moments
A package arrived a few days before Christmas. Confusingly, it was addressed with my maiden name. I thought maybe it was something else we were expecting. So, silly me, I opened it. Inside was a toaster. Oops; this should have gone under the tree.
Joshua peeked over my shoulder, “What is it? What is it? *Gasp* A toaster?” Anna looks unsure about what that is. Joshua continues to exult, “I love toasters! I love to make toast.” Then he starts singing and dancing around the room, “We’ve got a toaster! We’ve got a toaster!” Anna catches the spirit. Her tune and dance are inspired by “Once There Was a Snowman”. “We have a toaster. Small, small, small. We have a toaster. Small, small, small…”
During pretend play for the next few weeks, any stuffed animal Joshua imagined anticipating Christmas was either gifting or getting a toaster.
Overall, the toaster ranked as a close second to the #1 favorite gift: a train set. Thanks, Paul.
Joshua received a pair of sunglasses in his stocking. The initial thrill cooled when he discovered they were a tad small for his large head. He took them off and looked sadly at them, sitting in his hand. Then he noticed Anna taking an interest. He immediately offered them to her and took delight when they fit her perfectly. She danced around for him, to show how happy she was, frequently posing dramatically. After, she offered to share her new chapstick. Both were left quite happy.
Joshua, after emptying his stocking, looks at me and declares quietly overjoyed, “Oh Mommy, I got everything I wanted.” Not all he had written to Santa for, but from the bottom of his heart, his gratitude welled up and made it everything to him.
In that quiet moment, I got everything I wanted, too.
Later that afternoon, he sat down and drew a letter and a thank you picture for Santa. He presented the letter to me a while later for mailing, along with picture, carefully wrapped up as a gift.After Daddy put up our tree the week before Christmas, Anna stood staring at it completely mesmerized. After fifteen or twenty minutes of her standing there, someone called her away, but she kept coming back, just to stare at it. Finally, I brought down a blanket and she fell asleep watching the colored lights. She spent well over three hours of quiet awe watching the tree. Several times in the couple of weeks we had it up, she tucked herself in the corner behind it. It left me remembering when I had done the same as a small child.
The day before we took the tree down, I came into the room and heard giggles and talking, but couldn’t see the kids. Where are you? “Here, Mommy.” “Behind the tree.” They had tucked themselves into the corner for a cozy snack together. “Come join us.” I almost told them, I’m too big. But they looked up, the colored lights glinting off of their eyes and coloring the grinning faces of my adoring children. How could I be too big for this? I lay my head under the tree and we finished the snack together. -
Bragging Rights
Okay, so for the first time ever, I actually made New Year’s resolutions last year. The first (exercise) ended up being fluff because I didn’t make it specific or measurable (a S.M.A.R.T goal).
But the other (I’m rather proud to declare) I did keep for the entire year. I resolved to use my breadmaker more often by making a daily loaf. Since a loaf is generally gobbled up by lunch time, I figured that would work great. I did have to modify the goal slightly after the second week when bread ceased to disappear quiet as rapidly. It went down to a loaf as needed, but at least once a week.
Success! We went through an entire 2 pound packet of yeast in one year. And nobody is sick of homemade bread yet.
The downside is that the START button on my bread-maker is now beginning to wear out. Arg.
Dear Husband and I also made a list of goals during the middle of the year that we did pretty well on. I’m excited to see what’s next.
This New Year, (yes, I know my resolution is late) I’m back to exercise. Wish me luck.
Gotta go start a loaf of bread now.
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Our Crazy Life
Other people have much crazier, busier lives, I know. But my personal juggling capacity has been maxed over the last month or so. Which is why there have been no updates. But the good news comes in two parts: 1) much of the craziness has come from positive sources (Eg. Christmas, new job and new part time telecommute job–both Dear Husband’s–, and now a move in the works to eliminate the four hour round-trip daily work drive); 2) I have been collecting the best of those kiddie moments as they happened, so you didn’t miss out on the really good stuff. A little project therapy was in order for myself during the season (besides, Anna had outgrown all her current dresses) and Joshua has persisted in illustrating his stories, so there should be some fun projects (complete with visuals and instructions, in most cases) and story posts also coming. Joshua has not completed all his illustrating yet and is still enthusiastically plugging away at it, even today–the continuing updates are part of the reason the electronic release has been delayed. Since he is still working at it, and has even added additional story dictations, I surrender my original intent to release it in one whole publication. Instead, we will be releasing one or three at a time. Eventually… It will happen!
Family and friends, you have been in our hearts and minds. Even if I didn’t send Christmas cards… I know, I’m terrible about these things.
There’s the family update. (Since they are sporadic, feel free to subscribe to the blog. It’s an easy way to be alerted when something is posted, rather than having to check the site every month or so to see if I’ve done anything else.)
Fun stuff coming later this week. Kiddie quotes and such.
It really is coming; I’m cheating and setting up auto-posts to cover our moving-period.
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Recent Posts
- Also For Opportunity HomeSchoolers: Free Phonetics Program Download
- An On-line Education, Now For Preschoolers
- Moving is Crazy, But Also Pretty Much Finished
- Bunny-ana and Other Cleverness
- They Learn Fast
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