Cursive Handwriting

It seems a lot of schools are doing away with cursive handwriting. I don't understand why that is. Okay, I do; they think that it's a dinosaur now that we use computers and type everything from our research papers to our social interactions. But there are benefits to learning cursive handwriting, and I believe it's still a good skill to have.

Miss Reezle has some beautiful handwriting, doesn't she? Little G has been practicing a little with some worksheets I've found for him online, and will be learning more this year as a 1st/2nd grader. I remember being in my early elementary years, seeing the cursive letters and feeling like it was some special thing that only the older, cooler kids got to do. Being able to write cursive was like being in an exclusive club or something. Heh. I think my kids feel the same way, and it's fun how being a mom brings back all of those memories from my own childhood.

You and Me Time

Last night, just before bedtime, Little G wrote me a note on his drawing board.


He was a bit bothered by the fact that his sister gets to stay up a little later than he does, and that it means we don't get a lot of time where it's just him and me. It's interesting how his personality changes at those moments; he becomes so talkative and just loves to share his ideas and thoughts with me.

Obviously, I couldn't resist his request, and we talked a little last night and again tonight before bedtime. He was adorable, mostly sharing his excitement about K12 and his new workbooks. "I want to do homeschool until I go to college," he said. He also told me he can hardly wait until summer is over because he's looking forward to the fall weather and working in his workbooks every day. While I won't go so far as to wish away the summer, I'm excited about this fall, too.

To Easter B From Little G

Little G handed me a card this morning and said, "Mom, please send this to the Easter Bunny. It's late, but I still need to send it." I agreed. The card is hilarious, and says the following:

Happy Easter Card! Made 5/27. Ready, set, go, AND READ!
From: G. To: Easter B.

Dear Easter Bunny,
I am gonna point some things on this card. 3 is that Meow Meow Day Care picture. [He makes daycares and schools for cats all the time.] Thank you very much for the Reese's peanut butter eggs and Dewey [his new cat] and dresses [for Dewey] and the jelly beans. They were so good that I could explode! Yum yum in my tum tum. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I love singing a little song I made up all by myself. It is a sign of yumminess.

Love you a lot and enjoy your card.

Love,
G

Potentials

My son taught me how to quickly calculate larger numbers in my head.

He was 5 when he taught me this trick.

It was 38 + 42 that brought us to this epiphany. He spat the answer out in seconds. I asked, G, how did you do that so fast? The answer was 80. He said, "Moooom, it's easy. You break apart the numbers. Give the 2 to the 38 and make it 40, so then it's just 40 + 40, and that is super easy...80!."

Uh, woah.

And he was right. When he put it in those terms, it was super easy. That's now his mind works naturally. He's a problem solver by nature. I'm not built that way. I can learn, but it isn't built into my make-up like it is for Little G.

When Little G was just 23 months old, we learned that he is autistic. Just a short time later, we were told that he has hypotonia (low muscle tone) and a speech disorder (not just delay). And at the same time, we were also told that he might have a genetic condition (Beckwith-Wiedemann) that sometimes causes childhood cancer. Yes, I kinda freaked out. After leaving the geneticist's office that day, I smiled at my baby son, walked him in his stroller over to the gift shop where they had toy kitties (his fave), and hugged him to me as I choked back tears that I believe to this day could have flooded the building. But I never let on.

There was no speech therapist available through Early Intervention, so I just learned ASL (American Sign Language) and taught it to the kids and my husband. Because that's what had to be done. He started to communicate. I had great hopes for him, and yet, he still managed to surpass my wildest expectations.

I didn't expect my son to be skipping grade levels in school. I didn't expect him to be speaking so clearly and meaningfully at age 6 like he is, much less using that speech to teach me things about math. The kid is brilliant. And I want to tell all of you, with children who are diagnosed with autism and global developmental delays like my son was, that this IS NOT the end of the road. It is not a prediction. It is not a set-in-stone Way Things Will Be. Trust. Hope. Keep your minds open. And you will be surprised at what your child can do. Do not let anyone place limitations on your child. He or she holds more potential than anyone can see, think, feel, or predict. It will rock your world, if you let it.

Pen Pals

My daughter is an excellent writer. Her creativity and imagination, coupled with her way with words, makes her writing enjoyable to read. Getting her to write, however, is like pulling teeth.

I don't remember how the idea came up, but a few weeks ago I found myself talking about pen pals on Facebook with a few people. My daughter acquired two pen pals that same night and another today, and my son managed to get himself one as well. My hope is that this activity will help to connect her more with others, be a positive social experience, and help to sharpen her writing skills in a way she really enjoys. Pen pals are cool.

One of the bonus benefits of having pen pals is that we are already having discussions about conversations with others. She is just writing her first letters, and it is already proving to be a great way for me to discuss social things in a more tangible way than just hypotheticals and possibilities. I suggested asking questions for her new pen pals to answer, instead of making the letters one-sided and talking only about herself. I explained that this is key to being a good listener and having positive outcomes in all kinds of social interactions.

No Subject Left Behind

No Child Left Behind. It sounds great when you just hear the words, doesn't it? But what does it really mean and how does it translate into real education? Simply put, it may mean a whole lot of subjects left behind instead.

Math and language arts (reading/writing) are the core areas where schools are evaluated based on student performance. This is great if you consider how much these areas mean to effective learning and functioning in this world. However, it's not so great once you realize that schools are losing sight of equally important areas such as history, science, and the arts. While some would argue that these areas are not on level with math and language arts, I completely disagree.

First of all, there is a saying that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. I was appalled not long ago at how many people my age and younger don't even know who Adolph Hitler was, or much of anything about World War II and the mass genocide of the Jewish people in concentration camps. Far fewer are aware of our own country's post-Pearl Harbor internment camps which the Japanese-American citizens of our country were forced into, many after agreeing to renounce their American citizenship because they were bullied into doing so. If we do not know our history, and world history, we are doomed to repeat it. That is a frightening thought. But beyond simply repeating past atrocities and costly mistakes, there is also the insight that comes from comparing similar past events to current situations and making more informed decisions based on what happened previously; this insight is lost when we do not know our history!

It is not just political leaders and big decision-makers who need to know history, but the people voting for their leaders, laws, and government. People rely much too heavily already on others to make decisions for them, and a frightening number of people are just plain apathetic about politics. As a country, we do not appreciate the power we have to vote and make a change; and considering how far we have come to have such right and privileges, this is truly a shame. If our forefathers could have seen the ambivalent mess we have become, they would likely have either thrown their hands in the air and said, "Why bother!?" or done everything they could to instill within each new generation the importance of knowing history and being a part of their own instead of passively sitting by and consenting to whatever others chose for them. I choose the latter for my own children; in some ways I believe history is even more important than mastery of math or language arts. Our country was founded on the hope of having a choice and the freedom to govern ourselves. We have become a country that largely lets others govern us. It may not be kinds and queens anymore, but it's more corrupt than ever.

Science is important as well, for reasons too numerable to list. Science helps us understand how our world works and how we interact within it, in addition to providing us with an understanding of the most fundamental facts about ourselves and our bodies, from nutrition to exercise to our overall health picture. But it goes much deeper. Without science, history, and all of the subjects we used to learn in school, we become sheep. Plain and simple.

The cursive writing debate is one that seems to be drawing attention from just about everyone. Because the focus of education is the "core" math and language arts courses, cursive is being dropped from many curricula around the country because it is not something the schools are evaluated by. This is not in the interest of our children at all, but rather the interest of the ratings of the schools and their respective districts. Good penmanship may not be as critical as it was 20 years ago since technology has become paramount in producing finished academic works, but there are benefits (as this ABC article points out) which are being overlooked for the sake of schools looking better on paper. I don't know about anyone else, but I couldn't care less what schools look like on paper; I have always wanted my children to have a full and excellent education which will prepare them for the future - whatever that means.

People seem to be completely unaware of the fact that our current way of life is neither natural nor sustainable. We have achieved great things in this world, things which are incredible to even consider. Most people, however, stick a plug into an outlet or place a call from their cell phone and take it completely for granted. I'm not saying we should all return to the times before electricity, computers and cell phones. I rather enjoy these luxuries and I believe most people do. What I am saying is that we should all be prepared to live off the grid like our forefathers did, should the need ever arise. This is not some doomsday prediction, but rather something we should give some consideration to; what kind of mess would our society be if we had to live as they did 100 years ago? 200 years ago? It's fascinating but also sad how far we have come from that. Also, we should value the wealth of knowledge we have to learn from, realize that many of our ideas are not new but tried and tested, and act accordingly. In 200 years, your school's academic performance rating won't mean a thing to this world; your child's knowledge and potential to change the world, however, will mean a great deal.

Learning is important, and not just the subjects someone deems more important than others and evaluates schools by. Knowledge is power.

Let's Make a Trade

The kids made their warm and fuzzy trade yesterday; R chose a giant sketch pad and Little G, of course, chose the book with the cat in it.


Since it was time for morning break, G immediately curled up in the chair to read while R grabbed her crayons and got to work on some art.


She filled several pages in no time at all. My Reezle loves her art. Today she asked if we could do an Art lesson about Leonardo da Vinci, as she is apparently a fan. She enjoyed it, and tomorrow we are going to learn a bit about Italy and do some more sketching. I'm also going to have her "invent" something of her own and sketch it up, like da Vinci did.

I want to keep those creative fires burning, so I try to come up with ideas to encourage her to think outside of the box. My very favorite aid in this is the list of writing prompts. This afternoon she wrote a lengthy piece on her favorite food made with apples. She chose apple pie, talked about how to make it, and drew a picture at the end when she was done. I think we're going to have to bake an apple pie from scratch one of these days.

Week Two Wraps Up

As of today, we have completed our second week of homeschool! It was another enjoyable week, and we played with different schedule variations a bit. On Wednesday, Daddy had to work a couple of extra hours, so we used this time to do some extra lessons. On Thursday, we started bright and early in the morning and had most of our lessons finished by 10:15AM due to our jump start from the previous evening. The children were rewarded with a morning movie break for their hard work and great progress, and we wrapped up the remaining work after lunch.

The Math workbook is by far G's favorite, while R gravitates to the handwriting practice workbook. Both of them are doing great in all of their subjects, though G keeps asking me when he is going to start learning something in Math. They're going over shapes and colors, and he had that material mastered prior to preschool. "Mama, when can I learn multiplication?" he asks. We'll get there, little dude, I promise.

Language Arts is a great and challenging curriculum for both of them, and I'm taking some extra time there so they can learn both the Kindergarten and Grade 2 lessons together. The History curriculum also gets my approval, and the Kindergarten material is providing a great refresher course for R. Right now, we are studying the 7 continents and their well-known attributes, and both of my little students can name all of them. If they forget here and there, I can mention an animal or land attribute (i.e. penguins for Antarctica, the Great Wall for Asia, the Sahara Desert for Africa, and so on), and they will remember right away.

The internet, specifically YouTube, is a wonderful homeschool resource to compliment curriculum material. We watched videos about The Great Wall, kangaroos and the Great Barrier Reef, penguins, the Saharah, European castles, and this incredible Grand Canyon flyover:



R and G are learning, actually acquiring new information and retaining it, and being a part of this process is an honor and a gift. This feels right, like the way it is supposed to be. And not only do I enjoy having my family together and being a part of their learning, but I really like the teaching part!

I'm also still enjoying that bus passing right by our home, no stops required. I think I'll enjoy that indefinitely.