Alright, alright, alright… let’s get right down to business. In exciting family news, the girls make their first holy communion tomorrow, the kids’ violin recital is in a week, my sister got ENGAGED today (I hope I’m allowed to proclaim that Megs because we are EXCITED), and as always we continue truckin’ along with school.
April 23-27
How we use our calendars here.
Do you notice anything different in our schoolroom?
Hint, it glides and you sit on it.
That’s right, I moved a glider into our overcrowded homeschool classroom space! I cried mercy and realized I was not going to survive the next 4 weeks sitting on the floor / tiny chairs any longer if I want to make it to our finish line goal (rounding out the math shelf presentations and finishing our parts of speech work from our primary album). I added that chair and my life got so much more comfortable. I mean — not a lot comfortable because 35 weeks pregnant. But this was a much appreciated move, space or no space.
I also figured this will be a convenient way to continue school work while nursing an infant. A very common question I see online is, “How do I use Montessori materials with my older kids when I have a baby underfoot?” And as my youngest was already 2.5 when we got hardcore into Montessori, I’m not entirely sure how the early baby years go. I do have a plan — but I always think, if I can do 3 in diapers at one time without completely losing my mind, I can definitely pull off Montessori homeschooling with a baby. Ha. Famous last words maybe? Stay tuned!
The Arts:
No clue what’s going on in pottery. I didn’t even ask this week; I was happy to outsource to another capable adult an hour and half of the kids’ day.
Violin: We have the absolute best Suzuki violin instructor. Y’all I don’t even know how we got so blessed, but she’s great. The kids practiced their pieces this week with accompaniment. Am I the only parent who gets super nervous for their children at recitals? I just want them to do great!!
Mary sneak peak (I need to order her Moana costume ASAP).
The rhythm for this was super tricky and Josie has really hard notes on her piece. I’m proud of the hard work they’ve put in. Mike continues to be a goofball, but he’s also proud to be performing a little piece next weekend.
I love this picture of him practicing his bow grip and watching the girls practice some orchestra songs.
Math:
Mike continues to repeat and perfect the hundred board. He is so suddenly into math right now. He is always counting and saying how many tens are in quantities of hundreds that he’s somehow tracking in his head. Aloud. My hubby is like, doesn’t that get old fast? And I’m like, well he’s practicing mental math that I don’t have to teach him so… he can count all day as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not 100% sure how far he’s gone with math at his actual Montessori preschool (he attends part time), but he’s making so many connections right now. I can’t wait to really run with it this Summer onward. Mike, unlike either of the girls, really gets math. I rarely have to show him something more than twice. He is bright, super quirky and has such a strange sense of humor. The boy keeps me on my toes.
This week we spent a lot of time with the snake game. Mary learned the subtraction snake and loves it — though she keeps forgetting to put her ten bar golden beads down so her answer is generally 10 short. She gets the concept, so I’m not worried. More practice next week.
Josie understands the addition snake game but struggles immensely with counting to ten consistently. On the one hand, I’m glad she is conceptually grasping it, the way its played. On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about progressing her on when she cannot always count linearly. I mean, that’s incredibly basic math, but I’m not sure how to help her master it if it hasn’t clicked in this many years of constant practice (she’s 9 almost 10 in a few months with intellectual disability). On the other hand (how many hands am I on now?) maybe it’ll all click or like a space rock will hit her in the head, miraculously bridging connections, and we’ll be glad we spent so much time struggling through the same math processes every day times infinity. Because that’s how it works. Space rocks. Truthfully I don’t understand why some days she can get some basic math and others nothing clicks.
A lot of people make assumptions about our homeschooling or about her abilities to me directly. So I know there must be unsaid opinions. We look like overachievers with too much money devoted to school materials (scholarship cough cough) because schooling should be simple and about real life experiences like nature and good books. Ok. Or alternatively its, oh, we homeschool. That dirty word. You think people have strong opinions against homeschooling? Try medical / educational professionals who think special needs kids won’t learn at home and are very determined to suggest that to you. Then there’s the Montessori purists, some (not all) who insist Montessori materials never belong in the home and are best used under the guidance of a directress. But what do you do when you don’t have a Montessori school nearby or means to send your child to one? Drop Montessori altogether? Ha… over my dead body. I found this beautiful method and devoted myself to it because, in my opinion, there’s nothing so perfect for working with special needs kids with intellectual challenges (or any child for that matter).
I am sure there are the people who think Josie could be doing more — that I should outsource to someone with a certificate who knows what she’s doing. Flipped, there are the people who think Josie IS doing really well, but are completely overestimating her skills and that, oddly enough, hurts too. She has ID. Two IQ tests and a slew of other adaptive skill assessments and even though she is doing beautifully with so many things, Josie has mild ID. ID is a nicer and much more appropriate term for the outdated mental retardation. I can talk about her heart defects, immune issues, surgeries or speech struggles, but there is a big, bad stigma attached to cognitive disability. Yet among parents of kids with ID, it’s generally recommended to not hide the diagnosis — because that stigma needs to go away and also because people tend to be a little kinder when they realize the whole picture. I listen to my typical five and seven-year-olds discuss details of Harry Potter, but Josie doesn’t remember who main characters are; and there’s how she calls every building a store when she may mean “restaurant or hospital.” Anyway I don’t say any of this for pity because pity we don’t require or want. She is the most hardworking, grit-having kid I am confident you’ll ever meet with bravery off the charts. Blood draws? Doesn’t even flinch. Jumping into new experiences where she doesn’t know anyone? Ok go.
She is a miracle and a wonder, but just in case anyone else is struggling with a kid plus homeschooling — be it dyslexia, dyscalculia or global delays or just looking to the future — please know Montessori homeschooling can be done. I’m still figuring out the how part some days, but here’s our testimony to that fact. Can and will be done.
Back to our regularly scheduled post:
The subtraction snake resides on Math shelf 3:
If you hadn’t noticed or previously noted, Montessori math is gloriously color-coded. Subtraction materials feature green.
Because this work was new, we started off Mary with some short equations. She did great with 4-5 of those, so we moved onto longer snakes.
Josie practiced addition snakes, and I practiced much patience and deep breathing. I think it took us just over an hour to reach our first correct answer. She stuck with it. Determined. Setting up the black and white bead stair alone took a very long time and several attempts.
Yet she definitely did it.
And when she did, that felt awesome.
Mary practiced with the multiplication boards.
Language:
This week Josie read about a dozen of these Itty Bitty readers I’d pulled out for a review. She has made so much progress with reading, but it’s mainly been with sight words. There’s definitely some phonetic decoding coming though. She surprises me with it here and there. I spent most of 2016 perpetually agonizing over and teaching myself how to work with dyslexia — I read every thing everywhere — every study and program method I could possibly access, and the Internet is a treasure trove of information, so don’t think I didn’t get a good education. I tried the top dyslexia programs, I tried every local center we have, and I talked to many, many tutors on the phone; most were not optimistic about Josie learning to read because of her IQ (just a number y’all) combined with her severe speech problems (but she finally got surgery and is making giant speech strides).
Like I said, she continues to surprise me. I think she will read. I’m optimistic. I’m not 100% confident — and I hope I look back and laugh at those words — but I am super optimistic it’s just unfolding ridiculously slowly.
The girls played a Lakeshore reading game. Mike had gotten a cold by this point in the week. Girls are going strong, fingers crossed for tomorrow.
We also started the audio book Poppy by Avi and OH. MY. is it violent. It’s basically about humanized-mice that get eaten by an owl. Mary loves it. Pretty sure it is going over Mike and Josie’s heads. I will do better next book, I swear.
Grammar (my fav): Because I am loony, I stayed up to 4am last Sunday making a new baby unit with three-part-cards and grammar work. I will post freebies soon. I am sorry I forgot all about it somehow.
I even introduced grammar mad libs.
They thought this was hilarious of course. They moved the words around to create sillier and sillier sentences.
Here it is set up on the shelf. All of this was a hit thankfully.
Josie did some handwriting practice with scripture. I keep intending on playing music that corresponds with the verses, but alas, pregnancy brain / usually working with another child and forget to do everything I have planned.
The last new thing I introduced is tracing work. This could go under Language because it’s handwriting or it could go under Geography because we incorporated some biome work.
We also incorporated some Disney’s Little Mermaid to round it all out.
Oh and last of all, I thought this was funny. My preposition cards fail:
Note how the laminator caused one label to go “under” and one to go “far from” ?? HIL-AR-IOUS homeschool mom grammar humor. Har har. I gave myself permission to throw these away and not look back.
In other news, quick-take style, Timberdoodle is never going to let me review again because I still have like 5 outstanding reviews. I am sorry Timberdoodle. I name-drop you constantly, so there’s that!
I have a prayer request, a good friend’s whole family were in a really bad car accident this week and are ok but sore and shaken up.
If you would please pray for them, I’d appreciate that!
Whoever you are who is still reading this far in, thank you!
Here is something I found on Facebook I wish everyone would internalize about educating little ones:
Our garden’s squash aren’t huge but we have blossoms and tiny tomatoes on the vine. Photos courtesy of Mary.
And otherwise this week I spent a lot of time reading up on childbirth, baby-prepping and feeling hopelessly behind in every aspect of my life. Ever get the feeling?
Going to a big consignment half-price sale tomorrow to hopefully buy some baby clothes because I only have like 6 outfits so far.
Just 4 weeks until baby… *insert kermit the frog arm waving frantically and yelling meme* 🙂
Have yourself a lovely week!
