Letter to Restaurant

E wrote her first activism letter today. We used to have a restaurant here that E really liked until it burned down. For months, we drove by it every day, watching the repairs come together, and wondering if it was going to reopen. Finally, there was an article in the paper saying they aren't reopening, and now there is an sign for a different restaurant there.

She mentions how bummed she is about this restaurant being gone at least once a week, so I suggested that she write them and tell them she wants them to come back. She mailed her letter today.*

ETA: since we were talking about writing earlier in the thread... she usually writes in capital letters. For this letter, I suggested that she do it the proper way, with caps/lower case in the right places. She had a hard time forming some of the lower case letters, because even though she's used them before, she doesn't use them as often. So I helped her with the ones she couldn't remember, but by the end of the letter, she was already remembering how to form the ones she had done in the beginning of the letter.*

*wrote on message board on May 8

Inevitable Mondays- Strewing Games

Yesterday when I organized their games, I pulled out some things they had not seen for a long time including a big bucket full of plastic and foam letters.  They spent a lot of time playing with them today- stacking them in piles, spreading them all over the table, pretending they were pancakes and trying to spell words.  At one point, E asked me how to spell "whispers," and after she was done putting all the letters together she tried to sound it out.  She insisted that the R and the S on the end needed to be reversed.  We went back and forth for a few minutes- in a relaxed, playful way, not arguing- and then I let it go.  She was wrong of course, but that's not important right now.  She was really working through sounding out the letters and trying to place them the way she was hearing them.  That's an important part of learning to read!  L was having fun naming the letter and number "pancakes." ("I want a S pancake!  Now a blue one!")   

Pulling out the games was one more step in the most recent ebb (or flow?) of this ebbing and flowing life.  For the last few weeks, we've been settling in to new routines for the winter.  The girls had been taking dance and gymnastics classes, but since we are without a car, it is now to cold to walk.  All summer they played outside in our yard for hours every day, but now they stay inside more.  So I've been working on finding more indoor things to do.  Now that the games are organized I can see clearly what we need to get for Hanukkah gifts.  I'm also going to get them some art supplies and E might be getting a trampoline for her birthday.  I went searching for online games for them to play and found this list of the Top 10.  Ignore the intro- it's a totally mainstream "get your kid to learn by making it fun!" kind of thing.  Maybe I'll post reviews of the games once the girls start playing them more

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Teeny

E has a little porcelain duck named Teeny. Today she asked me how to spell Teeny's name and I told her the letters while I was working in the kitchen. I glanced over and realized that L was writing all of the letters too! She learned how to write E from watching E write her name, but every time I offer to show her how to write her own name or anything else she isn't interested until today when she suddenly just did it. She not only wrote all the letters easily and legibly, she did it by watching E write them on the other side of the table, so the ones she was copying were upside down to her, but she did them right side up on her paper. L doesn't require a lot of feedback or practice when she learns how to do things. She just observes, absorbs and suddenly does it. It's so fun watching their different learning styles!

Writing her Name

E was writing quite a few letters for a while and then the last few months pretty much stopped. She still did lots of "writing" in her notebooks, but it was mostly I, O, and U over and over. I wondered why she had stopped practicing other letters, but didn't say anything. Sometimes we write together and I would write words down for her to see. She likes to make lists- grocery lists or to pretend that we are at a restaurant and will write down our order. So we would take turns writing words, her writing combinations of I, O and U and me writing actual words.

This week she went to Vacation Bible School for the first time. On the first day when I picked her up, she showed me where she had written her name on the back of a picture she drew. I asked the teacher if it was done by herself and she said yes. One letter was backwards and one was missing, but for an 8 letter name, pretty good!

The next day she wrote her name again at home and it was missing several letters. She looked at it for a minute and said, "Wait! That's not right." And sounded out what it *actually* said. Then she asked me to write it for her so she could copy it and I did. She copied it perfectly.

The funny thing about all this is that the last few weeks she has been watching more tv than usual. D has been out of town for work, and I have been juggling the kids, my part of the apartment complex work and his maintenance work. On top of that, my car broke down, so we have been walking everywhere. All this has meant that I have less time to be as engaged with her.

I'm not proud of being less engaged, but at the same time I do see an interesting trend. When she has more periods of tv watching it seems to be that her mind is churning something over and she comes out of it with a new skill. I am becoming less and less concerned about the ebbs and flows of our lives and learning to just ride the waves. We have periods of time where we are constantly looking things up on the internet, doing science experiments, getting lots of books at the library, having wonderful, engaging discussions. Then we have times where there is a lot of watching tv, she plays by herself more yet at the same time is more emotionally needy. Lately she's been saying "I'm feeling shy," which if you know her is kind of funny. She is extremely outgoing! But she means that she is kind of DONE with people right then.

I am looking forward to D coming home so I have more time to be engaged with her. Even though she seems to be in a cacoon phase, I would like for it to be one where I am readily available if needed rather than too busy for her. But I am not stressing about this season. It will pass and come again, because life is full of those ebbs and flows.

Busy, busy

Wow, we've been so busy I've hardly posted lately! Then we were sick last week- yuck!

Let's see... we went to the Janzten beach carousel with some friends. It's beautiful and E had so much fun!

Our garden is producing massive amounts of tomatoes and cucumber. I love both of those, but there's only so many salads and sandwiches a person can eat!

We went to Powell's- the world's largest book store. I only got to browse the kid's section, since D's brother was visiting and I let them do their thing while I watched the kids. When my mom visits, I want to go back and check out the rest.

E found a book there called ALIVE and it's all about the body. I'm hoping I can find it for her at the library. She can't get enough of body books right now. We got a bunch at the library, but they aren't nearly as good as ALIVE. We've been talking about bone marrow, ventricles, cells, neurons, platelets, tibia, radius, ulna, skull, dentricles, carpels, intestines..... I explain some things in simpler language, but a lot of times she just wants me to read the books.

We've discovered some new favorite movies. E really likes Balto since it's about dogs (another current favorite thing), and we just discovered Harold and the Purple crayon. It's cute! She's also enjoying the Signing Time movies. They are sign language movies that show the signs for different themes. And I have the Wonder Pets song permanently imprinted on my brain- "It's Seweus!" lol

She got to see some new dogs too. I cleaned a house for a friend who has two dogs and E came with me. She's always pretending to be a dog complete with howling like a wolf. She calls all her food dogfood, and I'm just waiting for some stranger to think I'm a horrible mother when she asks for her "dogfood" in public. :)


This morning E discovered that one of her coloring books has letters in it that are the kind where the lines are broken up so kids can write over them to learn how to make them. She thought the was really cool and wrote E, H, I over and over. And she got to go swimming today at an apartment building managed by the same company that we work for. We've had an open offer to swim there all summer and D and E finally did it today. We'll have to take her back a few times again before it's too late.

L is cranky every morning until she gets a morning nap. I think she needs more sleep in the mornings, but gets woken up by a wet diaper and the rest of us moving around. Then she's too busy playing to go back to sleep, but too sleepy to really enjoy herself. Not sure how I'm going to help her with that.... for now I've just been nursing her a lot all morning long. Maybe I'll start wearing her more- she's happy if she's in the carrier and maybe she'll fall asleep that way. And she's climbing non-stop. On the chairs, the table, IN the kitchen drawers. Pulling stuff out of the drawers and turning off the tv. It's the age of perpetual redirecting... But she's SO CUTE and so much fun! She has two all purpose words "Ow" and "Ah Oh." She walks around all day "Ah oh! Ah oh!"

So, that's all I can think of that's happened in the last few weeks. I have some new projects in the works, but nothing I'm ready to share yet. Still, they have been taking up time. And I've been doing more meditating and mindfulness practices, which I'm going to do a different post about.

Sign Language and Spelling

I posted before about E learning the alphabet in sign language. We looked at some videos of a few other signs, but she hasn't really been interested in doing those. But she does the alphabet all the time. She remembers about half the letters, and asks me to do the rest with her. Some of them she knows, but they are too hard for her to hold her hand in that awkward position.

Then one day she did a D with one hand and an O with the other hand. I told her that spells "do." She thought that was pretty cool, so she's been doing it ever since. Another day I did a G and showed her that her D and O with my G spelled "dog." She's asked me to do that a few times since then. I also showed her "to," "so," and "go" since she seems to like doing O's.

We read Go Dog Go a few days ago, and I pointed out all the places where it said "do." I think she's making the connection, and it's so cool to watch!

Doing and Learning

Some new things E has been doing and learning:

She's drawing circles and recognizable pictures. Until a month or two ago, it was all scribbles. All of a sudden, the scribbles have turned into actual pictures of whales, dogs, horses, family memebers, houses, trees and other things. I still need her to tell me what they are, but once she does, I can see where she tried to put a nose here or a tree branch there. For a long time she would say she was drawing circles, but they were really lumpy and mishaped. I never said anything though, and never corrected her. Now she can draw really symetrical circles. She asked me to draw some squares and copied them, too. She's also doing up and down lines, kind of like an M over and over, and saying she's writing. She does it from left to right from the top to the bottom of the page- something I've never pointed out to her, but she's seen me do it that way when I write, of course.

She's also noticing that there are letters all around us and wanting to know what they say. She points out big ones especially, like the M on McDonald's and other letters on store front signs. She noticed the sign at our park that says "City of Tigard" and wanted me to tell her all the letters. She's also recognizing some letters and asking me to tell her the ones she doesn't know.

A few days ago, she asked me to write SIGMA, which is the name of her aunt's dog who we saw last week. She asked me to write it over and over- probably about 30 times- and say the letters as I wrote.

She always wants to count any stairs that we go up or down. She likes to count her steps too. There is a retainer wall on one side of our apartment building's parking lot. It's made out of concrete stones, about a foot long. I hold her hand while she walks on top of the wall. We've been doing that every time we go to that parking lot since we moved here. One day a few weeks ago, she wanted me to count the stones while she walked. There are 101 of them, and she had me walk back and forth with her and count them at least 10 times.