Monday Monday

New words!
Mom, Dad, & love. No idea why we had 3 words one week, 10 next (which we studied for 2 weeks) then 3 this week... But it's cool, so far, she knows them all :)
New oem!
Well, actually, this weeks poem is the one that they originally had last week, before they switched 'em up. She knows it by heart from last week already lol.

Green Smiley today, and the joy of knowing that one of her classmates just returned from an extended absence due to the Swine Flu. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not overly concerned about H1N1 vs the regular seasonal flu (which we never get innoculated for), and I'm not all in a tizzy and planning on boiling my kid. What I am worried about is that the schools and people in general ARE flipping out thanks to the media hype, and lord only knows what new measures they'll put in place now that there's a confirmedcase.I will not be surprised to find out our childen will have to be sent to school in full bio hazard suits - or, I dunno, ziploc baggies.

Best I can tell, her biggest accomplishment (as far as she's concerned anyway) is that today, she overcame her fear of the monkey bars - and even hung upside down on them, all by herself! 

So, this afternoon she came home, played a bit, got ticked off, threw a fit, and got sent to her room, where she fell asleep, and slept till 8pm. She woke up coughing again, coughing till she gags and pukes. It comes and goes, no other symptoms, no fever... we'll see if she'll be going to school in the morning. Between the coughing/gagging, and the fact that she's going to be up till freakin 3 in the morning...

I still haven't heard anything about the volunteering. Guess I'll call in the morning. Or should I just be patient? I dunno, I've never volunteered in the school before...

Week in Review

I can't believe I didn't blog for the whole week! Sorry, I've been busy, totally stressed, and sick :|

This week her sight words were, again, the color words. She's pretty well mastered them all.

Her poem changed from one apple poem to a different apple poem, which messed her up because she kept intertwining the 2 poems. Her teacher had posted the one poem on the Moodle page, and she had it memorized totally over the weekend, then Monday rolled around and the teacher had changed the poem. Kind of sneaky, and Terra never quite learned the new one 100%.

ORIGINAL POEM:
Apple Tree

Way up high in an apple tree
two red apples winked at me.
So I shook that tree as hard as I could
And down came the apples
Mmm- they were good!

NEW POEM:
Apples
Apples, apples what a treat
Sweet and tart and good to eat
Apples green and apples red
hang from branches overhead
and when they ripen,
down they drop
so we can taste our apple crop!

The even more confusing news is that, barring any more changes, next week's poem is also about apples. We're looking forward to more confusion lol.

This week was an all-green-smilies week, of which we are very proud. I'm not sure what her reward will be this week - Daddy has to work (thank you Universe for the opportunity to work, after 9 months of being unemployed!) so whatever it will have to be on Sunday.

There are new pictures up on the Shutterfly site too. Here are a couple of her, with any other children cropped out.

She brought home her first book from the Media Center: "How About a Hug" which doesn't seem to hold her attention, or be all that helpful in learning any of the things they're working on. We went to the local library too, and checked out some more books, books that incorporate her color words, the days of the week, the seasons, etc...

She has not yet learned to write her full name quite well enough to fi it on the line to get her own library card though.

Friday 9/18

Green smiley again today. That's 4 for the week. Normally the rule is that if she gets a green every day for the week, she is rewarded with a Saturday outing. She got one yellow this week, so she *shouldn't* be getting any outing this week. Unfortunately (for the strict parent in me) the Cabarrus County Fair is in town, and someone has offered to pay 1/2 the cost of getting in for the whole family. That means, of course, that she's getting an unearned outing. But ya know, our county doesn't have a fair any more, it's a once a year opportunity, and it isn't really fair to to the other kids to be disallowed based on Terra's classroom behavior. *sigh* Sometimes, I think life with one child must be so much less complicated!

She knows nearly all of her color words on sight, but still confuses blue and brown. I figure 8 out of 10 isn't too bad, considering she only had to memorize 3 words last week!

Our First Yellow Smiley

Well I guess I jinxed her with my post yesterday. Today she got her first yellow smiley - big surprise, she got it for talking when she was supposed to be NOT talking. I'm a little surprised that hasn't been an issue before, she does love to talk.

So she got off the bus and came across the yard, and she whispered in my ear, "Mommy, please don'tbe mad, I accidentally got a yellow smiley..." and started crying. Poor kid, she was more upset than I was about it. I mean, don't get me wrong, disobeying the teacher (who had warned her several times) is unacceptable - but she was so sorry, I feel like it made a deep enough impression on her that she didn't need me to yell at her. We talked about it, and she knows it wasn't ok. If it becomes a habit, I'll be harsher, but today, I was just glad to see that she took it seriously and understood that yellow smilies are not ok. And, a little bit of me is glad that her first yellow wasn't for shoving someone down on the playground, ya know?

So she's really getting the color words down pretty well, but I think we'll have to keep working on them for a while. She has trouble with black and gray especially. She did decide we were ALL playing school this evening though and sang the days of the week, and the cutest darn weather song ever! And boy was she a strict teacher! She made me sit criss cross apple sauce on the carpet for a long time, and when I straightened out my legs, she threatened me with a BLUE smiley, which is as bad as it gets. Whew, she's tough!

We're working pretty heavily on getting her to write her last name, and to control the size of her printing, in hopes that she will soon be able to write her name well enough on the application at the library, and get her very own library card. We'll see how long that takes, she really has a hard time controling the size of her letters so, we'll see.

Happy Humpday

Today Terra's teacher updated their Shutterfly page with pics of the kids doing a writing activity last week - shaving cream! What fun! The day they did it in school, we also did it at home. We did ours in the back yard though, no idea how the teachers got the shaving cream up off of 21 kids and 21 desks... INSIDE. Braver women then me!

Mommy has a Migraine

This morning at 5am, Terra's big brother Tyler, her daddy's oldest son, arrived from NY. He'll be living with us, and I can't tell you how excited we all are! He arrived before Terra left for school, but she's like me, not all that coherent in the early morning hours, so when she got off the bus, she asked Scott, "Was I daydreaming about Tyler being here?"

Of course, Scott couldn't pass up the opportunity to tease her and said yes. She was heart broken! Thank goodness he told her the truth quickly, or she'd have gone into full meltdown mode, and that doesn't happen often with Terra.

Happy Monday!

New poem - mostly memorized. New word list: her color words! Three words last week, 10 this week! Awesome! I've decided she, like me, is going to have a fairly easy time with language and reading. I want to work more on math, it seems that Ms Mullins isn't doing quite as much math as reading/writing.

Of course, I forget that they consider learning the days of the week, and the months of the year as math work.

Before Week 3

What a weekend! We did go to the school playground like Terra asked, as her reward from another all-green-smiley week last week. While we were there, she overcame her fear of going down the Fireman's Pole. Today (Sunday) she spent the better part of the day playing with the children who were attending our next door neighbor's 10th birthday party. She's always been VERY social, and has always played well with others, been kind hearted and easy to get along with, etc... but her interactions with other kids seem so much more mature since she started school. It's adorable. Seriously, watching her try to teach another little boy (one who was obviously older than she is) to ride her (too small for him) bright pink two-wheeler was too cute. She is so much more... fearless, less shy, more outgoing...

My baby, after just 7 full days in school, has grown up so much.

So this evening after the party we had dinner and a good scrubbing bubble bath, and worked a little to let her get familiar with the new poem "Crayons."

Friday #2

Well, it was another week full of green smilies, so we agreed to take her somewhere as a reward. I'll be danged if she didn't choose school. She asked if we could go to the school playground (not her own school though, another very close by) to play on the playground. We will oblige her, tomorrow. I'm glad to hear that she loves school so much that she wants to go even on the weekends!

I'm also looking forward to working on her new poem and things as the Moodle page is updated with her new lessons this weekend. We'll definitely work a bit on her new poem before Monday morning!

I hope I'll hear back this week about my status as a school volunteer. They do a full bacckground check, criminal and financial, check with personal references and professional references -- it's a careful investigation, and I have no idea how long it will take, or if they'll have room available for me to volunteer if I'm approved. It's a tiny school, and the parents are very involved, so they may actually NOT have a place for me to volunteer. I'll be sad if that's how it works out, but I suppose there are worse problems to have in a school

I did send in some items from the class wish list as well as extra snacks for kids who forget to bring one. I also sent the teacher a link to the interactive dolche site since it wasn't listed on her Moodle site.

Homework, sort of

The Moodle Page has several links with games and activities that we can work on at home to reinforce the class room lessons. Terra is pretty much already up to the point where she is supposed to be at the end of the week, so we decided to check out some of the links and games. I'm sharing them here, because they're awesome resources, whether you're homeschooling or sending your child attend public school.
Interactive Dolche Word site - organized by grade level: http://www.quiz-tree.com/Sight-Words_main.html
Starfall - awesome site for reading basics: http://www.starfall.com/
Math Activities: http://www.internet4classrooms.com/math_elem_index.htm
Word Wall Activities and Suggestions: http://www.teachingfirst.net/wordwallact.htm

I am still sad that homeschooling just didn't work out for us. Honestly, they're not doing anything in class that I couldn't have done from home, but

Rainbow Hair

Well, Terra definitely grasps concepts quickly, and has a great memory, which I knew on a certain level... but it's been reinforced in my mind. The Rainbow Hair poem is committed to her memory, as are the Dolche Words for this week. She's totally able to be told "long line, short curve" etc and make most all of the alphabet correctly now. She already knew and wrote her letters, but typically started at the bottom, or made some backwards (d/b) or upside down (M/W) - but since she took a peek at Handwriting Without Tears, she's suddenly much more likely to make the letters correctly.

She's also learning months of the year and days of the week between home and school, as well as getting a real handle on the basics of time within 5 minutes of us playing with the clock I bought for her Learning Wall.

She's learning so much, so fast, and so dang effortlessly, I'm just so proud!

Tuesday, 1st day of a short 2nd week.

She was officially assigned her first list of Dolch sight words today:
a I me

They were on the Moodle page over the weekend, and we added them to the wall and talked about them. The website also had a list of what the class work would be focusing on this week. I've never heard of writing without tears, but it makes such good sense, I can't believe I'm just finding out about it.

Another green smiley, and if she gets one every day, she'll get another reward on Saturday. Don't know what yet, but I'm sure she'll come up with something!

Labor Day Night

Well, the three day weekend was fun, except for Terra asking, "Do I have school tomorrow!?" every day! We went to the park on Saturday to reward her for all the green smilies. Man was it hot! Then we went to IHOP for dinner, where, in case you didn't know it, for the month of September, kids 12 and under eat free!

We worked a bit on her new poem "Rainbow Hair." too. It's a little longer and harder to memorize, and I assume it will require a bit more work to be able to get it down pat.

Rainbow Hair

Rainbow purple
Rainbow blue
Rainbow green and yellow too
Rainbow orange
Rainbow red
Rainbow colors on my head
Colors, colors, everywhere!
I like rainbows in my hair.

It's so cute when she repeats it with me though! We've created a Learning Wall - totally low-tech, with all of her (color coded) color words, and her number words, her poems, a clock, a calendar, etc... as she does this poem, she points at the color words. She came up with that idea, but it's really helping her with the memorization, as well as sneaking in some familiarity with her color words :)

End of the First Week

Holey moley, the first week is done already. She only attended 3 days but in those three days, she had a perfect record in green smilies, rode the bus all by herself 3 times, earned herself a trip to the park tomorrow, made lots of new friends, memorized her bus number, her lunch number and her September poem and, seemingly matured about 5 years.

It's a long weekend, no school Monday, it's Labor Day. She's actually upset that next week will be a short week!

Back to School

Terra was feeling much better and was excited all over again to go to school this morning. She had to be a car rider in the morning but got to ride the bus home - finally! Oh my goodness she was thrilled!

So far, she swears she has not had to do a bit of work, and Ms. Mullins hasn't taught her a thing. Apparently, Ms. Mullins is much sneakier about teaching than I was when I was homeschooling last year. Brilliant woman I tell ya!

She has a poem each week to memorize - it helps with fluency. This week she's learned "September"

September

In September
for a while
I will ride a crocodile
down the chicken soup Nile
Paddle once
Paddle twice
Paddle chicken soup with rice.

The poems are all listed on the teacher's Moodle page so I've been working on it with her at home, but she swears she hasn't worked on it in class. Maybe they've just been taking it easy because it's their first week, and, really, today was only her second day since she was sick...

Anyway, we've been working on this from home, and she does know it by heart.

I have been really struggling with "letting go" she's my baby, the last child... my Earth Angel, the child I never intended to send to public school. I don't know what to do with an empty house, this is the first time I've had no children at home since I had Tommy 20 years ago... but honestly, I think I'm struggling even more with just how much and how quickly Terra is changing. Wow. Bittersweet. I'm very proud, but a little sad to see such a sudden transformation. Luckily, she's adjusting more seemlessly than I am!

Sick already!?

Terra was sick, running a fever, and stayed home from school. I was grateful that despite the fever, she was able to be up and around and not feeling terrible. She wasn't happy about having to stay home, but at least she wasn't experiencing any nasty symptoms.

Wow, Terra's First Day

First full day of kindergarten. Wow.

There were some issues for some reason with getting her assigned to a bus, so we drove her in. She was disappointed to be a car rider. She was just so excited to really be going, so proud to be a big girl who goes to school like her sister and brother. She was very thoughtful -- she got 3/4 of the way down the hall, stopped and turned around, making sure we saw her as she waved goodbye. We'd teased her about going to the half day of testing without saying goodbye, and she wanted to make sure she said goodbye this time.

While we were there we picked up the paperwork for me to become a classroom volunteer. There's a rigorous application process, an in-depth investigation into each volunteer's criminal and employment histories, I even had to give professional references. I got to give them some great names as business references, Cami Walker, and Daryn Kagan. That was fun lol. Anyway, I am volunteering to show my gratitude to this awesome school (several of my older children attended there as well) and to a teacher who I am extremely excited about. Hopefully, I'll be accepted!