Hannah's reading has really taken off in the last couple of months. But this did not happen overnight. It has been a process that has been years in the making. When we first got home from China, Hannah and I would sit at the computer and play at Starfall.com. Vicki Miller introduced me to this site years ago and we have really enjoyed it. Hannah learned to click on the letters herself and she was delighted. She learned to sign "apple" for "A" from this site and she would pull on my hand and sign "apple" and point to to computer to try to convince me that it was computer time. We also had Leap Frog's Fridge Words
on the fridge which Hannah and all the cousins made good use of. Then a neighbor changed our lives and gave us a Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD. The older cousins knew all their letters and sounds and this reinforced them while the younger cousins learned all their letters and sounds very quickly. We bought the follow up DVDs Word Factory and Code Word Caper and everyone learned basic reading in a flash!
Hannah still wasn't convinced that reading was the best use of her time though. There were cousins to be played with and backpacks to fill with random toys and carry around, dominoes to sort etc. Each day for school we had to use the same technique for reading as for writing - her in my lap, my legs on hers, my hands on her hands. And we had to be somewhat isolated to keep distractions at bay. It was still a struggle to get her to look at the words but I would make the first sound and she'd look because she was curious and we'd work though it even though she would say "I want to be done." A couple times per page. For new books, I would read them with her the first time and she'd read them by herself the second time. By books, I mean level 1 Bob books to start out with. Now she can read pretty much anything if she focuses. After she read, she got a couple of MMs. Me too. Yum!
In Dallas we had only 1 car and we'd take Paul to and from work. We'd do flash cards and reading while we waited for him to come down to the car. We also did flash cards with the cousins and made all sorts of games out of that. This is tricky with her. JJ is fast and focused and he can read anything. Paul says "How do you know JJ's been to your house? There's peanut butter all over your Wall Street Journal." And JoJo was also a very early reader. So there was lots of competition. If Hannah managed to focus and win a card she'd celebrate and look around to see who all noticed her victory. By the time she looked back the other 2 cousins had won several cards and she would despair. But this was a good opportunity to train her to be gracious and we worked through it little by little.
Now she wants to read. She uses a combination of sounding things out and memorizing those weird words like head, laugh, neighbor, etc. She loves the story of Esther and she looks for it in her Bible story books. She reads it over and over. She is learning the 10 commandments for Bible class and she can read pretty much any word in the Exodus 20 NIV 10 commandments. She is very excited about all this. She still gets a little lazy sometimes and just wants to guess at words but, if she concentrates, she can read anything that has a regular phonetic pronunciation. We are quite proud of her progress!
Friday, December 4, 2009
Hannah's 7th Birthday
Hannah turned seven this past Wednesday. She's been looking forward to this for weeks. My sister's daughter JoJo looks forward to turning seven too. She's presently 5. But JoJo plans her birthday parties in advance. Every time I talk to that girl she's planning her birthday. And every time I see her she's making a list of who to invite or what the theme should be. Hannah's never really cared about her birthday like that. On her birthday last year we asked her where she'd like to go for her birthday and she said "Schlotzsky's." We called a a few relatives and 18 people showed up at Schlotzsky's.
This year is different as we aren't so close to relatives. Her birthday fell on a Wednesday which was AWESOME as far as she's concerned because Wednesday is co-op day. Co-op is 5 miles from our apartment. But using the MTA it takes an hour to get there. We ride 2 trains and walk for 11 blocks unless we're lucky enough to catch the bus as we exit the subway station. Cake and cupcakes were out of the question as they wouldn't survive the trip. So we made little candy grab bags for everyone at co-op. We made them 2 weeks ago because she was so excited about it. They sang "Happy Birthday" to her in her drama class and she giddily passed out candy to everyone she saw. She told everyone on the subway that it was her birthday and she finished the day off at her favorite restaurant, No Strollers (Toby's), where Miss Chris gave her a special table near the kitchen and her own ice cream.
Here Hannah is showing off the card her buddy Anthony in Corsicana sent to her along with 5 dollars. The card is a noisy card that says "Happy Birthday." She LOVES it.
Hannah made herself a gift bag. She loves aluminum foil. She also loves tape. She taped bits of foil to the bag and colored the patches with markers. Looks great to me.
I wrapped her gifts in foil. That was like having bonus gifts as far as she's concerned. Pastor Matthew at Trinity Church Dallas sent up a DVD of video taken during this year's VBS. And she got a new game for her DS.
The next day Hannah got a package from Miss Brenda. It had 2 crazy awesome outfits.
Then today we got a couple more cards. The one from Grandma Cheryl had money!!! $7 from her and $7 from Greatmother. We didn't get a picture of that $ yet, but I wanted to get these pics up since I'm being harassed by Stephanie Mac. We will be in Dallas at the end of the month/beginning of next month and Hannah and JoJo will share a proper birthday party with cake and relatives and friends and such. I don't know the details - I'm leaving them in JoJo's capable hands.
Hannah signs "Thank you" for all the gifts.
This year is different as we aren't so close to relatives. Her birthday fell on a Wednesday which was AWESOME as far as she's concerned because Wednesday is co-op day. Co-op is 5 miles from our apartment. But using the MTA it takes an hour to get there. We ride 2 trains and walk for 11 blocks unless we're lucky enough to catch the bus as we exit the subway station. Cake and cupcakes were out of the question as they wouldn't survive the trip. So we made little candy grab bags for everyone at co-op. We made them 2 weeks ago because she was so excited about it. They sang "Happy Birthday" to her in her drama class and she giddily passed out candy to everyone she saw. She told everyone on the subway that it was her birthday and she finished the day off at her favorite restaurant, No Strollers (Toby's), where Miss Chris gave her a special table near the kitchen and her own ice cream.
Here Hannah is showing off the card her buddy Anthony in Corsicana sent to her along with 5 dollars. The card is a noisy card that says "Happy Birthday." She LOVES it.
Hannah made herself a gift bag. She loves aluminum foil. She also loves tape. She taped bits of foil to the bag and colored the patches with markers. Looks great to me.
I wrapped her gifts in foil. That was like having bonus gifts as far as she's concerned. Pastor Matthew at Trinity Church Dallas sent up a DVD of video taken during this year's VBS. And she got a new game for her DS.
The next day Hannah got a package from Miss Brenda. It had 2 crazy awesome outfits.
Then today we got a couple more cards. The one from Grandma Cheryl had money!!! $7 from her and $7 from Greatmother. We didn't get a picture of that $ yet, but I wanted to get these pics up since I'm being harassed by Stephanie Mac. We will be in Dallas at the end of the month/beginning of next month and Hannah and JoJo will share a proper birthday party with cake and relatives and friends and such. I don't know the details - I'm leaving them in JoJo's capable hands.
Hannah signs "Thank you" for all the gifts.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Teaching Hannah - writing
For a few days I've been thinking of a post about how I homeschool Hannah. This has very little to do with where we live, but its on my mind so I will write some things down for you. It could be that you have a little student with a learning style similar to Hannah's and you find a trick that will help you, or that you've discovered a trick I haven't and you tell me and I write a new post next week about how your trick has revolutionized our lives. I will break this up into separate posts about different aspects of the process so you don't get bored.
Hannah is a very active child. I used to say that she was like the very active and independent Gerald character in Sid the Science Kid. Now I am thinking that comparing Hannah to the Matrix's Neo would be more accurate - she's just so fast and I am not. She is easily distracted and when I am tempted to get frustrated I try to keep in mind that there are probably some underlying developmental and sensory issues left over from her 2 years of living in an orphanage.
One thing that has has developed on a different pace than many kids we know is the desire to color or write. I remember how Autumn (one of the cousins who lived with us for 3.5 years) used to write anything just to write. She'd copy the ingredients from the cereal box just to have something to write - seriously! And Joshua (Autumn's brother) and his ambidextrous self decided to write one day and then he was writing with both hands. There were times that all of the cousins would be at the table coloring and copying cereal ingredients, you know fun stuff, and Hannah would be way more interested in moving the crayons from bag to bag than coloring.
One thing that helped her along was getting those coloring pages with the raised felt and markers that helps kids stay in the lines, you know, they are in the dollar section at Target all the time. She likes the dollar section and she'd always at least put a little color on the pages before she turned her attention to chewing the markers.
This leads me to another residual effect of having lived in an institution for 2 years. Hannah is constantly chewing things. I have put all kinds of bitter things on her favorite chew victims, but this leads to her finding chew things that are even more inappropriate and to Paul getting a big dose of bitter when he goes to gnaw on his pens that have gotten mixed up with Hannah's. So I try to have things that she can chew on that are less likely to kill her than the random things I fish out of her mouth. Little plastic eating utensils or straws work well.
Because of the chewing issue, pencils don't last long here. What seems to work well for Hannah is dry erase markers. There are several reasons for this. First, Hannah just likes dry erase better. She thinks it's fun.
Let me take a break from the details here and talk about making things fun. We actually pray each night that the kids will enjoy learning. I'm not going to hire a math clown or anything, but if dry erase markers go over better, I will use them. If she gets a kick out of funny colors of ink or paper, I will use them.
Back to dry erase markers. So it has taken Hannah a long time to want to write. This time last year I remember that everything she wrote was actually traced. I would write out her memory verse on a handwriting tablet and she'd trace it. She would sit in my lap, with my legs over hers, and my left hand on hers and my right hand on her forearm and she'd write. I also tried putting ankle weights on her lap and her legs. This is because she squirms so much that I honestly think she had no idea that her foot was behind her ear and it's just really hard to get your writing done with your foot up there. I had to teach her how to sit and give her body the sensory cues to settle down. Lots of work, but it paid off. Now I write her memory verse for the week on a piece of tablet paper and put it in a page protector sleeve and she traces it with a dry erase marker and she likes it. There are days when she squirms and I put her in my lap, but those days are the exception now, not the rule.
Another advantage to the dry erase markers is that corrections are easy if you make a mistake. Hannah HATES making mistakes. She gets really upset and frustrated. With a pen, the evidence of the mistake lingers and she looks back at it and scolds herself. Pencils are just out of the question since the erasers were ingested long ago. So dry erase markers are perfect! If she makes a mistake, she wipes it away with her thumb and moves on with her life. No big deal!
All this has been discovered by trial and error. It has helped that we like to cruise Target for fun and we look for things that might spice up school time and are cheap. But it seems to have paid off. The other day she wrote something on her own, just because she wanted to. What a day! Now she is trying to spell things all the time and she is more adventurous in her writing. She is starting to color more too. She's so proud of herself and I am proud of her too.
Hannah is a very active child. I used to say that she was like the very active and independent Gerald character in Sid the Science Kid. Now I am thinking that comparing Hannah to the Matrix's Neo would be more accurate - she's just so fast and I am not. She is easily distracted and when I am tempted to get frustrated I try to keep in mind that there are probably some underlying developmental and sensory issues left over from her 2 years of living in an orphanage.
One thing that has has developed on a different pace than many kids we know is the desire to color or write. I remember how Autumn (one of the cousins who lived with us for 3.5 years) used to write anything just to write. She'd copy the ingredients from the cereal box just to have something to write - seriously! And Joshua (Autumn's brother) and his ambidextrous self decided to write one day and then he was writing with both hands. There were times that all of the cousins would be at the table coloring and copying cereal ingredients, you know fun stuff, and Hannah would be way more interested in moving the crayons from bag to bag than coloring.
One thing that helped her along was getting those coloring pages with the raised felt and markers that helps kids stay in the lines, you know, they are in the dollar section at Target all the time. She likes the dollar section and she'd always at least put a little color on the pages before she turned her attention to chewing the markers.
This leads me to another residual effect of having lived in an institution for 2 years. Hannah is constantly chewing things. I have put all kinds of bitter things on her favorite chew victims, but this leads to her finding chew things that are even more inappropriate and to Paul getting a big dose of bitter when he goes to gnaw on his pens that have gotten mixed up with Hannah's. So I try to have things that she can chew on that are less likely to kill her than the random things I fish out of her mouth. Little plastic eating utensils or straws work well.
Because of the chewing issue, pencils don't last long here. What seems to work well for Hannah is dry erase markers. There are several reasons for this. First, Hannah just likes dry erase better. She thinks it's fun.
Let me take a break from the details here and talk about making things fun. We actually pray each night that the kids will enjoy learning. I'm not going to hire a math clown or anything, but if dry erase markers go over better, I will use them. If she gets a kick out of funny colors of ink or paper, I will use them.
Back to dry erase markers. So it has taken Hannah a long time to want to write. This time last year I remember that everything she wrote was actually traced. I would write out her memory verse on a handwriting tablet and she'd trace it. She would sit in my lap, with my legs over hers, and my left hand on hers and my right hand on her forearm and she'd write. I also tried putting ankle weights on her lap and her legs. This is because she squirms so much that I honestly think she had no idea that her foot was behind her ear and it's just really hard to get your writing done with your foot up there. I had to teach her how to sit and give her body the sensory cues to settle down. Lots of work, but it paid off. Now I write her memory verse for the week on a piece of tablet paper and put it in a page protector sleeve and she traces it with a dry erase marker and she likes it. There are days when she squirms and I put her in my lap, but those days are the exception now, not the rule.
Another advantage to the dry erase markers is that corrections are easy if you make a mistake. Hannah HATES making mistakes. She gets really upset and frustrated. With a pen, the evidence of the mistake lingers and she looks back at it and scolds herself. Pencils are just out of the question since the erasers were ingested long ago. So dry erase markers are perfect! If she makes a mistake, she wipes it away with her thumb and moves on with her life. No big deal!
All this has been discovered by trial and error. It has helped that we like to cruise Target for fun and we look for things that might spice up school time and are cheap. But it seems to have paid off. The other day she wrote something on her own, just because she wanted to. What a day! Now she is trying to spell things all the time and she is more adventurous in her writing. She is starting to color more too. She's so proud of herself and I am proud of her too.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Black Friday
We went to Herald Square to look in the store windows. It was CROWDED! Andrew, there's a pic of the Hearald Square JCP just for you. Everything was beautiful.
I had a couple of Chevy Chase moments. I sat in a bistro chair in the pedestrian area. It was broken. I became entangled in the chair. There I was trying to regain my balance, wearing a baby, shaking a chair off myself. Then I moved to another chair. I leaned on the little table and became entangled in it while accosting a nearby 8 year in another effort to regain my balance. Paul was very entertained.
I had a couple of Chevy Chase moments. I sat in a bistro chair in the pedestrian area. It was broken. I became entangled in the chair. There I was trying to regain my balance, wearing a baby, shaking a chair off myself. Then I moved to another chair. I leaned on the little table and became entangled in it while accosting a nearby 8 year in another effort to regain my balance. Paul was very entertained.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Pic tutorial anyone?
Feel free to send me a link to school me on this. I am tired of getting the right side of my pics cropped.
Thanksgiving Eve in NYC
So we had an interesting day Wednesday. Hannah, Elijah, and I went all the way up to the Bronx, to the Pelham stop, to pick up a milk donation. Then we headed to meet Paul in Manhattan to see the parade balloons being inflated. It was super crowded and we were herded through the streets by traffic cops. We had a great time. Hannah's favorite part was riding on Paul's shoulders.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Funny faces of Elijah
Well blogger cropped these pictures strangely. You can see his whole face if you click on each picture, but grandparents are probably the only ones who want to go to that much trouble. I'll figure this out eventually.
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