A River Runs Through It...

Our backyard that is. We've finally started a "Rivers" unit study that I wrote a few years ago (which I have posted on a blog somewhere on the internet, but can't locate at the moment). On the schedule for tomorrow was to "build a model river", which I hadn't really worked out the details of, but was getting inspiration from this webpage. Presented with exceptionally gorgeous weather this morning, I asked the kids if they'd like to get started on it today, and I'm so glad we did. I can see this is going to be an ongoing project for them (especially since they created a watering hole for their miniature animals four years ago and still use it regularly) - a backyard river system is a natural fit for my kids. Little Brother said it's "our best homeschooling project ever", even better than ice cream in a bag.

When hard work pays off

At today's aikido class, Little Brother was honored with The Purple Stripe. The elusive purple stripe was mentioned in a class a few months ago. It is bestowed upon a student who shows good leadership and acts as a good example for others in class. Ever since he heard about, Brother has had his goal set on earning that purple stripe. He was so proud of himself when he told me about it. He said he was so surprised, and when he saw Teacher Nancy pulling out the purple tape he got really excited, and he didn't know what to think. It was very sweet listening to him recap the whole experience.

Little Brother has always been such a sensitive kid, and so much in life brings him down or makes him feel like a failure. I love that these past five months, aikido class has consistently been a place where he's been excited to go, and always comes away feeling successful. When I watch his class, I can see him working on a lot of the skills I've tried to help him with for years - remaining calm and cool when frustrated, remaining focused on his own behavior and trying not to worry about the behavior of others, speaking up when he needs something. He still can't hold it together in a lot of other settings, but he has a safe place to work on it when he goes to aikido. Tonight I loved sharing in his excitement that his hardwork didn't go unnoticed.

Facebook has brought my blogging to a stand still

I'm a little embarassed that I've gone so long since my last blog post! Time to dust things off over here, I guess!

Shall we step into the Dolphin Valley Academy time machine and go back in time to what's been happening these past few months?

February 2010:
We started out the month celebrating Little Brother's 7th birthday! He had his first friend party ever, and it was a lot of fun. He had three buddies over (one from school and two from our homeschool group), and we celebrated with a LEGO theme. Our pinata dumped LEGO pieces all over the floor - isn't that better than candy?

Big Sister went on a 3-day overnight with her troop where they held a special late-night ceremony, complete with candle-lit pathway to receive their bronze awards. It was her first overnight without Mom, and she did great! Sister also had annual homeschool testing this week. Once again I used the PASS test, and remain pleased with it - primarily the focus on measuring the child's own path on the continuum of knowledge in the three subject areas. Sister was a pill about the test-taking, but was also distracted by houseguests that week - sometimes life throws unexpected curve balls your way, and we rolled with it all the best we could.


March 2010:
March brought the end of Girl Scout cookie season in our area. I was our troop's Cookie Mom again, and was quite ready for the crazy cookie selling season to be over! Hubby and I also celebrated 13 years of marriage this month, and honored the day by taking a day hike, minus our children. It was wonderful. Not that I mind our family hikes - I love them, but there's something nice about being able to cover more ground and see more sights that was very freeing.

Little Brother had an exciting month. He had his first belt test in Aikido, and he got a hand-me-down bike from Sister! Brother started taking Aikido at Aikido Kids! back in mid-January, and has absolutely loved it. The classes have been really good for his self-confidence, and I love watching him help another student when he understands a concept and his partner needs a little help. I'm mostly proud of the manner in which he does it - very matter-of-fact, and without judgment in his tone of voice. Not at all like he talks to his sister at home. ;D

We also turned Big Sister's old hand-me-down bike into a new bike for Brother. We took a very pink, girly bike and painted it a metallic blue. Little Brother is very happy with it (in fact, this past weekend he rode 8 miles on it with Mom and Dad)!



At this point, in March, Big Sister was still going strong with all of her regular activities. By this time, we were drowning in activities for the two kids. Sister was in a year-long drama class that was getting ready for their shows in April, as well as swimming lessons on Wednesdays, and a Girls Tri Club that one of the moms in our homeschoool group started up. This mom is nothing short of phenomenal, and decided to use her passion for triathlons to help create an opportunity for her daughter to have more "girl time" with others her age - a problem many of us were having in common with our 10-12 year olds. They're feeling too old for parkdays, but too young (and really, too silly) to hang out with the teens, so this was a great solution. So, Sister is in training for a Kids Triathlon!

April 2010:
April was show time for Sister's class play "The Ozard of Wiz". She played "Glinda, the Good Witch of the North", as well as a couple of other smaller parts. The whole cast was a little rusty going into dress rehearsals, but they pulled it off in the end, putting on a great performance. It was extra special to be the last show on the old Studio East stage. We're looking forward to seeing the new digs very soon!

April also brought Easter:

And trips to the local park with a farm:

And fun homeschool science (ice cream in a bag):

And overnight camp outs with the girl scout troop:
(Thankfully this 20 minute, torrential thunderstorm was the only nasty weather we had that weekend!)

May 2010:
We went over to Yakima, with my sister and nephew, for Mother's Day weekend. My dad had arranged for the kids to participate in a Fish-In for kids, where the kids got their own rod and reel to keep. My kids weren't particularly successful with the fish that day, but have continued their excitement for fishing. They spend part of each day practicing their casting technique in the backyard. I need to get them back out on the water soon!

Gorgeous, sunny weather coaxed our homeschooling outdoors. With my various volunteer commitments seeming to be kicked into high gear all at once, I've had to resort to homeschooling when the opportunity strikes. This arrangement has us down to doing book work roughly 3 days per week, and I plan to go ahead and work through the summer.




So that's us in the past few months! LK

Update, Jan26

All is well! We're just keeping busy. We all survived the flu in December, recovering in time to enjoy the holidays.

Big Sister continues to read voraciously. She's struggling with rote memorization of math facts, so we continue to plug away in the math book while doing daily times table review. This makes her scowl, but she admits it's needed at this point. She's also doing daily journal writing, which is off-limits to teacher mom - I just wanted to see her getting comfortable with daily writing, without the pressure of spelling things perfectly. Seems to be working. Retention of spelling words is a struggle - she aces the tests, but can't seem to remember them in her writing. Not sure how to make that connection.

Little Brother is happily homeschooling. He's my eager learner right now, waking with a smile, and running downstairs to start his day. He's progressing nicely, and isn't being held back by a lot of the perfectionism that was paralyzing him when he came out of school in October. He's really into building k'nex and LEGO models right now - builds them, takes them apart, builds them again. He likes following the instruction manuals. Brother also just started an Aikido class last week. He tried it out last Tuesday, and while he did enjoy the class, he initially told me he didn't want to do it again "because they do stuff in there that I don't know how to do". See? The whole perfectionism thing. We talked about how that's kind of the point of taking a class - to learn how to do something you don't know how to do from someone who can share their knowledge with you, or to enjoy doing something with other people, even if you're "not that good" yet. He must have thought about it for a couple of days and decided that it was fun enough to take the risk. His next class is this afternoon - I'll be sure to take a picture in his new uniform!

I ♥ Homeschooling...

When I sent Little Brother off to get dressed this morning, he came out dressed in a hand-me-down bat costume. No problem!

November wrap-up

Pathetic, eh? Doing a single post for an entire month? It turns out that between homeschooling, driving kids all over, and too much time spent on Facebook, my little blog suffers. Here's what we've been up to...


Big Sister's Spanish class had a Dia de los Muertos celebration, complete with sugar skulls, pan de muertos (I was able to make some that was dairy and soy free, for our friends with food allergies), and marigolds on display. They learned a lot and had a great time.

Little Brother's last day of first grade at public school was Friday, October 30. He had a Halloween party in class that day, which was a nice way to say good-bye. He also came home with a very nice, spiral bound book of pictures and notes that his classmates and teacher created for him. A nice momento from his time in Ms. P's class.

Lil'Bro' is continuing to participate in music with his class twice per week. I knew that homeschoolers in our state are allowed to access classes through their neighborhood school, but wasn't sure how much resistence I would run into. It ended up being no trouble at all, and the principal was very gracious about the whole thing. It's a really great music program, like nothing I could provide for him, and I was very happy that it fits into our already busy schedule. He would have preferred to continue with P.E., but the timing didn't work out. Maybe next year.


In November we hosted Flat Stanley, who came to us all the way from North Carolina (after stops in Texas and Missouri). I've always wanted to participate in a Flat Stanley project (Flat Stanley has his own wiki), so I jumped at the chance when it came up. Flat Stanley is the story of a boy who gets smashed flat when a bulletin board falls on him at school. He learns that a benefit of being flat is that he can travel all over the world for only the cost of a stamp. We took Flat on a fieldtrip with our homeschool group (to Petco - not very exciting), to dinner at Teddy's Burgers (where he had his picture taken in front of the wall mural), and to the Visitor Center at Microsoft (where he was photographed with the founders of Microsoft). He also got to experience some typical fall/winter weather while he was here. His next stop is Connecticut, and we wish him well. Before he left, Big Sister filled out a form that tells about the activities he participated in, as well as interesting facts about our area. It was a fun learning experience for all of us.

We're wrapping up a unit on Thanksgiving. I recently subscribed to Evan Moor's Teacher File Box through a group-buy at the Homeschool Buyer's Co-op, and I'm really enjoying it. I've always liked the Evan Moor Pocket Books, but found myself put off by the cost of purchasing each of the books, plus the time involved in taking the book to be photocopied. The reasonable cost for the subscription, plus the ease of printing at home makes it totally worth every cent. Some of the Pocket Book themes are a little on the young side for Big Sis, but we can beef things up a bit for her - she's just excited to finally be doing more of this crafty-type stuff.

Our other activities lately have included: girl scouts, lego club, a fieldtrip, parkdays, Spanish class, drama class, swimming lessons, and homeschool PE class.

We just completed Thanksgiving/Christmas number one with the grandparents over on the east side of the mountains this past weekend. It was a little early to breaking out the holiday cheer, but necessitated by the fact that the grandparents will be making their annual flight south to Mexico in less than a week. We won't see them again until summer, and were thankful to have the chance to see them one more time before they go. Thanksgiving number two will be celebrated with hubby's family, and we are looking forward to it.

Enough complaining and whining - time for action...

Friday is Little Brother's last day of public school! We've been going through a rough patch with first grade, and it didn't make sense to keep trying to muddle our way through when there's another option available to us. I'd obviously not been won over by school this fall, but was trying to be supportive of a choice that was making my boy happy, and certainly wasn't damaging him - until it started damaging him.

One night I heard him crying softly in his bed - turns out he was worrying about the next school day, and feeling like he's "not smart enough" for first grade. I immediately emailed the teacher to let her know what we were dealing with at home, so she could either shed some light on the matter, or work with him on her end. After all, with him away from me for 7 hours/day, she's the one who has him for most of his waking hours - plus she's "the professional" and I thought she might have a few tricks up her sleeve. She is a nice woman, and my boy thinks she's amazing, so I have no gripes against her really - it's just that her methods of trying to build his self-confidence back up were hugely unsuccessful. She let me know that she's constantly telling him how smart he is, and publicly pointing out her own mistakes and foibles to him in an effort to make him feel better, but to no avail. The fact is we can tell him these things until we're blue in the face, but if he doesn't believe it and really feel that he is successful, our words matter little.

Unfortunately, after weeks of working on this issue, Little Brother's attitude towards himself and school has not improved. He began asking, daily, to homeschool. So, after many long discussions with dear husband (who agreed that when our intelligent boy believes he's stupid, there's a problem), I set the wheels in motion to home school. I filled out the paperwork yesterday, had it signed and date stamped, and then let his teacher know. She was very supportive, and agreed that the home school environment was likely a good fit for him right now. Today I go to the school's office and let them know officially. I also want to talk with the principal about having my boy continue taking music with his class twice/week (state law allows homeschoolers free access classes, such as PE and music, on a space-available basis at their neighborhood schools). After a Halloween party at school on Friday, he will officially be a first grade drop-out!

This will be a big adjustment for all of us. Big Sister is worried about having less one-on-one time with me - a valid concern. She's also worried that Brother won't like her humming and fidgeting as she works - he probably won't. She does agree that school isn't working for Brother, and that he deserves the same opportunity to learn at home as she is having. I'm confident we will make this work, and that we will all be happier for it. Wish us luck!