I created a turn taking system that theoretically doesn't require the girls to stand next to my elbow pestering me while I put Matthias down for a nap. It is also meant to eliminate the constant ping ponging of my attention when we're doing school. So far it is doing a poor job on both counts. :/ I like the idea, though, so we're sticking with it for a while. I have a board with squares numbered 1-4 (and room for expansion). Each child has a sign with his/her name on it. When the girls need help, they are supposed to put their signs on the next number in line and then go back to doing something independently, with the understanding that I will come find them when I am next free. The main breakdown happens in the second step, since they invariably come inform me that they've put the sign on a number and then hang around waiting for me to come check the board. So far Gretchen uses the system to ask random questions, and Olivia uses it to put Matthias's sign on number 1 whenever he is crying.
Another recent craft was mailboxes. A while ago we read a Frog and Toad story about a letter, and Olivia and Gretchen spent the afternoon drawing pictures and writing letters to anyone who came to mind. Olivia's letters followed a standard "I hope you have a happy day" form, but Gretchen's were a bit more exciting. Anyway, they got few replies, but the afternoon did kick off an obsession with checking the mailbox for new letters. One day I suggested to Olivia that she write Gretchen a letter so that Gretchen could get mail. Gretchen of course reciprocated, and now they always want to write letters to each other. Since I didn't want them scampering out to the mailbox constantly, we made indoor mailboxes out of shoeboxes, wrapping paper, and copious amounts of packing tape.
Remember back in July when I detailed an adventure that happened to our friends while we were along for the ride? Their problem was that the alternator on their van died. I was recently remembering that post and thinking about how in later years that story would seem completely unnecessary and out of place. As it happens, it was neither unnecessary nor out of place, because the same thing happened to our van on Saturday. We were driving back from Fort Wayne and slowly lost power to the van. As Gretchen describes it, "we got slower and slower and then we stopped at a gas station and now the van is broken." It was, in fact, a pizza place where we stopped. We made it to within a mile and a half of our house, but a stop sign got us in the end since we couldn't get the van to go once we rode what little momentum was left across the intersection. I steered as Bryan pushed the van into the nearby parking lot and the girls marveled at his strength. We made it further than we thought we would, and the Weys were able to come get us and take us to our house. Josh (Hodges, not Wey) knows how to fix alternators, so Bryan went to buy one at the auto parts store and on Sunday afternoon they swapped out the bad one. Our van is now running again. Hooray. :)
Kaitlyn has updated her word for elephant from "enferma" to "eleferma."
School has been going well. Olivia's reading is improving by leaps and bounds. She's into consonant blends and seems to have no trouble remembering the wildly inconsistent rules of English. Olivia had started writing on her own, so I ran her through a couple of pages of "this is how to print letters properly" and now we're working on cursive. Her math is also going well. She has recently decided she can only add and subtract using manipulatives (blocks are her favorite, but fingers will work), so I'm looking for ways to slowly break her of the counting habit. It may not ever happen completely since I still count points on numbers when I do math on a piece of paper (in my head I'm fine, though!). Gretchen's letter recognition is nearly perfect (although she did somehow decide that W was P the other day). Other than letters, Gretchen's school work is mostly fun stuff -- mazes, stickers, and coloring sheets. She wanders in and out as she pleases, but generally at least starts the day's work with Olivia. Kaitlyn also wants to do school, so she has some coloring pages, a pair of safety scissors, and a dry erase marker that she can use on our wipe clean books. They are all kept out of reach when she's not using them. :-P
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