The Progeny
*sigh*
The sun shines (depicted by the open hand) as farmer Trevor maneuvers the Lego planter out of it's barn.
(there was another picture with fist closed (depicting the moon) but the open-legged shorts created something of a wardrobe malfunction which Ma deemed it best not to share)
With uncommon skill the huge planter is gracefully manipulated onto the field of worn pine boards.
Ethan built the monster yesterday.
____________
On an unrelated note, I've become most frustrated with my efforts to teach Trevor to read. He's a smart little whip but the Alphaphonics which I've used on the last seven children seems to be both uninspiring and perhaps deficient for Trevor's needs.
I get tired of going back over and reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. He's gotten lazy and started just guessing after the first letter of many words, as well as clipping his words so short that I can't always distinguish between his short vowel sounds.
Frankly, I'm just weary of the whole process, though I keep telling myself, "He's the last one you have to teach to read...he's the last one..." And I KNOW it will be exciting when he gets past this hump and past the long vowels and past the blends, and....
So I googled the old method I used on Ardith and Sharon in Indiana, Hear, See, Say... which I'd borrowed free from the Warsaw library. (this was back in the days when we could visit the library once per week instead of once every two months)
Found one set in a library in Wichita, Kansas, but since that seems a tad far to drive, I located what I think is an updated version with a cassette tape at Amazon. There were 8 copies from 8 different sellers, ranging in price from 40 cents to $168.00!!
I decided to go with the 7th ($6.00) which was "like new condition" and included the cassette tape.
I'm pretty sure that last seller is completely nuts.
I would also encourage women to think really, really hard before having children after the age of 40. Maybe 35.
All cuteness and motherly love aside, most people have no idea how tired one can get near age 50. And of course, if someone had given me that advice at 38 I would have just laughed in their face and called them a wimp who didn't have enough faith in God... Like so many things, this is just more wasted breath, ha, ha.
Thankfully, I'm going off shopping in a few minutes.
By myself.
It's not the three days alone in a motel that I need, but I guess it'll do for now :-)
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(there was another picture with fist closed (depicting the moon) but the open-legged shorts created something of a wardrobe malfunction which Ma deemed it best not to share)
With uncommon skill the huge planter is gracefully manipulated onto the field of worn pine boards.
Ethan built the monster yesterday.
____________
On an unrelated note, I've become most frustrated with my efforts to teach Trevor to read. He's a smart little whip but the Alphaphonics which I've used on the last seven children seems to be both uninspiring and perhaps deficient for Trevor's needs.
I get tired of going back over and reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. He's gotten lazy and started just guessing after the first letter of many words, as well as clipping his words so short that I can't always distinguish between his short vowel sounds.
Frankly, I'm just weary of the whole process, though I keep telling myself, "He's the last one you have to teach to read...he's the last one..." And I KNOW it will be exciting when he gets past this hump and past the long vowels and past the blends, and....
So I googled the old method I used on Ardith and Sharon in Indiana, Hear, See, Say... which I'd borrowed free from the Warsaw library. (this was back in the days when we could visit the library once per week instead of once every two months)
Found one set in a library in Wichita, Kansas, but since that seems a tad far to drive, I located what I think is an updated version with a cassette tape at Amazon. There were 8 copies from 8 different sellers, ranging in price from 40 cents to $168.00!!
I decided to go with the 7th ($6.00) which was "like new condition" and included the cassette tape.
I'm pretty sure that last seller is completely nuts.
I would also encourage women to think really, really hard before having children after the age of 40. Maybe 35.
All cuteness and motherly love aside, most people have no idea how tired one can get near age 50. And of course, if someone had given me that advice at 38 I would have just laughed in their face and called them a wimp who didn't have enough faith in God... Like so many things, this is just more wasted breath, ha, ha.
Thankfully, I'm going off shopping in a few minutes.
By myself.
It's not the three days alone in a motel that I need, but I guess it'll do for now :-)
Tweet
posted by Ma Hoyt | 12:49 PM
3 Comments:
I'm no reading expert, and I'm for sure no homeschooling expert, but I do have one little story about reading and homeschooling. When our oldest was approaching Kindergarten age we were living overseas and I decided it was time to teach him how to read. I got the ba-be-bi-bo-bu method (I think it was from Abeka) and started in. After a period of honest effort, I was in tears that this cute child of mine was retarded--why couldn't he say ba-be-bi-bo-bu?? Then somehow we got out flashcards and wrote "airplane" on them and he was reading in no time.
Later, I learned there are names for the different ways people learn to read.
The end of the story, my retarded child got a graduate degree from Harvard, and we all lived happily ever after. (And he still can't read things like new place names phonetically.)
That's a good story, Thainamu :-)
I'm thinkin' the last three--all boys--would have liked some way to sit in front of the computer and learn to read without human interaction :-p
It sounds like your perseverance paid off and you and your oldest found out what worked in his situation. (I suppose that once I chill out things will be OK)
Of course, your story could also say something about Harvard, but I don't really want to go there...
On a somewhat related note, this same child had a difficult time learning Spanish in high school. He couldn't seem to get the phonetics idea that you say what you see and you write what you hear. When he tried to take AP Spanish, the teacher made him get out before he failed. (He enrolled in beginning Latin instead.)
Fast forward a few years, and this same student did a college semester in Costa Rica and actually learned how to speak Spanish by speaking Spanish. He went on to marry a Spanish speaker and today supervises 40+ employees entirely in Spanish.
Same moral of the story--not everyone learns the same way.
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