School stuff

Lemme see... Not a whole lot going on here today. The kids are doing great with their school stuff, except Adam has a fear of numbers. I have the same thing I suppose, but he sees a number and he's ready to run for the hills. Ok, not quite. He just keeps telling himself that he can't do math and then he gets all panicky about it. We're trying to lay low with them for now and not stress the kids out with cramming info in their heads. Our main project with the kids is to get them feeling settled and safe in a family. But we do have them do some book-work though, so that by the time we are ready (and speaking English!), they will know all their letters and sounds, numbers and sequences. Dot-to-dots have been hard for him, yet good for him. He has gotten tons better at them, but he still tells himself he can't do it without asking us at every dot what comes next. If we give him a list of numbers with one missing, he panics and can't do it. If, however, I take a number off of the calendar without him looking, and ask him what goes there, he can tell me without much problem. It's sitting him down with a pencil and making him stare at a number that scares him. Another Ukie-adopter-homeschool-mom recommended what she called "potato chip math." She said when her boy came home she would say, "How many chips do you want?" and he would say a number. Then she would purposely give him less and ask how many more he needed to make that number. Then she'd say, "That's because 2+4=6!" That's Adam's kind of mathematics! (Mine too... where were my chips in Algebra class?)

I took the kids to Walmart today and we shopped for a letter. (Might have mentioned doing that before, as today isn't the first time we've done this.) If the kids are having a hard time remembering what a certain letter looks like during school-time, when I take them shopping that week, we go hunting for that letter. We find the letters on signs, on labels, etc., etc. Wow, has that helped a lot, and the kids think it's fun. (They can say their alphabet perfectly, but we're still working on recognizing the letters in print.)

Speaking of, Adam was looking at the pictures in a Reader's Digest that we had laying around, and he asked me what a word said that was graffiti written on a bus. It said, "Kill," which wasn't the nicest word, but oh well, that's what it said. Anyway, as I was wishing it said something else, he started to sound it out, and lo and behold, he read it! Couldn't believe it! (I'm not pressuring them to read at all right now. Until they are really speaking English well, I don't want to tackle that project. Makes no sense to learn to read a language you don't speak. Working on the basics here.) Anyway, I was pretty proud, and it was a big relief to me that he is intuitively sounding things out. Hopefully that will make it easier once we sit down more formally to do so.

As we were reading today, all of a sudden Liana stopped me and said, "what 'instead?'" (I had just read that Belle wanted the Beast to take her instead of her papa). I got to camp a minute to explain it, and she seemed satisfied, so we continued. (Believe me, our Liana would definitely let me know if she didn't understand! She asks more questions when we read of any little kid I've ever seen. It amazes me that the other two kids don't slug her to make her be quiet as they try to listen. Nobody has yet, though one night when Aleksa asked more questions than normal, Liana told her to "be quiet!") Anyway, we got toward the end of the book where Belle tells the Beast she loves him, and Adam piped up, "Spell broken, dah, Mama?" My first reaction was, "How on earth do you know about spells being broken?!" and then I read the next line which said that the "spell was broken." It's amazing how much they learn from books, and how much they remember. I know I've only read that book a few times before.

The dollhouse is still in one piece! And strangely enough, Adam has claimed it. I'm still scratching my head about that, but it does have duct tape all over it, and Papa made it with his Swiss Army knife, so maybe he just figures it was a handyman project for "guys?" Who knows. But, it's in his room among his cars, balls and legos. Adam just likes to have stuff. This is the same kid who hung my kitchen clock in his bedroom closet when we first came home. Thankfully, his gimmes have tamed down a LOT. I no longer have to pat him down at the store, though I still do watch him like a hawk just to make sure.