Morning School

When I signed the boys up for afternoon kindergarten, my intention was to work with them in the mornings with some more challenging work. It has been almost 2 months since they started school and I am proud to say that I have worked with them I think every morning except when I was in San Diego. But even then, my mom worked with them. We don't work long, usually a little less than an hour. But it has been great. There are some mornings I dread it and would rather clean my house or do something more fun. But I resist the urge to skip it because I know if I skip it once, it will be easy to skip it again the next day.

We have been working on math, reading, and spelling. I have been using materials from my tutoring. So far the boys have learned how to spell the following sight words: would, could, should, were, some, says, your, Mrs., Mr., for, have, what, they, said, was, do, from, are, of does, and goes. They have also learned the following unit syllables: all, ank, ink, onk, unk, ang, ing, ong, and ung. We practice reading each day for a few minutes. It is fun to watch each of them develop and see, even though they are twins, they have far different strengths. Zach excels in reading while Nathan excels in spelling. In math, we have been working on adding and subtracting and learning place value. We even started doing some fractions after Nathan and Zachary showed some interest in them while we were driving to the rodeo the other day. I am so happy with the progress they are making.

In our home, we spell anything we don't want the kids to know what we are saying. Obviously that hasn't worked on Eric and Erin for a long time. But now it no longer works with Nate and Zach. Erin gets really annoyed that they can spell now because she can no longer communicate with me without them knowing what she is saying. She also gets mad because she doesn't think I should teach them so much because then they will be bored in school like her. I tell her there are worse problems than being bored in school, I don't feel too bad for her.

Here are some sample writing samples from the boys. One is from early August and one from today. Zach's handwriting has really improved and Nathan's has always been pretty good.

Zachary-8/3/09 (with a little note from Nate on the bottom...Zachary is awesome)

Zachary's writing today...9/9/09

Nathan 8/3/09

Nathan today...9/9/09

Allergy Tests

Eric is still undergoing different tests to see if the doctor can find a cause for his occasional migraines. He recently had an MRI and saw an eye doctor. Fortunately the MRI came back perfect and Eric's vision seems fine. The next step was to see an Allergist. Poor Eric got poked 80+ times in his back. I don't think Eric had any severe reactions to any of the items they tested, but he did have slight reactions to the following foods:

Shrimp, avocado, beef, peanuts, chicken, trout, hazelnut,

peach, grapefruit, cherry, plum, yeast, and oyster.

So the doctor asked Eric not to eat any of the above foods for the next 4 weeks to see if it makes any differences in his migraines. Most of those are pretty easy to avoid, but yeast...that is a hard one. The good news, for me anyway, is that he is not allergic to wheat. Maybe we can have pasta for the next 4 weeks! I would save a lot of money and energy on cooking! Poor Eric, no more hamburgers, sandwiches, pizza...at least for 4 weeks anyways.

Math Counts

Mario and I try to encourage our children to get as much math as possible. We were excited when Eric came home and told us that he chose Math Counts as his elective this year in 7th grade. Now before you call him a nerd, let me say, the alternatives were things like chorus and band. So math didn't sound to bad compared to music classes. To get into Math Counts, you have to have a strong background in Math. Fortunately Eric was selected to be in the class. His teacher recently sent home a newsletter with some samples of math problems that they work on. I consider Mario and I pretty good at math, but some of these problems made us say "What in the World?!" You can test your math skills with some of these sample problems:

The average age of a group of teachers and students is 20. The average age of teachers is 35. The average age of students is 15. What is the ratio of teachers to students? Express your answer as a fraction in simplest form.

Find the smallest positive whole number that does not contain the digit 9, but it is divisible by 999.

George has a combination lock with the numbers 0 -39. He must enter three numbers in the correct order to open the lock. He tells his friend Jordy that one of the numbers is 23. What is the probability that Jordy guesses George's combination correctly?

It gives me a headache just trying to figure out how to start figuring these problems out. Today we took Eric to Subway for lunch. We told him it was a working lunch and he needed to show us how to solve that first problem (on his napkin.) Mario and I thought that the problem was definitely missing some important information. But Eric quickly showed us how to solve the problem.

Nice Try!

When I went upstairs to put the laundry away, I realized that the boys had been very quiet so I figured they must be playing in their room. When I went in their room to put their laundry away, they weren't there. So then I proceeded to go look for them. As I was walking out of their room, Zach walked up and asked me as any mother would ask their child, "what are you doing?" I about laughed. He had this look on his face that he was busted, but he was trying to get out of it by questioning me, like I was doing something wrong. Turns out, he was confiscating a gift that he had recently given to Erin. He said he was taking it back because Erin wasn't being nice. So, he really was up to no good and he was busted. Nice try Zachary!

Bedtime

Eric usually doesn't let his lack of sleep affect his behavior or mood. So Mario and I aren't too strict with him on his bedtime. Often times, we go to bed before him. But, the last few days he has been going to sleep at 8 with the exception of last night when he had Boy Scouts and then an outing with Mario to the ice cream shop until almost 9 pm.

He told me this morning that he likes going to bed at 8 pm now. He feels so much better in the mornings. I was glad that I didn't have to say anything to him about adjusting his bedtime to help him recover from all his extra-curricular activities. He's growing up. I bet he wouldn't admit to any of his friends he plans to go to bed so early, but I am hoping he sticks with this new routine and we no longer find him reading in bed until 10 pm or later.

Erin's horses

While Mario and I were in San Diego recently we were looking for a small gift to bring back to Erin. We came across a horse drawing book but decided not to buy it since I didn't think Erin liked to draw horses. When we returned from our trip, she was excited to show us what she had drawn while we were gone. Goes to show, we have a lot to learn about Erin and her varied interests.

Interviews

We try to hold weekly interviews with each of the kids. Unfortunately they usually end up being monthly interviews because we get busy and forget. The saying "A way to a man's heart is through his stomach" must apply to boys as well. I always ask the kids how we, as parents, can improve. Nathan's answer was to make more macaroni and cheese. Zachary's was to let him eat Trix cereal. Eric's answer was to not make him any more ham sandwiches for lunch.

I am not kidding, this is what all the boys said individually without hearing the other's responses. I guess they only area I need improving with my boys is in the meals. (I wish that were true.)

For those wondering what Erin said...Erin is a typical girl and always thinking she is being shortchanged. Her complaint was that Mario and I take the good cruises (Alaska) and only took her on one cheap cruise. I told her I guess since she didn't appreciate the one cruise, we won't take her on anymore.