Nathan

Nathan has finally been bit by the reading bug. He was doing such a good job with his reading last school year, but since we moved in April, he has been less than enthusiastic about reading. It was to the point that if I could just get Nathan to read me a sentence, we were doing good. Even then, he would look for the shortest sentence. What was worse was that while Nathan was struggling with reading, Zachary was zooming way ahead and reading faster and better each day. Zachary became known as the better reader (I didn't label them that way, they labeled themselves.) That really made me sad for Nathan. I was really getting kind of worried about Nathan. When Zachary had to sound out a word, he only would sound it out once or twice and then after that, he remembered the word and he was able to read fast and fluently. Nathan on the other hand would sound out the same word each time he read it. I was starting to wonder if he had a learning disability. (I am probably a little paranoid since I work with kids that have learning disabilities.) Our family fasted and prayed for Nathan (we have more success getting Erin to fast if she feels like it is a worthy cause...fortunately she deemed Nathan a worthy cause.)

The past week has been terrific. Not only does he not fight me about reading a small sentence anymore, he started reading me several paragraphs. Now he is bringing me his books and asking me to listen to him read. I can tell that he has confidence now. That is all he lacked before. Mario sat and listened to Nathan read the other night and he later told me he was sad because he didn't know that Nathan had made so much progress. He felt like he had missed steps along the way. I assured Mario that he didn't miss anything. It was like a lightbulb turning on for Nathan and happened overnight. That is exactly what I prayed for.

Rodeo

I wouldn't consider us to be city people, but if you listened to the conversations that the kids had when we got out of the van on Monday for the Sonoita Labor Day Rodeo, you would have thought we have never seen the country before. Zachary was asking things like, "Are there going to be REAL horses here?" Mario and I were a little embarrassed. Everyone had on cowboy boots, hats, and huge belt buckles. We were quite the outsiders parking our mini van next to all the big Ford and Dodge Trucks. If that wasn't bad enough we stepped out in our tennis shoes and shorts.

It was great to see a "green" section of Arizona. It was about 10 degrees cooler and a lot greener than Tucson. I thought the rodeo would be fun for Erin since she is so in to horses. But after a couple hours, she was ready to go. She thought the announcer did way too much talking in between participants. But all in all, the kids had a great time watching four to six year-olds riding sheep and kids as young as five barrel racing. I have to admit, I had a hard time watching the 3 five-year-olds barrel racing. I was so nervous these tiny kids were going to fly off the horse. It made me feel pretty foolish for worrying so much about Erin on our recent trail ride. I think the kids favorite part was the snacks: popcorn, peanuts, and smoothies.

Erin bought herself a new hat that she has been wanting for a few months. She now looks sorta like a cowgirl, now time to buy the boots and the belt buckle...and if she got her wish...a horse!

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.