school - StarDance Press

Home Again

May 20, 2013 elouisebates

I woke up this morning with the strangest sense that I had left something undone. But what? I had even unpacked my suitcase before collapsing into bed last night! Then I remembered:

No blog post.

I almost always write these posts Sunday night, in order to have them up in good time Monday morning. Last night, though … well, it’s probably a good thing I did forget, because otherwise the post would look like this:

asfkjbarlsuhdflkgjbfkdjbgjskbg Graduated! sfkgjbnjlkjbjb..!

I was tired. It was an amazing weekend, watching my mom receive her Master’s hood (afterward, while I was helping Grace in the ladies’ room, a news photographer stopped by and took a picture of my gram, Mom, my sister, and Joy, to do a piece about the four generations in the paper. SO wish I hadn’t missed that!), bullying my pregnant sister into taking her vitamins every day and drink enough water, celebrating Grace’s birthday a little early, just enjoying being together with family.

But it was exhausting. Especially since my brother-in-law took out all four of Carl’s wisdom teeth on Thursday, leaving Carl pretty much non-functional for the rest of the weekend. Our trip to Ottawa on Sunday, intended to be the cap on a fantastic weekend, ended up being mostly a bust just because he was still having a hard time forming coherent thought and I was too tired by then to do the thinking for him. We wandered around Parliament, drove by the tulip beds, and came home with little more than a box of Timbits to show for it. Oh well. Another year.

We’re all doing much better after sleeping in our own beds. (and those Timbits were not scorned for breakfast today, let me tell you.) I’m even hoping to start first grade with Joy today.

(We’re starting right after finishing kindergarten, because we know we’ll be having to take time off during the year and I would rather start early than have to go late next spring, and also I’m a little concerned she’ll forget half of what she knows if we go a few months in between right now. Also I’m still really bad at sticking to a schedule, so the more time I have to form good habits, the better.)

Other exciting things will be happing soon. Magic Most Deadly is with my proofreader. The cover designer and I are trying to restrain ourselves from going overboard with shinies. I’m currently debating between finishing up a new Sophie short story, putting in more work on Magic Most Deadly’s prequel (this one set in Regency times!), or going over to the Louise Bates side and starting work on the 1930s historical fiction. I’m really strongly leaning toward the 1930s story, but … I would love to do some physical research on that first, going over to the area in which it is set and getting a real feel for it, but that’s not likely to happen until next summer. So I’m still dithering.

In the meantime, laundry, school, meal planning, and grocery shopping beckon. It was a great weekend, but it’s good to be home!

Books, children, goals, Life Talk, school

Reader

July 3, 2012 elouisebates

A possible near-future conversation between Joy and a librarian or teacher.

Librarian or Teacher, looking at Joy’s armful of books teetering nearly above her head: My, that’s a lot of books! Are you going to read all of them?

Joy: Yes, all by myself.

L or T: Really? How old are you?

Joy: I will be five in November.

L or T: And you can already read all those books by yourself? How did you learn to read so young?

Joy: I got bored.

End scene.

This kid, she amazes me. I really did start to teach her to read simply because she was bored. Bored to the point where she was getting into trouble out of frustration. She struggled a bit at first because it didn’t click immediately (and because I was an idiot and thought I could teach her with easy readers and flash cards – I’m sure that’s all some people need, but I am a lousy teacher and needed a curriculum), but we persevered (all of us – Joy and I did the official school books, but Carl would sit down and patiently work with her through regular books, even letting her read the bedtime stories sometimes), and then, ever so slowly, it started to come together. She would recognize one word when she saw it, then two. Then five. Then she could put together sentences. Then she started figuring out the whole “sound it out” business.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked through the living room and paused. Joy was curled up on the couch with “Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea,” which we had borrowed from the library last week and hadn’t had a chance to read together yet, and she was reading it. Out loud. By herself. Sounding out the words she didn’t know. Getting some of them wrong, but more of them right. Going back to re-read a sentence that she hadn’t added the proper emphasis to before. Immersed in her own world.

I very nearly burst into tears.

She finished that and picked up “Sam and the Firefly,” another library book, and read through that. Then she read through “Go Dog. Go!” She had to take a bathroom break partway through that one, and I sat in Carl’s study and listened as she read all the books we keep in there for the littles to look at while they use the potty (leftover habit from the days they were potty-training).

I quite honestly had a lump in my throat the rest of the evening. Reading has shaped my life, my very nature, for as long as I can remember. It has been one of the deepest desires of my heart that my children share the same passion and love for the written word as I have. Seeing this love take root in Joy is one of the most rewarding moments in parenthood I’ve had thus far.

She’s reading. My kid is reading.

It still blows my mind.

Now I just have to keep from going absolutely crazy on Amazon and buying every easy reader I can find. I just want to shower her with ALL THE BOOKS IN THE WORLD, but that’s what libraries are for, and I don’t want to deprive her of one of my other deep-set joys, which is finding those amazing books at the library, and the thrill of bringing them home to read.

Taken first thing this morning after she came downstairs. Please ignore the mound of clean laundry next to her. It was a long weekend.

I have a reader. A real live reader. Somebody pinch me!

By the way, the scene up top would never really happen. Joy hates talking to strange adults. I can’t really blame her; I’m not crazy about it either.

children, Life Talk, school

Obligatory Start of School Year Post

September 7, 2011 elouisebates

“So Louise,” you say, “What have you been up to lately?”

Funny you should ask!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned here before our plan to teach our littles at home. Our main reason for this is that both Carl and I feel that a classical education, or some form thereof, is going to give them the best tools for learning and growing their entire life. And that is not something that one can find in any public schools, or even most private. I love the holistic way classical education works, showing how everything is interconnected, I love that it teaches how to learn, instead of just imparting facts, I love, love, love that it gives them Latin at a young age so that they have a good solid base for almost any other language they want to learn in later years.

So. Yesterday I started preschool with Joy. It wasn’t in our original plan to do preschool at all – I have a rather Montessori approach to schooling for really little kids, in theory at least, that they learn best through unstructured play and exploring their world.

But Joy? She gets bored with unstructured play. And she really loves doing projects, or sitting down and practicing letters, or anything of that sort. So last year I bought a few workbooks just to see if she would like them, and she ate them up. So this year I firmly put my child’s individual preference ahead of my ideals and theories, and we are doing preschool. I ordered more workbooks from the same company (Kumon, in case anyone is curious – I know they don’t work for everyone, but they seem practically made for Joy), bought some flashcards (which she likes almost as much as the workbooks), and typed up a weekly schedule for her. We haven’t dived right into the new schedule yet, still using some of our other books (Hooked on Phonics, which she likes but doesn’t find anywhere near as challenging and satisfying as the Kumon books) because I’m still missing one workbook which I thought I had but ended up having to order …

But this isn’t about my absent-mindedness, although I suspect we’ll possibly have an episode like that every year. Joy is so happy to be “doing school” every day, and although I am emphatically not a natural teacher, I love seeing her blossom almost overnight with this new schedule.

I even wrote out a goal list of things I want to see Joy accomplish this year – both academic and personal, because for me, school is about so much more than just training the mind, but about developing healthy lifestyle habits as well. Which is why “explore new ideas” is one item on the list, as well as “learn to write name,” “learn to count to 100,” and “learn to control temper” (I suspect that one will go on the goal list Every Single Year); and “skate forward and backward” (figure skating is our PE!) is right next to “learn music” (yes, that one is vague, but I’m still not sure what we’ll be doing for music. Joy insists she wants to learn banjo, but I’m thinking we might need to start with something more basic, first). Education! It’s so much more than readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic.

Grace, I suspect, will be my Montessori kid, which also ought to be fun, especially once I’ve gotten used to Joy’s learning style and have to retrain myself all over again to figure out what works best for Gracie, but I am adapting as I need, and the reward of my kid’s beaming face as she finishes up the last of last year’s workbooks before starting the new is enough for me.

Hope this wasn’t too boring for you all to read! I promise, I will do a writing-related post soon. How many of you sent your kids off to school this week, or started school at home? Were your kids excited or dreading the school year? If you do homeschool, do you follow a particular method, and if so, why? Are you super-impressed by my not-quite four-year-old’s ability to mostly color within the lines?