Amy's lesson...guest post by Dad

The other day Amy and I were were working on Amy's word club where the teacher gives her 5 words to learn to spell... Or "master." I would say "Amy, please spell the word 'because'" then Amy would write the word on a piece of paper. I wasn't paying very close attention while Amy very quietly spelled all words perfectly.

In addition to being quiet (which is abnormal for her) she had a guilty look on her face. I asked her to hand the scrap paper that was near her. She said, "no, you don't need this. I'll just crumple it up." with hand motions and head bobs trying to be as casual as possible. I asked for the paper again. This time she said, "how about I'll just throw this in the trash?" She was working hard to not have me see that paper. next, she said I could have the paper but I could only look at one side.

It turns out she has written the words on that paper and used them to cheat. I very calmly confronted her and she finally she admitted to it and said "I was cheating".

We had good talk about the importance of doing work honestly...but it was hilarious the way she knew she was busted and tried so hard to cover it up. 5-6 must be the age that kids realize they have the ability to cheat and they know that cheating is wrong, but they need to test the waters.

Music and technology

Tonight was the first time that Reed wanted to make a very specific playlist for the iPod Touch (which he inherited from Tod a few months ago). There are many songs on the Kids Music playlist and mostly, he just didn't want the Wiggles to pop up for him anymore - he's waaay too grown up for that. It was fun putting it together, having him think through which songs and artists he really liked and wanted to put on his playlist.

For this initial run at putting together his favorites, we included Justin Roberts, Barenaked Ladies' kids album, Recess Monkey, TMBG, we've also got some pirate stories on CD that are on there, the Philadelphia Chickens CD that goes with the book, a little Ziggy Marley, a Phineas & Ferb album. You know, the classics. :)

I can't imagine having this capability at the same age - having access to so much music that I liked, being able to control and organize it how I wanted to – oh, I would have been so thrilled!! It's not quite the same as when I was a teenager making mix tapes, recording songs off the radio, but I guess it's the equivalent. I think the apple didn't fall too far from the tree, and that makes me happy.

She's officially a Daisy!

Last night was Amy's investiture in Daisies. It's been off to kind of a slow start with the program, so they haven't done a whole lot yet, but she's enjoying it. We hope she'll get a lot out of Scouting, I know she has had fun with the girls in her group. Here she is with Riley, Claire and Emma, who are all in her class with Mrs. Mitkowski.

Random

We made it to 2011. 2010 was difficult, so here's hoping for a better year.

Several random things, I suppose. Most recent would be that Amy lost her second tooth! To backtrack a bit, though, she lost her first tooth on December 21 – and can you believe that she swallowed it?!? It'd been verrrrrry lose for a while, but she didn't want anyone to mess with it. Finally, she was eating a cupcake and it came loose and down the hatch it went. She handled it very well (and thankfully didn't ever ask for us to try to find the tooth...ick!) – she wrote the tooth fairy a note ("Dear Tooth Fairy - I accidentally swallowed my tooth. Love, Amy" and the Tooth Fairy still delivered! Yesterday, the kids were playing Pokemon on the trampoline, when Reed ran in and said "Amy lost her tooth!"....and there she came, crying hysterically. She thought she'd swallowed the tooth, but we asked if she felt it go down and she didn't think so...we headed outside with very little hope of actually finding the teeny tiny tooth, but there it was! It was on the edge of the trampoline, sooo very close to falling down into the mess of fallen leaves, never to be seen again. Whew, what a relief! She tucked it under her pillow and the Tooth Fairy brought her another shiny gold dollar.

Over the last couple of weeks, Reed has taken to waking up extra early. He turns on his music, grabs a book, and just hangs out reading. He says some days he wakes up at 5:30 a.m., other times 6 or a bit later. But instead of trodding down the hall to our room like he used to, he's content to spend some quiet time on his own. Or he takes a book into the bathroom for a morning constitutional. Today when I went in his room at about 6:20, I asked what he was up to. The response: "I'm multi-tasking – I'm reading and I'm listening to music!".

Tonight Tod and the kids were playing a game and Amy was such a rotten sport. Fortunately we now have the benefit of having seen Reed go through the same process and eventually make it to where he's a good sport almost all of the time. So no worries, just ignore it. She'll grow up all too soon.

The theme of second grade for Reed, as evidenced by the previous post, seems to be "Excellent, but sloppy." Reed's work is consistently good, but he rushes through. His teacher wants all the students to get an Accelerated Reader from the library each week, then take the test about the book. Last week he took the test on a book he hadn't even finished (he lost interest in it) – he still got 6 out of 10 right, but it was a drop-off from his usual scores, of course. His teacher guessed that he's just trying to be the one in the class who takes the most AR tests.

Amy can now read some Level 2 books on her own, and is even reading to us at bedtime sometimes. It's so great to see her grow in that way, and I can't wait 'til she's able to sit and really read books and enjoy it. She does both the regular homework and the challenge homework every day at her Quantum Leaps in-home day care program, without complaint or incident. Such a huge difference from Reed's kindergarten homework days!! Just about every single day of kindergarten was a fight with him, but Amy seems to enjoy doing the work, and receiving feedback on it – her teacher is great about making notes on her work. Reed's homework this year is going a lot easier, except the much-dreaded Thursday homework – word search. These are generic, computer-generated word searches based on his spelling words and they are 100% torturous. The words are very hard to find, they go backwards and upside down, and it's just ridiculous. We've had some success recently with encouraging Reed to find a few words one day before finishing the word search up on Thursdays – that's helped him to be less frustrated with it. But what a ridiculous, pointless exercise.

We had a nice Winter Break and Christmas/New Year. Tod's Dad came for a weeklong visit, which was wonderful – it had been a while since he was able to visit and we all enjoyed having him here. Things were definitely not the same without my Mom, but we all did the best we could, and took a moment when we needed to. Life does go on, for the living. This winter break we refrained from trying to pack in a million activities...we really didn't do anything except visit with family in various configurations. This year was our first to host our family's Christmas Eve Eve dinner, which was something Mom used to do. We had a nice meal, then played some cards, kept it low-key. We had our usual Christmas Eve at the Wenzells, went to church with Poppy, had Christmas morning at our house, then Christmas dinner at the Mitchells. Christmas dinner leftovers at the Mitchells the following day, too. We started a new tradition, doing a 3K walk/run on New Year's Eve afternoon, which was an adventure. Reed thought he wanted to run it, but that was a bit beyond his abilities – he ended up skipping a good portion of the race, leaving his Aunt Jennifer in the dust, in favor of running with our friend Wendi. Oops! Amy walked the entire thing, which was great. We had our usual New Year's day chili dinner at the Mitchells as well, which was quite tasty. All our family gatherings included lots of board games, card games and puzzles.

The big news at our house was two new additions – on December 12 we got not one but two dogs! Clearly we lost our minds to do such a nutty thing. Shelby is a now 7-month old Beagle mix (maybe with pit bull?), and Bobby is a now 2-year old Bassett hound/Beagle mix. We got them from a rescue group, and boy did that decision happen quickly. More on them later...right now it's past my bed time!

Speed Racer

The other day, Reed got a new Harry Potter book at bedtime. He and Tod read a chapter together, then he took it to school the next day. He came home and said he'd finished the whole thing, and the book is 352 pages! We thought it was curious that he'd have so much time to read during school, so we asked his 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Dingus -- here's her response:

I require the children to always have a book handy when their work is done. I am truly amazed at his speed in reading. He seems to pay attention to my lesson, complete his assignments (although messy) and then read at every free moment. This is a great skill he has. Sometimes though, his speed misses important details in a story. He is very gifted, though.

She's always gotta harp on his messiness, but a nice note anyway!

Kindergarten's going great!

Amy and Mrs. Mitkowski at
meet the teacher day

Amy is doing so well in kindergarten, just like we thought she would. She is excited about everything they're learning, and is enjoying the structure and organization of the classroom. We are so incredibly fortunate to have gotten Mrs. Mitkowski and Mrs. Cote as her teachers – Mrs. Mitkowski really seems to see what Amy needs, and takes the time to do things that will help her. Amy has quickly learned to use lower case letters and is really reading, though I think she still doesn't feel 100% comfortable and confident with her abilities – she doesn't feel ready to sit and read on her own, though I think she's pretty well capable of it. Amy wanted to learn to write her name in cursive, so Tod showed her how and she's been busy perfecting her signature.

Amy learned to tie her shoes last month....just before she broke her wrist. She got that cast off yesterday, thankfully, so now we can get back to wearing tie shoes and reinforce her abilities. And that cast – it didn't slow her down one tiny bit. She's a bit too much of a pro at it...here's hoping for no more broken bones!

Today was our first parent-teacher conference with Mrs. Mitkowski. She reviewed how Amy did on the PALS (Phonological Literacy Awareness Screening) testing. The expected benchmark for kids as they start kindergarten is a score of 27 (I think that's right – somewhere in the 20s) and then they'd like kids to be up to a score of 81 by the end of the school year. Amy started the year with a score of 85. Wow.

Mrs. Mitkowski also said "You know Mrs. Cote and I try not to have favorites, but Amy just captured our hearts from the very first day." Wow, is that nice!

So far, so good!

You've got to be kidding!

Well, she's gone and done it again. On Thursday, October 7, Amy fell off a bike at her after-school program. I got there to pick her up about two minutes after she fell. I had a feeling, based on the way she was crying, that she truly was injured. I took her home and we tried to figure out how bad it was. She said her wrist really hurt, but said the pain was a 5 on the 1-10 pain scale, with 10 being how much it hurt when she broke her humerus. She could move her arm and bend her wrist forward but refused to bend her wrist back. About a half-hour of indecision later, I figured I should just take her to the urgent care and get it x-rayed.

Off we went, back to the same urgent care that missed her broken arm earlier this year. This time we got a doctor whose specialty was sports medicine, so I felt more hopeful that they'd get it right. Sure enough, she had a buckle fracture of the distal radius (the bone that connects to your thumb). Evidently kids' bones are soft and sometimes they can buckle, much like a soda can when it's crushed. She fell on her wrist just the wrong way. They bandaged her up and we went on our way. She got a super cool blue cast the next morning – two and a half weeks of that and she'll be good as new.

Same arm (right) as before....three months to the day. How crazy is that! We're thinking we might need to wrap her in bubble wrap every time we leave the house from now on.