Reading with David

Although we are beginning later than I had wanted, we are finally moving into full gear (2nd-gear, at least) with David's reading. Jaime's new schedule has allowed us more breathing room for this kind of structure. Additionally, David is developing a growing awareness of reading and the benefit to him.

We had our biggest break-through last week when he finally got the idea of blending sounds together rather than pronouncing them separately like syllables. That seemed to happen overnight. One day he is saying "cuh-aaa-tuh" and the next day "cat." Additionally, I began using techniques for teaching that I learned when helping teach a learning-disabled child. It is a system that curbs the amount of frustration that comes with trying to answer a question he doesn't fully understand the answer to, while still giving him incentive to figure it out on his own, while not taxing his attention span.

Lord have mercy, he is squirmy. Every ten seconds I am asking him to put his bottom on his chair and his feet in front of him. I am the same way still.

So, now his primary barrier to reading is his own willingness. It is something else that mom and dad (especially dad) want him to do so, even though he wants to learn to read, it is sometimes more important to test the limits of his own will by refusing to cooperate. I am being as dexterous as I can be here. I really do not want reading to become a power struggle. So far so good though. I generally only have to ask him twice to compare the understanding of evil and human nature as depicted in "Les Miserables" and "Crime and Punishment." When he gets it right, he gets a sticker.

Later squirmy fans.

"Best Buddy" the final episode

Sick Simon

Simon has been feverish and vomiting for 24 hours now.  He is not doing as poorly as we have seen in the past, but he feels pretty miserable.  Breaks my heart to see him this way.

"Best Buddy" Episode II

We filmed this at the end of the day so David was getting kind of worn out (hard to believe, I know). He had been singing these all day. So they aren't quite as imaginative as they had been earlier in the day. Nevertheless I think they still reflect the bold creative genius of the thrash-toddler-mosh-haze genre.

Best Buddy, the video sensation that is sweeping blogs around this house

David told me on the way home from grandpa's that he would sing me his new song and I was intrigued. His mom reminded him at dinner. While I am always entertained by David's attempts to, um, entertain, nothing could have prepared me for what happened next. Over the next couple of days, I'm sharing a nugget of the improv rock poetry deliciousness with you.

Enjoy.

Cute cap

Jaime phoned me a photo of her latest hat. She didn't make for herself, but she sure looks cute in it.

Pasta

So, we made pasta last week. Sometime during the summer, Grandma Suzie gave a real eye-TAL-yen pasta makin' contraption. This thing is so authentic, the directions are in seven languages and none of them are American. We had to use British directions.

Aunt Marla was in town, so we invited her and Aunt Skylar over and made a morning of it. Lots of fun. We took pictures and I made a set called "cooking" for this and future such endevors.

David takes his pasta very seriously.

Simon played quietly with the left over flour crumbs the entire time.

Yes, we bleached all the surfaces that the pasta touched

AHGHG! MY FINGER, YOU ARE CRANKING THE WRONG WAY!
It is amazing how long your index finger gets when you set the press to "5"

1.5 hours later. Simon is still playing with the flour crumbs.

This is a test--Simon's water

I am testing a new add-on that would allow me to update more easily. 

Simon regularly wakes up in the middle of the night demanding a drink of water.  One night, however, I heard the pitter-patter of little feet and went to investigate.  He had gotten up, walked into the bathroom, climbed up in the toilet from which he can reach the sink, and pulled out his pacifier and set it on the toilet tank.  He didn't notice me standing in the door watching as he filled the cup with water, took a drink, dumped the rest of the water in the sink, put the bink back in his mouth and climbed down from the toilet.  He noticed me with a start as he walked back to his bed.  But he has never done that since, which I frankly would prefer.

Craft day, pipe cleaner finger puppets

Jaime and the boys made adorable finger puppets with pipe cleaners and felt. Here is a photo of Simon's dragon. Jaime wants me to be sure you know what a great job David did thoroughly cleaning the play area of the basement today. We'll be renting him out soon.

Sick Simon and growing David

We drove to Manhattan last night to see dad. Simon fell asleep on the way, but not the whole way. He woke up grumpy, complained of his tummy hurting and rested on his mom's shoulder the entire rest of the evening. He was a bit under the weather in the morning but seemed fine when I saw him in the evening.

I spoke with David on the phone this afternoon and marveled at how different he sounds. His inflection, the sound of his voice, and the things he talks about reflect a boy who is, for all intents and purposes, a five-year-old. He is already planning his fifth birthday party, which you are invited too.

Having hung the Simon-bait on the branch, David runs to his hiding place
to wait for the boogy man to fall for his trap.

On the couch, in the woods.

Last week, Jaime sheared the boys, dressed them up in flannel, and took their pictures.



Then on Saturday, I sat them down myself for a photoshoot.




On Sunday afternoon, the weather was perfect for a three-hour walk in the woods, with dad, and his camera:

Chapter books, great books, award-winning books, and letters

We've passed another milestone on the path to literacy. Last week, I began reading David a chapter book--Stuart Little. Previous most bedtime reading was stories that we could get through in a single sitting. The occasional exception might be when I simply did not have it in me to Bartholomew Cubbins start-to-finish for the 1,000th time and I would split it over two nights. But I came across our copy of Stuart Little while cleaning a couple of weeks ago and decided to give it a go.


It is a great choice for first chapter book. Each chapter is only five-or-six pages most of them have a plot arc within them. The language is for the most part direct and simple with just the right amount of advanced vocabulary. It is fairly entertaining for the child and the adult. David is eating it up. I am impressed with the amount of information he retains as well as his over-all interest in the book. Simon could not be more painfully bored. But he has his own milestone that I'll get to in a minute.

So onward and upward with the chapter books. If you have recommendations for a four-year-old, I would love to hear them. I assume when we get to the end of this one, David will want me to start it over again, so there is no rush. But we have reached the next step in his library building.

Speaking of reading, I have been thinking about Great Books for kids. I plan to focus the boy's education around a "Great Books" curriculum to the degree that I am able and want to get started. You know how you can get a quadrillion books of Bible stories for children? Well we would certainly love a high-quality volume of those. But I also want some stories of Great Literature for children. These are more difficult to come by, but they are out there--teh stories of writers like Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Melville, Dickens etc. as well as the standard classic stories for children. Also, I have found some selections of poetry, as well as children's versions of stories from the Arabian Nights. That last one demonstrates the difficult waters we get into here. I brought a children's telling of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves home from the library forgetting that it is a story of gore, dismemberment (and rememberment), and boiling oil. I had to practically make up a new story and skip over certain pictures as I was reading it. Please do not feel obligated to find Titus for kids. But I want to get David started on as much of this as possible. I would like him to be familiar with the Great Books of Western Civilization starting with the stories contained therein. Frankly, it the only way I'll become familiar with them myself.

My second general recommendation is this article about Caldecott winners. By those for Christmas. Get some for David and Simon, too. The only Caldecott that I know we own is Where the Wild Things Are.

As for Simon's milestone--letters in the environment. When we are out and about, he has begun pointing out letters and numbers. Not by name, usually, but just as general fact; "letters daddy!" Signs on buildings, mostly. This is interesting to me because I don't recall David ever doing this. Simon seems generally more interested in letters than David ever has been. He is also more interested in coloring than David generally ever has been.

Ssss Ehhh Ksss

I am very proud to announce that David has passed an important milestone on the path to literacy. We work with him quite a bit on letter sounds and he pretty much knows the what sound each letter makes (well, at least one sound per letter anyway). He is still struggling a bit with short vowel distinctions. But he has not been able to mush the sounds together into a word. He has not been able to get C-A-T from "Kuh. Aaa. Tuh" to "cat."

Until yesterday. For the first time he looked at a series of letters, not as several unrelated sounds, but as a pronounced unit.

We were in Brooke's truck where he was messing with a promotional beach ball containing this logo:

Which he proudly parsed as "SEX."

So, we had to remind him that "C" can be hard, as in "cat" but I did not let the significance of his effort pass.

We are on the way to literacy. Perhaps Freudian literary criticism, even.

Look! New photos up on Flickr!

Throwing in the towel, over and over

What is up with the spilling?!?! Can we not get through one single meal without someone spilling there drink? We have reverted back to the sippy cup with Simon because, even though he perfectly capable of delicately sipping a fine Chablis from a crystal glass, when he gets bored with his meal, he has to conduct hydro-entertainment experiments with his cup. David is simply distracted and clumsy. Then tonight, I had carefully set both boys' cups out away from them and there wildly gesticulating robot-velociraptor-tentacle-laser arms. In doing so, they were within reach of my gracelessness and I knocked one over.

We are averaging two towels per meal this week.

Don't let Simon drive the tanker.

House Party One would have been ok

As I have mentioned, if David gets up early in the morning, he gets to watch TV so that, left to his own devices, he doesn't burn the house down or wake up his mom (in no particular order of importance). This morning, he awoke just as I was getting my socks on to leave. I grabbed the remote, activated the toob, and pressed in channel eight--PBS--so he could watch some Clifford, the Commercial Free Dog (with the help of viewers like you). No, he wanted "five, eight" Disney. Who showed him that? Well, I didn't have time to stick around and see what would be on Disney at seven am and I am not comfortable with him watching commercial TV by himself (well I am not comfortable with him watching any TV, but you don't care). Channel eight or nothing. He went. To. Pieces. Flopping around on the couch and crying real tears. Then he explained that when I left he was just going to change it to five, eight himself even if I put the remote up on top of the TV because he can get it there by climbing up on the furniture.

Now, when I type it out like that, I am inclined to think that I probably should have unplugged the TV at that point put the remote in the garbage disposal. But he was so cute. He was trying to be defiant but was just pitiful and clearly had no idea of the gravity of what he was saying. Plus, I didn't have time to peel him off the ceiling. So I reiterated that it was eight or nothing and he acquiesced. He even hugged me before I left.

So, what did I deprive him over over on the Disney channel? According the TV Guide, Little Einsteins followed by the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. And I just realized, he had the channel wrong. Disney is 45. "Five, eight" is Comedy Central, where he would have been watching House Party II.

David gets the remote

More on the genius of WALL-E

Basically, any configuration of Legos can be declared some character from the film.

Social carnotaur

I sat on the couch reading Saturday afternoon while Simon napped and David played outside. Occasionally I would peek out the window to check on him. He was running around with a boy who is six or seven and girl who is eight or nine. I am not sure what they were doing as they roamed over the parking lot and the "island" in the middle of the lot, but it was clear that the two older kids were setting the agenda, playing with each other, and that David was floating around the periphery, participating as much as possible. I give the older kids credit for including him to the degree that they did, but he seemed to be working hard for their attention. My first reaction was pity, but I checked myself.

I have to give David props for his ability to socialize. He will walk up to anyone of about any age, befriend them, and play well with them. He generally does not overwhelm and rarely allows himself to be pushed around. We had been to the Mall playground that morning where there were many kids of all ages. Among them were four boys between the ages of 3 and 5 running around and around (and around and around). David ran up to one of them, struck his Velociraptor pose with hooked fingers, and hissed menacingly. The boy he was challenging struck a similar pose and hissed back. And they were fast friends for the next hour, running circuits, chasing, switching from game to game. Sometimes David led, sometime he followed, all the time he enjoyed himself immensely.

I don't need to pity him during those times when he tackles a larger social situation. He is happy to be on the periphery of some older kids' play for awhile, but I know he will not remain there long.

Burned

Simon has a second degree burn along the half-inch length of the back of his right thumb's proximal phalanx. I normally do not let Simon in the kitchen because he is stubbornly resolved to tear it apart or in some way injure himself. Today, when I excused the boys after breakfast and began cleaning, Simon wanted to stay in his seat. He does this sometimes--usually before meals--sits in his chair and watches me prepare or clean up. I was doing the dishes and didn't notice that his slipped off his chair, walked across the kitchen to the stove behind me, reached up and touched the skillet just as I turned around.

The skillet was cold. He didn't burn himself today. He did that Thursday morning at mom's. Before she could react he darted into the kitchen, up to the stove, and reached for the skillet in which she was cooking. The burn was pretty bad and made him miserable. Today is the first day that he didn't complain about it hurting and didn't put up a fuss when I changed the bandage. He does avoid using that hand as much as possible, which is a pain since it is his dominant hand. But in spite of the misery of that experience he still walked up to another skillet today and touched it. I shouted in alarm, picked him up and set him down outside the gate that normally prevents him from entering the kitchen. His eyes welled up with big, wet, offended tears.

Consummate scientist: That skillet burned me, but that mean this one would too?

Grandpa's 80th B-day

I don't know if I'll keep this here, but it is the quickest way to show it to those of you who care and make sure it is ok.