December-- What are they doing now?

[St. Margaret]

If I'm going to be up at night with the tiny one I want adorable stories to read! :)

DD is handling the transition to big sisterhood fairly well so far, so I'm grateful. 

She's been reading almost entire books (easy readers like Mudge and Little Bear, and picture books).  And oh my goodness the rainbow fairy books are a huge hit.  She could sit and listen to three of them in a row.  We've been reading them nonstop, thank goodness for library requests.

Last night at dinner I counted something in Italian and she picked up where I left off and counted more-- no idea she had learned any numbers! 

She asked if Santa was real... but it turned into a discussion of if he was gas or solid.  Turns out she was more wondering how he got around so fast and into houses and did his magic.  And at Disneyland she pondered if the "snow" was real, and decided it was fake, probably paper or like bubbles.  I have no idea what it is, she was with her dad, but he says that's what it's kind of like.

Then she recognized my old advent calendar as showing the same city (Venice) as a puzzle she did a couple months back with her dad.

She's begun writing things totally on her own, spelling things out pretty well and writing in a couple directions when she runs out of space.  She's really excited to have gotten pretty good at the last few letters and numbers she had a hard time with, because S was hard and of course she wants to write her name a lot.  I'm saving the pretend birthday card she wrote to me FOREVER :)

[no5no5]

I missed this thread. 

DD has been sick for the almost the whole last month (fifth disease, then a cold, then a few days healthy, and now another cold).  Argh.  She's missed all but one of her swimming classes because of it.    Well, we'll just sign her up again next session and hope she does better.

She's loving the snow.  She said she doesn't miss the beach anymore because snow is just like sand.    She's also thrilled that she will (hopefully) finally be a big sister this summer, and making all kinds of plans for how she's going to help with the baby. 

Her asynchrony is becoming more and more striking.  For example, she cannot spell words, except very simple ones, and even those are mostly by accident as far as I can tell.  How can a child use and read words like "contamination" and "astounding" and "flabbergasted" with ease but not be able to tell you how to spell "hat" or "bus"?  Her handwriting and math skills, which were very advanced very early, have not progressed much in the last year or two, which also has me scratching my head a bit.  It's hard for me to tell whether she's just uninterested right now, or just uninterested in showing what she can do right now, or whether she needs something that she's not getting.  We may end up getting an eval sooner than we had planned, if we can find the money.  Sigh. 

In other news, she's interested in everything else in the world, it seems, besides handwriting, spelling, and math.    She had me trying to explain everything I knew about history the other day, which, as it turns out, is not much.  She's regularly looking things up in The Way Things Work.  And she has DH explaining the details of how he treats his (cardiac) patients every day when he gets home from work.  She's really a riot. 

[Roar]

Originally Posted by no5no5 

Her asynchrony is becoming more and more striking.  For example, she cannot spell words, except very simple ones, and even those are mostly by accident as far as I can tell.  How can a child use and read words like "contamination" and "astounding" and "flabbergasted" with ease but not be able to tell you how to spell "hat" or "bus"?  Her handwriting and math skills, which were very advanced very early, have not progressed much in the last year or two, which also has me scratching my head a bit.  It's hard for me to tell whether she's just uninterested right now, or just uninterested in showing what she can do right now, or whether she needs something that she's not getting.  We may end up getting an eval sooner than we had planned, if we can find the money.  Sigh. 

Remind me how old is she?

For what it is worth I had the exact same concern about spelling. Our self taught reader was able to read anything and used very sophisticated vocabulary but had no idea at all of spelling. We spent a little time on word families - just little rhyming kind of stuff like making a list of every word we could think of that ended in "at". Within just a few sessions he went from totally unable to spell to being able to spell most words he could read. It was like prior to doing some activities with spelling it really didn't connect for him. That isn't to say it is how it will progress at your house but I wanted to toss it out there. Sometimes asychrony really is just that and in time with more experience it works out.

[no5no5]

Originally Posted by Roar 

Originally Posted by no5no5 

Her asynchrony is becoming more and more striking.  For example, she cannot spell words, except very simple ones, and even those are mostly by accident as far as I can tell.  How can a child use and read words like "contamination" and "astounding" and "flabbergasted" with ease but not be able to tell you how to spell "hat" or "bus"?  Her handwriting and math skills, which were very advanced very early, have not progressed much in the last year or two, which also has me scratching my head a bit.  It's hard for me to tell whether she's just uninterested right now, or just uninterested in showing what she can do right now, or whether she needs something that she's not getting.  We may end up getting an eval sooner than we had planned, if we can find the money.  Sigh. 

Remind me how old is she?

For what it is worth I had the exact same concern about spelling. Our self taught reader was able to read anything and used very sophisticated vocabulary but had no idea at all of spelling. We spent a little time on word families - just little rhyming kind of stuff like making a list of every word we could think of that ended in "at". Within just a few sessions he went from totally unable to spell to being able to spell most words he could read. It was like prior to doing some activities with spelling it really didn't connect for him. That isn't to say it is how it will progress at your house but I wanted to toss it out there. Sometimes asychrony really is just that and in time with more experience it works out.

She'll be 5 in February.

We are always looking for games we can play on the bus, and that might be a good one.  Thanks for the advice. 

[kgianforti]

Originally Posted by no5no5 

In other news, she's interested in everything else in the world, it seems, besides handwriting, spelling, and math.    
 

This is pretty funny because my dd is interested in all the above and not so much in reading! She is reading more independently but *still* at about a 1st grade level. I'm waiting for her interest in reading to spark some more. She does enjoy spelling and using this LeapFrog thing that my SIL gave her. Math is just really taking off and she is farther ahead than I thought (compared to our ps).

She LOVES anything Magic School Bus (she is also a science-buff).

My small girl turned two last month! They are both full of energy and completely wear me out!

[Roar]

At not yet five I'd worry about it not at all.

The spelling thing clicked here after the age of six and that was after years of reading. Seriously, couldn't spell cat one day and before long could spell catastrophic. It was like he didn't understand spelling or pay attention to it and then, click it was there.

[no5no5]

Originally Posted by Roar 

At not yet five I'd worry about it not at all.

The spelling thing clicked here after the age of six and that was after years of reading. Seriously, couldn't spell cat one day and before long could spell catastrophic. It was like he didn't understand spelling or pay attention to it and then, click it was there.
 

Thank you again, Roar.  That is very reassuring. 

[joensally]

Welcome to asynchrony land.   The unevenness has always fascinated me.

[dessismama]

My 11 yo son just finished a season of three music competitions, and actually won one at the conservatory prep school! We are most proud of the fact that he worked very hard on a very technical piece of music (3rd part of Saint Saens cello concerto in A minor) and polished it after a difficult period of repetitions with no obvious benefit. He kept doing more and more groups of 20 slow repetitions until finally the muscle memory got where it should be.It took a lot of maturity on his part to complete this work.The entire concerto is now polished after 3 months of intense practicing--yay!! And he is onto learning the prelude to the third Bach suite and Juli-o. He also completed composing.a 3 minute piece for string orchestra and is working on a very short quintet piece. His music theory teacher keeps saying how fast he is...:) School really gives him a lot of busy work... need to talk to his teachers.

My 8 yo daughter is suddenly playing a lot of violin, about 1 hour a day with no prompting. She is also having a blast in the math enrichment program that her elementary school is offering. Her teacher says she is 3 years ahead in reading and a full year in spelling. The cognitive behavioral therapy we are doing is making a difference--less outbursts this month!!

My 5 yo is suddenly reading quite well and doing simple arithmetic. This is the kid who did not want to do any of this about 3 months ago. His K teacher shared that she rarely sees kids who soak everything up like him and complement her too!!

[expecting-joy]

I actually think the spelling thing is pretty easy to understand. Receptive language skills generally precede productive ones. Now if only my dd could get past the perfectionistic frustration of not yet being able to spell everything perfectly. Her teacher believes she will get all the spelling down in a month or two and really fly. We'll see. She is really enjoying art, Native American studies, gymnastics, ice-skating, being silly with friends, writing stories and reading, reading, reading. She's still coming home with reams of math worksheets, but not doing much math play at home. She still loves singing and is having a love/hate relationship with her violin. It's that darn practicing. It's really difficult to meet something you can't master quickly, when that's pretty much been your life experience. She has lots of friends and seems very happy at school socially.

The other one is reading tons, loving writing, making up great math games, enjoying her baby dolls, improving her representational skills as an artist, adoring gymnastics, tap and ballet and the very best news of all - she has two best friends at school and they do everything together. She learned to do a flip in gymnastics and can now do a cartwheel on the beam. She is still working on her handstands and just adores the bars - definitely her favorite apparatus. She has been teaching her big sister her tap routine and it's really an amazing and beautiful - and long - routine. We feel she may have found her passion in gymnastics and dance.She just seems genuinely happy all the time.

The girls have started their own detective agency/reading club and spend a great deal of time reading in the carpeted cubby reset in their bedroom wall. They also go on fantastic journeys together (lots of trains and planes and luggage) and host lovely birthday parties. They made stockings for their dolls and hung them on their bedroom door and have been busy thinking of what to get their dolls for Christmas. They have already decided on gifts for their father, each other and their grandparents. Dd2 is stumped as to what to get her teacher for her birthday (all her ~ I've never suggested giving teachers birthday gifts). In general they are just enjoying the excitement of the holiday season: the Christmas books, the decorations, the lighting of candles and playing special games, the music, the parties, etc.

[moominmamma]

On the spelling issue: I've always been re-assured by the three-year rule. It says that you usually only need to worry if your child's spelling lags more than 2-3 years behind their reading. In other words, think back to what your child could read accurately 3 years ago. If she can spell at that level now, you can likely relax. Probably your girl wasn't reading anything three years ago, so you don't need to worry yet if she can't spell her way out of a paper bag yet.

My 7yo has just started Singapore Math 5A (6th grade level?) and is interested in math again after a bit of a hiatus over the past six months or so. She's just (finally) finished polishing up the Vivaldi g minor violin concerto and is enjoying the simpler shorter pieces that follow it in Suzuki book 5. She getting to play little bits of chamber music with her older siblings and other teens and that's nice for her.

My newly 12yo dd isn't doing much tangible lately. She's dealing with peri-adolescent hormones and is retreating into herself a bit, reading a lot. She's in the midst of an 8th grade science course and finding it a cakewalk. She could probable finish the second half in a couple of weeks if she worked consistently at it. She's doing some stop-motion animation and video editing. She's having a blast ice-skating on our backyard rink and is teaching herself spins, spirals, backwards crossovers and such.

My 14yo ds and 16yo dd are playing a paid weekend symphony orchestra gig with me this weekend. Three 2.5 hour rehearsals followed by two performances. A pretty intense fast-paced weekend. It's fabulous experience for them, and they've been asked back for the next program in February so they seem to be doing well.

Miranda

[Tigerle]

Originally Posted by expecting-joy 

 She learned to do a flip in gymnastics and can now do a cartwheel on the beam. She is still working on her handstands and just adores the bars - definitely her favorite apparatus. She has been teaching her big sister her tap routine and it's really an amazing and beautiful - and long - routine. We feel she may have found her passion in gymnastics and dance.She just seems genuinely happy all the time.

At 3 1/2? Co-ool! What a talent, so different from the usual ones around here...
 

[Tanikit]

DD (3 years 2 months) has come down with chicken pox and seems to have it quite badly - hopefully in a week it will be a thing of the past. Luckily I have had it as I am now 27 weeks pregnant and do not need it. She has been reading short books since shortly before she turned 3 and it is amazing how fast she picks up new things - she learnt the -ed and -ing endings with me only showing her by covering the ending once or twice. She is starting to do some sums in her head (mostly basic addition) and showing quite an interest in numbers. She is also showing a great interest in the baby and talks to her and blows raspberries on my abdomen. She has ideas about what a baby will be like, but it remains to be seen how she will respond once she is a big sister. Physically she has started hopping though it still takes a lot of concentration. She is asking a lot of indepth questions about emotions lately and specifically dealing with anger and hurt - her questions show a lot of insight and I hope I will be able to answer them in a way that does the topic and her justice since I am not too sure of the answers myself.

[physmom]

You know, I always think of stuff to post on these things but whenever this thread actually comes up I always forget!  Let's see... DD's still counting like crazy and tries to go to 20 often but she'll still skip some numbers in between (but the ones she does get are always in order).  She's even tried counting backwards a bit and when many times count with me if we go over 20 but not all the numbers.  She also likes to play the beginning sounds game (basically I'll make a "mmm" sound or some other letter and we think up words that start with that sound and she's even started adding some of her own).  I actually realized that I'm not sure how phonics works at all because I was trying to do that for "g" and ran into a problem with the "j" sound vs. the "ga" sound.  So I'm not sure how other people differentiate between the two?

But I think right now she's working on communication the most.  She talks A LOT and will repeat almost anything we say. She's always testing out new sentence structures now where before she seemed to be more formulaic.  In general, she's a lot easier to play with now because we can actually talk to each other (we could before but now it flows more like a conversation with questions and everything).  Not every thing's been easy though since she's not handling our move and constant traveling very well (she keeps asking to go home) and she's actually picked up the flu at the moment (and I feel pretty bad too so she might have passed it on to me :( ). 

Oh, but we did have a bit of a funny incident at the airport where she said something that shocked one of the flight attendant.  I don't actually know what it was because I wasn't listening but the flight attendant gave me a really strange looks and said "What did she just say???".  I told her I hadn't been listening but the flight attendant didn't repeat what DD said either so I have no clue what it was, hopefully it wasn't offensive!!! Oh, and DD finally turns 2 next month so I can stop saying that she's almost 2.

[expecting-joy]

Tigerle, yes, it's pretty amazing, but it's her normal. I've had to work really hard to keep up with what is normal for her peers. This is the child who was walking at six months, hanging from the bars and doing skin-the-cats at 18 months, scaring party guests by climbing up the really big kid structures at the park at 10 months and sliding down the giant slides and going down the fire pole by herself sometime before two. She had a brief stint with using irregular simple past tense forms just before she turned two, but since then is consistently stuck in the land of "he goed." She''s been talking up a storm for two years and reads really, really well, but those irregular verbs in free speech elude her. She also speaks English with German word order sometimes, but very, very rarely says more than a word in German, although she understands and will read it aloud. Dh and I keep wondering when she'll figure out the irregular verbs.

[expecting-joy]

Originally Posted by moominmamma 

On the spelling issue: I've always been re-assured by the three-year rule. It says that you usually only need to worry if your child's spelling lags more than 2-3 years behind their reading. In other words, think back to what your child could read accurately 3 years ago. If she can spell at that level now, you can likely relax. Probably your girl wasn't reading anything three years ago, so you don't need to worry yet if she can't spell her way out of a paper bag yet.

Miranda

That's really interesting. Let us know if you remember the source for that information. I wonder if giving my dd that information will calm her down a bit.

[mom2ponygirl]

Originally Posted by no5no5 

Originally Posted by Roar 

At not yet five I'd worry about it not at all.

The spelling thing clicked here after the age of six and that was after years of reading. Seriously, couldn't spell cat one day and before long could spell catastrophic. It was like he didn't understand spelling or pay attention to it and then, click it was there.
 

Thank you again, Roar.  That is very reassuring. 

Don't worry if it doesn't click at 6 either - we were closer to 9.  LOL

[moominmamma]

Originally Posted by expecting-joy 

That's really interesting. Let us know if you remember the source for that information. I wonder if giving my dd that information will calm her down a bit.

No source. As best I know it's just "common wisdom" distilled from observations by a whole bunch of homeschooling and unschooling moms on the homeschool Canada email list. It's been observed and discussed there, and borne out by experience, for more than a dozen years.

Miranda

[expecting-joy]

Oh, OK.

[Rlin]

yay, I wanted to start this thread yesterday. No time to reply now, but I'll come back to post. I love reading these stories...