June 2011: What are they doing now? - Page 2

[dessismama]

Originally Posted by moominmamma 

Dd17 has moved away! She's across the country on a university campus training with the National Youth Orchestra for the summer. Six to eight hours a day of rehearsals, virtually seven days a week (they have half a day off every two weeks). Plus individual practicing for hours a day! She's in her element, just loving the environment. Here's her "musician profile" on their website, if anyone is interested. Once they finish their tour in mid-August she'll be home for a week or two, then moving on to Montréal. I'm beyond excited for her, she's so happy and energized to finally be getting the lessons, ensemble experience and independence she's been craving.

Miranda, her profile is so great! She is a wise soul (no surprises here!!). My 12 year old is at music camp, 1000 miles away, practicing 6+ hours a day on his new full size cello...

[pigpokey]

DS6 convinced me to take one of his many comic book creations down to the office services store yesterday and he paid for 100 copies.  I am hoping that he understands that he paid $.70 per copy and if he wants to be able to do another "issue" of Slug Man and Leech Boy, he needs to sell each for more than that.

He's working as a photo double this week on a movie and excited about getting his hair dyed brown.  For some reason when he is nervous he tells completely harmless, but sometimes irritating / embarrassing whoppers to outsiders.  So for example when asked how he would feel about the hair dye he replied "I have always wanted my hair brown by my mom wouldn't let me." 

[tuesdaymom]

Dd turned 2 this month. She can tell you her first middle and last name my husband and I full name and her street adress. She got a state puzzle for her bday and knows half of them already. I guess I should see if she can do her phone #

[lonegirl]

My son, 4.5, is into biology now.

It all started with a dollar store puzzle of the digestive system.  A few days  I picked up "The Human Boday. for grades5-9" http://www.teachchildren.com/mp4721.html  He loves it!  He reads it all the time and is learning all about the various systems.  He then talks to us about them.  Any big words I helped him with (cerebellum and cerebrum in example). 

His reading has really taken off and he has learned to read to himself (well at least just whisper reads now).   

Oh and he has now decided that when he is all grown up he is going to come to work with me to help the animals.

[meemee]

dd 8.75 is into FIRE. it just suddenly kicked in. we are having a lot of fun researching as well as trying new things out. 

and cooking. i am soo enjoying having a sous chef at home. while she cooks too she LIVES to chop. so i always have chopped veggies to cook - however be prepared for teenie tiny pieces. she is experimenting with herbs and spices and trying to figure out what works with what. so she really isnt cooking from a recipe but throwing things together to see how they turn out. so far we have only had a few barely edible entrees. 

she is now in acting camp. and enjoying it. she finished a week at a farming camp and LOVED it. 

i feel so sad because she has so much talent and our limited resources just cant sign her up for these things. she should be in swim team (she has the energy as well as passion for it), she should be at a music camp, a dance camp but we just dont have the $$$s for it. many of the places offering scholarships have discontinued or are offering v. few ones. 

[meemee]

Originally Posted by lonegirl 

My son, 4.5, is into biology now.

It all started with a dollar store puzzle of the digestive system.  A few days  I picked up 

dd was obsessed with the human body from about 3 to 5.

she was happy with the medical dictionary we had which had enough drawings of systems that worked for her. the first system she studied was the reproductive and the next the excretory system  at your son's age she went to the bodies exhibition which was visiting our city (she begged adn pleaded) and that started her interest in diseases. its the spiderman heart that did it and since she was super princess spidergirl she could not resist that. 

would ur son enjoy these? http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=human+body+coloring+book&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=4100776033549426524&sa=X&ei=ua4UTp6lAenhiAKihfTkDQ&ved=0CDYQ8gIwAQ

those were the only colouring books we had at home along with one fairy colouring book. i got most of the colouring books from the university book store. 

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=human+body+puzzle&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=12402352675975219267&sa=X&ei=-64UTpwK4-WIAvbXnPAN&ved=0CD0Q8gIwAw (i dont know how big this is but my friends science lab prof. was kind enough to let dd go look at the big human skeleton and muscles and organ sculptures)

a movie buff dd's favourite cartoon was the magic school bus series and she particularly enjoyed the ones on the human body (i think there are 3 if i remember right). 

her interest started with 'but how exactly does one die mommy? what exactly happens to our body?' at the airport restaurant waiting to take off. 

[lonegirl]

Meemee, thanks so much!  I will have to look into those for him.

I just got him "Uncover The Human Body" http://www.amazon.com/Uncover-Human-Body-Book/dp/1571457895 and he absolutely loves it.  The other book he loves right now is "The Human Body grades- 5-9"  http://www.teachchildren.com/mp4721.html it is a teaching book with overhead transparencies.

Yesterday in the car he was reading his new book and learning about kidneys.  "mommy?  Did you know we have 2 kidneys?  And, did you know that urine has 5% urea in it and 95% water. Oh and mommy?  Urine is clean enough that we could drink it.  I think it would taste yucky, maybe we should take the urea out first."  LOL

I am going to get him the "Uncover The Dog" book as he always talks about when he grows up he wants to come help me take care of the animals at the hospital.  I thought doing a comparison would be interesting to show him. 

[loraxc]

DD just performed in her end-of-camp show at drama camp. Her delivery was great, but she was too quiet, as were most of the kids--director didn't emphasize it enough, I guess. Camp was a mixed bag due to social issues. Also, the child who has always loved older kids decided that too many older kids was...too many. (She was the youngest kid in the whole camp--the majority of the cast was 10 and up). On watching the video we noticed that she subtly mouths the words of all the other actors while on stage (because she has everything memorized). Talked to her about that as gently as possible. Her mental math continues to wow me and she's rocking her math facts on her Flashmaster. She started Harry Potter, but dropped it after a few chapters for being "boring." I'm not sure she's ready for the complex plot yet. She is obsessed with the Penderwicks series and is also engrossed in The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. Both of these are about the same reading level as HP 1, so it's interesting that she can't sustain that one, but IMO HP is harder than those books.

DS is interesting these days. He's having a lot of trouble sleeping due to fears (his imagination is huge right now) and is starting to remind of his sister more. He's also obsessed with writing his name everywhere and with reciting the entire Curious George ouevre (really). HIs memorization skills seem to even outstrip DD's, which is saying a lot. We are amazed by how he memorizes entire (long!) library books after one reading.

[UpToSomeGood]

DS just turned 6 yesterday.  He is about to finish third grade math and start on fourth grade.  After dropping his robots for a while, suddenly in the past week he is building them like gangbusters again.

[KaliShanti]

DS, 4, (who I'm not quite sure is gifted but others say he is ;) )  is really into chess right now. He woke us up at 4:45AM asking to play it (yeah right)! Then he figured out a 2-move check mate on his own just by studying the board a few minutes at breakfast. He is also blowing through every early reader book that I approve of at the library and I'm wondering which young reader novel series to start him out on- I think he'll be there within the year. The way his reading skills grow weekly kind of astonishes me. I'm wanting to truly start him on Kindergarten homeschooling this year but feel so clueless on what to do with him and which levels on which subjects he'll be on...

[expecting-joy]

My four-year-old is now successfully reading her sister's 500-800-page chapter books and enjoying them very much.   Car rides are generally very quiet and [it seems like] they know every children's librarian in a hundred mile radius.

The little one is currently obsessed with the Presidents of the USA and knows their order better than I do. I've got most, but I get mixed up with some of the less significant ones.

The older one loves drawing cartoons and writing stories and still reads a ton.

They are both very active and are enjoying swimming, jumping rope, playing make-believe and prairie days schoolhouse in the woods/grass, climbing trees, dancing, singing, skating and dreaming of traveling.

After the fiasco of violin lessons for my older dd last year, I was stunned to hear her playing songs on the piano (a few weeks ago) for her sister (who was apparently not singing the correct tunes) and she wanted to show her how the tunes should go. I had no idea she could play the piano and she thought I was asleep. I never told her I heard her. I think she''s keeping it a secret from me.

Younger dd fell in love with ballet this spring and loved her teacher and class and did fabulously in her spring performance. Her teacher really got her. She's very driven for her age and is passionate about her gymnastics and ballet. She's pretty amazing.

[Aufilia]

Oh, I just noticed this was the June thread... but I didn't reply in June and it's up here at the top of the forum again so anyway...

DS (21 months) finally came had a vocabulary explosion and started making phrases... thank goodness!  His sister was such a talker that I feel like we've been waiting foreeeever for DS to really talk. He's hard to understand but it seems like half of what he says relates to shapes or letters.  He probably knows as much of the alphabet as DD did at this age, which continues to surprise me because he's never seemed as interested in intellectual pursuits as she was--he'd much rather sneak into the bathroom and make a big wet mess on the sink than play with letter magnets.  He's an excellent problem solver and can now reach just about anything in the house, turn anything on or off, and has just learned to open the baby gate at the top of the stairs.  He may well turn out to be a supergenius but only if he doesn't manage to kill himself first.

DD is hard to define lately.  Her reading level is high enough that I'm not really sure how high it is.  We recently picked up nearly all of the American Girl books at a book sale and have been reading them together (I stashed them in the top of her closet where she cant' get to them or she'd've read them all to herself by now, but I'm tired of her reading ahead whenever we are reading a book together!!). 

I'm working to enroll in a master's in teaching program in the fall and have been studying up for a pre-admissions test by brushing up on things like algebra, biology, physics, etc.  DD has been making off with my study materials (YA/J-level books from the local library). She's spent the entire last week talking about molecules, vacuums, and chemical reactions.  Like this morning she had a cup with a straw in the car and was making vacuums with her straw and talking about how the walls kept the air molecules from getting in, and stuff of that nature.

I also recently picked up a lovely teaching manual called "Literacy: Helping Children Construct Meaning" and having been working with her on increasing her reading comprehension though intentional literacy activities like story prediction and summarizing what we've read.