Cally: I feel your pain man! There are days where Miss L is just way too strung out and tired to get her reading done. i have personally found that in the morning before school works best for her. after school she is just too wrecked.
we SOOOO need water tanks. they will be on the list for march me thinks. at the moment we havent had any rain i dont think in over a month. actually maybe longer?? it is so hot and dry. and i am TOTALLY raging right now as there was a CFA meeting for our street (it is a recognised significant fire risk street etc) and I GOT THE DATE WRONG! turned up today only to realise it was last night so angry at myself.
Arte: i too groaned internally when the readers turned up yesterday hahahaha. and now that she is doing better with her reading the darn stories are bloomin' long!
MD: some of those things about colours would, i reckon, be awesome to use on Miss L. whenever she goes a bit OTT etc we really need to hold her and focus her on how her 'belly' feels (gut feeling i guess) and ask her to see if that's how she wants to feel ITMS. but the colours might be a better way of self checking...
AFM: throwing ourselves into the country life with gusto: blue light disco and BBQ at the local pool tonight hahaha! LOVE IT!
Cass, the country life rocks We have a gypsy fair in town tomorrow. The kids are very excited lol
Usually we read a chapter of a book to W at bedtime and he will happily lay there and read the next chapter or two before he goes to sleep so I am going to talk to the teacher and see if we can count that instead of forcing unbelievably boring works upon him.
Last edited by Artechim; February 7th, 2014 at 07:29 PM.
Cally, I'm glad you've got your voice back now , that can't have been nice.
Re reading, I found with DD1 that there were definitely different "windows" during the day when she would read with a lot more concentration/patience. After tea is good here, before tea is a disaster. TBH we don't have any problems with miss E fidgeting - but I suspect the readers were "too easy" last year, they had a very limited range in the reception box. Already we've had completely different readers come home (longer text, more words, etc). BUT - I'm quick to prompt her when she stalls. I usually sound the start of the word and then she gets it.
TBH I have no idea how well she is actually reading because she constantly surprises me at what she reads in other contexts. Like when I'm reading to her (eg, Milly Molly Mandy, not a huge # of pictures) and she corrects me (!). I think she uses a predictive method more than decoding the letters phonetically, which is good for fluency now but I'm not sure whether it might be a disaster a bit further down the track? Anyway, they have this trick at school which is pretty neat: every time you can't work out a word by yourself, you hold up a finger. If you get to five fingers, then maybe you're reading the wrong book, and it's best to pick another one.
LOL Arte at your internal happy dance. Ah it's so peaceful when they just come home and there are no homework, isn't it? Re the alexithymia - from my reading it seems like there may be a bit of both aspects. For the family member I'm thinking of, I think there may be an inherited aspect, but then I think about that person's mother and their extremely limited range of emotional expression (including facially) and then I wonder if it's a learnt response to the absence of emotional feedback? Plus in this case there was also a significant head injury at a young age. (FWIW alexithymia can also be a trait in people with PTSD, another kettle of fish). BUT I do believe that even IF it was a born personality trait, early recognition and then explicit teaching of self-awareness and corresponding social skills would help enormously and might even grow some adaptive brainal pathways, kwim? There are plenty of kids with aspergers who display alexithymic traits and who, with good early intervention, go on to function well in this area. It's the people who get to their 40s and 50s without ever realising they're out of sync with 98% of the world's population who are the ones who are going to struggle, IMO.
BTW "gypsy fair" sounds awesome. Again I'm wanting to move to NZ.
Cass, I will let you know how the colour thing goes, I'm kind of just feeling my way because i don't want to spend a bajillion dollars on buying other people's kits. Bummer missing the CFA meeting, but I'm sure they would be happy to send someone out to talk to you, seeing as how you're new to the whole shebang. Anyway, it's good excuse to knock on a few more neighbours' doors, if you haven't already.
Far out is is cold here again. Thinking of turning on the heat pump. Swim club is probably cancelled today, which is a good thing because I have had the swimsuits on on the line since Thursday and the rain is showing no sign of letting up!
The gyspy fair was only about 8 house buses, so not hugely exciting but the walk there and a look around managed to break up the day.
Last edited by Artechim; February 10th, 2014 at 07:17 AM.
MD - I'd never heard of that 5 finger thing before, but it was on one of the info sheets which came home last week too. A really good one for when she is reading a book from the home collection. Couldn't they grab other readers last year - Miss K would have to run across the courtyard to year 1 to grab one from their collection once she got past a certain level.
We get homework on Fridays and have to return it on Thursday's. Loving having the weekend to do it. Also loving being able to read other books when the readers are finished. She got through 3 Dr Seuss books on the weekend - some quite easy, but it's still reading and getting back into the swing of it.
Arte - we're talking about getting Miss K into her own reading at bedtime too. We got into the routine of proper book read by one parent, into bed, other parent reads 'short story', then 1st parent returns for cuddle/kiss. Getting sick of having to go back in for second time when I am parent 1, also the 'short story' is from a collection of 12 she has which can be recited from memory by all! She hasn't been into them lately and has wanted us to make up stories. I have nil imagination and HATE doing that. So ditch 'short story' and let her read for 5-10 minutes by herself. Then second parent can go in and turn light off and it's all over.
Also reaffirmed my belief on the weekend that small bikes should be supplied with brake lights! She stopped dead in the middle of the path and I missed her by inches! Got my adrenalin rush for the day and not a good one.
OMG I hate it when they stop dead in front of you on the bike!! I get grumpy real quick if W keeps swerving/stopping in front of me. Especially if I have E in the baby carrier.
That sounds like a long bedtime routine. I also have no imagination - I shudder inside when they ask me to make up my own story lol - def try getting her to read by herself. I am not sure if it is perfect reading, but he can tell me what happened in the last chapter the next night so I guess enough is going in.
ETA. W's teacher stopped by to drop off his reading books (no forgetting around here lol) and she said he is allowed to read silently now! Freedom!!!
In other news, DH has a job interview tomorrow for a position that would see us moving to his hometown right at the arse of the world. It would be great for the kids. They would see their grandparents all the time. All.The.Time. I am in two minds about it. I know it would be totally great for the kids to have some actual family around and the town has a swimming pool, movies, full range supermarkets, a department store and even an ice skating arena. More stuff to do in the weekends etc. But I have friends here and it has taken a long time to get a nice little circle of people and I like my quiet little town where everyone knows everyone. Also I hate that I am a public crier and the goodbyes would suck. They approached him and he almost certainly has the job if he wants it so it all sort of comes down to the money.
Last edited by Artechim; February 11th, 2014 at 09:31 AM.
Arte - oh, that move sounds good and bad. Away from your little town and friend, but closer to extended family..... DH has been talking about looking at other places for him to go and I don't really want to think about it. It helps that my role is definitely here with minimal chance of relocating so we'd end up with a total wage drop if DH got a new job. I've been here 9 years and only just starting to feel like I belong, do not want to start again!
Re: Babies Born ~ September 2007 #74
so angry at myself.
We have a gypsy fair in town tomorrow. The kids are very excited lol
, that can't have been nice. 
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