1. Spelling. My nine year old is having trouble with spelling. He is doing great in most other subjects, but spelling is just his tender spot. His last teacher pointed out that, while he has been taught with Spalding phonics since kindergarten, he actually reads without really sounding out words – which makes him a fast reader with good understanding, but a terrible out-loud reader. He reads more by idea than by sound of the words. (I wish I could read like that!) But that doesn’t help his spelling at all.
It also doesn’t help that he really just doesn’t care about spelling. He sees the subjects that he has to learn; history and science are interesting, math seems to be a fun puzzle game, if tedious at times, Latin and music are exciting challenges. But spelling? What good is writing words that he can read just fine no matter how they are spelled.
You and I know the value, of course, but he is a tough sell.
I stumbled across this article on spelling: Why Some Kids Can’t Spell, and Why Spelling Tests Don’t Help, and found it very enlightening. This week we went through his spelling words in a different way. For some words we used memory tricks, for example with the word “monastery” he was having trouble remembering where the “a” and “e” went. So we talked about what a monastery was- a place where monks or sisters might live, and how they would probably grow some of their food, and might have an apple tree in the middle of their monastery. A=apple, in the middle, so the “a” in the word is in the middle. It sounds complicated, but his brain can think these things way faster than I can type them. We also went over the base words for some of the words: erode=erosion.
Low and behold, he came home with 25/26 instead of the usual 50%. So it looks like we will be doing a lot more etymology in this house!
2. Toddlers as old fogeys. Gus(almost 3) has such a funny way of speaking. He came up to Posy this morning and asked, “Can I drink of your drink?” To which she answered, “What century are we in?” Earlier he had exclaimed, “This is a tasty pear!” He also frequently asks, “Are you sure this is appropriate?”
3. House update. Our old house is still off the market as we wait and prepare to make the necessary repairs. Since we had no trouble buying the house in 2008, we never foresaw the trouble we would have selling it. To recap: There is a slight negative grade (slope towards the house) near the back family room. This room used to be a part of the patio, so it is still level with the rest of the patio. When we got a lot of rain, we have had flooding in the room. In the 6 years we lived there, we had water in the room twice. Since we moved out in July, we have had severe flooding twice, one time necessitating replacing the carpet.
We now have a workable solution to the problem: adding drains across the patio and increasing the drainage area on the side of the house. This has the thumbs up from two termite inspectors, who are the ones who ding this issue on inspections. Hopefully the house will be back on the market in another week.
4. Today was my due date. The baby I miscarried in February was due September 26th. This has been a rough week for me. I realized this had come up last Saturday, so I was able to at least take some tiny steps to be a little nicer to myself this week, although it was a super busy week.
I had wanted to have a cake or something with the family, but now I am not so sure. When I was at Target the other day, I thought that maybe I would buy some baby clothes and diapers and donate them, in remembrance of Ambrose. Except I found myself crying in the baby section of the store, not really willing to touch any of the baby things. Apparently I am more raw than I expected.
I know I will be okay. I am trying to give myself the space to lean in to the feelings and be sad, instead of running and hiding. In the mean time, maybe cake isn’t such a bad idea.
5. Another fascinating article – about how rewarding children who are already motivated harms their motivation. My husband was telling me about this one, it had come up in a book he was reading (and that I am now reading), You are Now Less Dumb by David McRaney. Jay told me that he had read about this, and began to explain it, saying that researchers had done a study on preschoolers. They took a group of preschoolers who naturally gravitated toward drawing and art…
… and they offered those children a reward for doing a good job drawing. And do you know what happened?
I knew right away! I was a kid just like that. Those children stopped drawing and creating.
The article I linked to talks about how there are two kinds of motivation, intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external, like a reward) and if children, or any people really, are given an extrinsic motivation for something they already have an intrinsic motivation for, the brain starts to think that is just too much – somebody must be trying to trick it into doing something, because there is too much motivation surrounding the activity. Fascinating!
6. Kid angst. The toys are just totally out of control. The weather is still blisteringly hot. And the kids are going crazy. There have been lots of meltdowns lately, just out of overwhelm and no place to run out the extra energy they accumulate. I don’t even ask them to pick up all the toys at this point, it’s too overwhelming of a job. I have to get a handle on it this weekend, and probably remove a good portion of the toys while I am at it. So hit me up, what are your favorite toy organizing tips for a whole bunch of kids?
7. We got a Roku. My dad gave us one. We haven’t had time to set it up yet, but I have heard good things about it. Do you or have you had one? Can you get sports on it? ( <- That question is near and dear to my husband’s heart.) While we really haven’t missed cable, or at least don’t miss it anymore, watching sports, football and baseball primarily, was something Jay enjoyed and misses.
Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend!
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