Classifying Animals

For science, we had a first grade science book that covered such topics as plants, animals, bugs, seasons, weather, simple machines, and space. Each topic came with a worksheet or two and a few ideas to expand the lessons. So each topic could possibly take about a week or two.

However, we are doing more of an unschooling approach, and I only used this curriculum as a jump board to dig more deeply into a topic. I liked the worksheets, and so did the girls. So, to supplement, I used a lot of ideas from the Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out series, which contains activities for ages 4 to 7 (although my 3 year old enjoyed the activities too).

When we got to the part on animals, my 1st grade science curriculum taught how to identify mammals, and that was about it. So I found these wonderful science story books that describe each animal group. The books are easy for a young child to read and understand, pinpointing the specific physical characteristics that identify an animal as being part of a specific group. For example, the book on amphibians describes the cool, moist skin and the stages of life as well as several other aspects that all amphibians share.

We would read one of the books, and then I would follow that up with a poster board project. I bought a used school book from Half-Price Books that contains tons of real life pictures of animals. We would cut out the pictures from whichever animal group that we were working on and paste them on our poster board. Then I would write some comments like "baby amphibians breathe under water with gills" and "adult amphibians breathe air with their lungs" and "amphibians have cool, moist skin."

Added to this activity, we raised tadpoles last summer, and we got to watch as one slowly lost his tail and eventually jumped out of the water. R used to carry around imaginary baby puppies, and she would say that her imaginary puppies were so little that they did not have their legs yet.

We also raised some crawdads, and it was cool to see when one of them shed his skin. Before shedding his skin, Houdini (he kept trying to escape) had only one claw as the other was broken, and one of his antennae was also broken. After molting, both the claw and the antennae were restored but were just a little smaller.

We also captured a caterpillar, watched it grow and make its cocoon, and we kept a bug house for crickets . With all of these hands on activities to supplement the science curriculum, the girls really learned a lot about different types of animals.

One day, M made the comment that turtles are reptiles, and my husband TJ (a science major in college, by the way) was not so sure, thinking that they might be amphibians. Nope, they are reptiles as they lay their eggs in the sand and the babies hatch fully formed, and they have scaly skin rather than cool, moist skin.

Chapter Books

We just got Mary Poppins in the Kitchen and several other children's cookbooks to get the girls interested in cooking. The Mary Poppins Cookery Book was a story and a Cookbook, and M sat entranced as I read the story. Each chapter was only about three pages, but there was only one picture per chapter. Even R sat for most of the story before she ran off to go play with K.

After reading the Mary Poppins Cookery Book, M wanted to use her special night to make cupcakes, which we decorated with smiley faces. She ate one and then set two aside, one for herself and one for R, and the next day, she spent all morning telling R about the "special surprise" that she made for her.

Curious to know what she would do with chapter books, I got Little House in the Big Woods, which I discovered to be a splendid book for social studies as well as reading. We sat down to read the first chapter, which described many of the fall times preparations that the family had to perform in order to survive for the winter.

M said, "Well, if they run out of food, they will just have to go to the store." Daddy said, "Remember what the story said earlier? There was nothing around for a whole week's or even a month's journey." She sat quietly contemplating that. When I was done with chapter one, M ran off with the book and started trying to read it to herself.

Last night I read chapter two to both M & R, and even R sat through several pages. Finally R asked, "Where are the pictures?" And I said, "You are supposed to make pictures in your mind." So I started talking a bit about the story, comparing Pa to Daddy. "Pa would pretend to be a wild dog, and sometimes Daddy pretends to be a bear and growls and chases them. Pa has blue eyes, but what color eyes does your daddy have?" I asked.

"Brown!"

R commented, "Our house does not have a gun." And we talked about why they needed a gun and why we do not have one.

The story describes wilderness life in such detail, that I am learning so much: from making cheese & butter to storing vegetables and meat. And two little girls are mesmerized. We only read half of Chapter 2 last night because they jumped up and started running around the room, pretending to be mad dogs.

Nothing Teaches Math Like Cookies

About six months ago, the only number that R could recognize was the number 3 because that was how old she was. We found this out when we bought some preschool math workbooks, and R really struggled with the simplest exercises. So I began my campaign for toys and activities that would familiarize her with the numbers. This was before I found the Count on Math book that I use now.

One game was something like hopscotch. I took the cushions off our kitchen chairs and used masking tape to make the numbers 1 to 5. Then the girls jumped from one cushion to the next, saying the numbers as they go. It was a great way to combine exercise and math.

Then I found some cookie cutters shaped like numbers, and we made sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies in the shape of numbers. I tried to say the numbers as many times as possible while we cut out the cookies, and I had her arrange the cookie cutters in order before she started cutting them. Then she was exposed to the shapes of the numbers when we decorated the cookies and again when she ate them.

Lauri Toys has several puzzles that help teach numbers. The Number Play puzzle and the Number Puzzle Board and Pegs help the child to associate the number shape with the same number of items, but I think I like the Number Express the most. The girls love trains.

Language Game

On the drive home yesterday, M & R learned how to play "I Spy." It is a great game to help build descriptive language skills. Believe it or not, it is not easy for 3 year olds and 5 year olds to describe something. So what skills can this game build?

• language
• observation
• problem solving
• spatial awareness
• pre-reading skills

R's descriptions went something like this: "I spy a hat." or "I spy a white car!" or "I spy a big house!" However, by the end of the car ride, her descriptions became a little more complex (she dropped the noun so that she did not give the answer away and started using a few more adjectives), and she actually started guessing some of the answers. As our car ride took forty five miutes, she had a good amount of time to get the hang of it.

M, being a little older, described things by color, shape, texture, position, and even by the letter with which the item started. A box was no longer just a box; it was something that was brown, made of cardboard, and you can play inside it. K's boots were no longer just boots; they were brown with little fuzzy balls on them.

Suddenly, the world had developed a whole new dimension of possibilities for two little girls. The most mundane objects were now something interesting to describe.

Power of Empathy

As human beings, we have no right to own another’s emotions. Offering advice is bragging that you know the perfect way for them to solve their problem, and offering sympathy is selfishly putting the focus on yourself (i.e. “Yeah, I know how you feel. Let me tell how that same thing happened to me...”)

On the other hand, empathy is acknowledging someone else’s emotion, giving the emotion a name and a valid place in that person’s situation. Empathy says that your emotions are your own and I will not change them. This is grace and respect that all people need, including little people.

One day R was throwing a fit because she had stated that she wanted Daddy but it was Mommy who came to get her. I could have argued with her, reasoned with her, or spanked her, and from past experience, I know what that would have gotten me. So instead, I said, “It is really frustrating when you are not heard.” The temper tantrum stopped immediately. She slowly nodded her head. I continued, “How about I get you out of your seat and give you to Daddy?” She nodded again.

Now, empathy does not mean that all actions are acceptable, but it acknowledges that I do not have the right to control you through emotion or twist your emotions by my own desires. Someone once told me that the best way to deal with a temper tantrum is to ignore it, and empathy goes hand in hand with that idea. Empathy gives a person room to work out their feelings in their own time.

When M met her first bully, she acted out a lot, and in some ways, she exhibited the same behavior that had been dealt to her. For about a month, I tried to "fix" the problem. I tried to reason with her. I tried to coerce her. I tried to punish her. And finally I said, "It really hurt to be treated like that." And I walked away. Within a week, she had forgiven, she had made friends with the bully, and she was praying that God would let the "bad girl" know that she loved her. She worked all this out, and she did it without any help from me.

Sometimes we as parents just want our kids to be cooperative, which means we do not want to deal with their negative feelings. Sometimes as parents, we feel guilty when our children are unhappy. Sometimes we think we need to create a bubble to protect them from any negative feeling. Sometimes we just want things to go our way. So we either try to force them or coerce them to feeling what we want them to feel.

But when we do this, we prevent them from learning some very valuable lessons. Emotions are the very make up of our being. Made in the image of God, we are emotional beings. Throughout the Bible, God got angry, jealous, hurt, upset, sad, etc. And so do we. We can either bottle up those emotions and push them away (harden our hearts) or we can learn to deal with them. And in the same way, we can force our children to have the emotions we want them to have or we can teach them how to deal with their emotions.

It is an important thing for a child to know "this makes me uncomfortable and I need to get out of here and run for safety." The book Liberated Parents, Liberated Children: Your Guide to a Happier Family gives a story of a teenage boy who suggested to a young girl that they play a toe licking game behind a tree. The girl, feeling uncomfortable, ran home. Her mom, the author of the book, was thankful that she had taken the time to respect her daughter's feelings.

However, just because any emotion is permissable, not actions are. Children should be taught that certain behaviors (throwing things, hitting, disobeying, etc.) are not acceptable ways of expressing how they feel, and they should also be taught that just because they want to have something or do something they will not always get it.

There was a young girl at our family Thanksgiving gathering who did not want to go home at the end of the day. Her mom had her hands full with the baby brother, and the dad was begging the girl to come over and get her coat on. The grandma tried to help by suggesting that it would be scary to be left behind with Uncle Tom, and Uncle Tom pretended to be a scary bear. None of this worked.

Finally I got up and asked for the girl's coat. I went to the girl and said, "You really don't want to go. You are having so much fun with your new friends, and you don't want to stop playing. I think your friends are going to miss you too." While I said all this, I got her dressed and ready to go. Without any more fuss, she left with her parents after saying goodbye to her friends.

There were two things I did: (1) empathy and (2) action. I acknowledged what she was most likely feeling, something that I am sure I would feel if I was having fun, but I moved her in the direction she should be going. Just because she did not want to go did not make it acceptable to ignore her parents.

Now does this always work? No. It has to come from the right attitude. If I use empathy as another means of coersion, they are going to sense it. First, we have to truly let go of any way in which their emotions affect our emotions. There can be no guilt, no frustration, and no pride on our part that can be attached to any emotion that they may have.

For example, there have been times when I feel guilty when they are sad or upset, or I feel frustrated when they want something that they cannot have or I cannot give them. Just as their emotions are their own, our emotions must be our own too.

Then we have to watch what we say:

• "It is just a paper cut. It doesn't hurt. Don't be such a baby."
• "See, there are no monsters in here. There is nothing to be scared of."
• "Don't be bothered by what your brother says. He is just pushing your buttons."
• "Don't whine. I can't help it we don't have any waffles right now."

Then we have to learn to replace those statements with simple statements that observe the child's emotion:

• "Paper cuts can really hurt."
• "You are really concerned that there might be monsters in your closet."
• "It really hurts you when he says those things about you."
• "You really love to eat waffles for breakfast! I wish I had some for you today."

The child walks away from this feeling (1) I have been heard and (2) my feelings are okay, but you will be shocked on how much easier these situations are to handle. From personal experience, I am familiar with what would happen if I said "that doesn't hurt" when the child had a boo-boo. They would have thrown a fit to illustrate just how much it hurt. And if I say, "You can't have waffles because we don't have any," my toddler would scream for them. No amount of reasoning would make her understand. And dismissing the pain caused by insults would only get me some sulking or yelling.

Today, when I am able to do empathy the way that I should (and admittedly I am not 100%), things move more smoothly in our home. I just got to remember: it is not about control.

My husband overheard this conversation between M & R:

R: It hurt when you stepped on my hand. I want you to say you're sorry.

M: I am sorry.

R: I forgive you.

Little Einsteins

Of all the children's videos out there, I am most impressed with the Little Einsteins. The stories illustrate great pieces of classical music. My favorite (as well as the girls' favorite) is the Rocket's Firebird Rescue, based on Stravinsky's The Firebird. It is a ballet that tells the story of Kastchei who seeks to destroy the Firebird, and the Little Einsteins seek to rescue the Firebird from the cage where Kastchei holds the Firebird captive.

The videos build knowledge of music terminology like crescendo and allegro. They learn about instruments, tempo, art, conducting, singing, and ballet, but the most significant thing they gained was appreciation and awareness for music. After the girls watched Rocket's Firebird Rescue, we got the music. We put the CD in without telling M & R what it was, and when they recognized the music, they started jumping with excitement, in time to the music.

In Little Einsteins - Our Big Huge Adventure, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony tells the story of the life cycle of a Monarch butterfly, which gives them some science as well. The 4 kids help a caterpillar get to the musical tree where it forms its chrysalis, and once it emerged, they helped the new butterfly migrate south.

M & R beg to watch these movies over and over, but even little K who is not even two yet loves to sit and watch them too.

Parenting Tip: Date Night

In a household with three young children, ages 1 to 5, it is so easy to overlook the needs of one child. Or actually, it is easy to overlook the needs of all the children. Diapers, potty accidents, refilling milk cups, library and doctor visits, grocery shopping, preparing three meals a day, breaking up fights, and finally getting them all down for naps or bedtime can consume hours of activity without actually giving that personal moment of attention that a child needs to feel special, unique, loved, and wanted. And oh yeah, did I mention your own bathroom breaks, food needs, and downtime? You gotta take care of yourself too, or you will not be fit to parent.

We took a tip from some friends of ours who have more kids than we do. They establish a weekly date night, and the kids take turns on who gets special time with Mommy and Daddy. The nice thing about this schedule is that after each girl gets her Tuesday night date, Mommy and Daddy get there night together to put girls to bed a little early and have some time for just the two of us.

Our Date Night is on Tuesdays, and last night was R’s night. Sometimes R gets overshadowed by an older sister who has more advanced language skills, and sometimes she gets overlooked with a younger sister who gets into everything. Date night is the perfect opportunity for us to single her out for special activities, and we have noticed how much more confident and secure she seems when she gets this attention.

The night started with M & R working on their wooden model kits with Daddy, and when they were done, M went to bed and R started drawing. She is not able to write yet, but she created stories to go with all of her pictures. This was an opportunity for us to encourage our timid, tender-hearted girl to talk more freely, so I listened attentively to her stories about being captured in a net and Mommy coming to save her. She described all the items on the pictures and explained to me what each thing was.

We stapled her pages together to make a book, which she then added “words” and then read the words to me.

Then we had a reading lesson from the book Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We are on lesson 12, and she is learning to string sounds together to make words. When her sisters are awake, it is hard to get her undivided attention because she wants to play, but she got really excited when she learned that lesson 13 starts to have pictures with stories that she gets to read.

She drank hot chocolate with marshmallows and reread her picture book to me, and when she finally went to bed with some story books, there was a big smile on her face, and her little eyes were shining with joy, knowing that she is truly special to us.

Lessons using Stories of Big Sister Dog

M does two things on a near non-stop basis: (1) tell stories and (2) talk about Big Sister Dog. Big Sister Dog has been her imaginary friend for well nigh a year now. Big Sister Dog is blue with rainbow eyes. She has a long neck so that she can eat the clouds, and she is a super hero dog that rescues baby dogs and children.

So after learning how to read using the book Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, M started writing stories, sounding out the words and writing the sounds she heard. I wanted to coach her to write evenly across the page, and I wanted to improve her spelling without getting her bogged down with spelling lessons. She is only 5, and I think that can wait until 1st grade.

So using special writing paper designed for preschoolers, I wrote several stories using the imaginary character Big Sister Dog. I put a title on the first page so that it would seem like a real book, and I wrote every other line so that she could have space to copy my words. Then, I left the backs of every page blank so that she could add pictures.

This accomplishes several things without me hovering because that seems to squelch her desire to write:

(1) drawing letters legibly
(2) learning word order, spacing, sizing, and keeping everything on a straight line
(3) writing the words of the story with proper spelling
(4) developing language skills with a fresh story that interests her
(5) using creativity by illustrating the stories herself

Here are two of my stories. You can replace Big Sister Dog with a character of your own.

Big Sister Dog and the Tornado
One day there was a tornado. The fire chief called Big Sister Dog to rescue some baby dogs from the tornado. When Big Sister Dog arrived, the tornado was coming close. Big Sister Dog was not scared. She just opened her mouth and swallowed it. The tornado did not hurt her. It just made her grow taller and stronger. The End.


Big Sister Dog and the Missing Bone
One day, Big Sister Dog lost her bone in the forest. She sniffed all over until she caught its scent. The trail led up the mountain to a dragon lair. The dragon was chewing the bone. Oh no! Big Sister Dog tried to back up, but she tripped and made a loud noise. The Dragon said, "Please share my bone with me." So Big Sister Dog and the Dragon were friends forever. The End.

Math Skills for All Ages

The first chapter in Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds contains many activities for exploration. I went into this first chapter thinking I had failed my children in giving them the most opportunities to develop their minds, so I started filling our time with these activities as if we were on a race against time.

I planned all these things and got very frustrated when things did not go as I wanted. "My kids need to explore!" I thought. Or what? Something bad will happen? For one of the activities, I collected jar lids, but nobody was interested in the lids except K (1 1/2 yrs old). I gathered rocks and spread them out on the table, but M & R said to me, "We want to play with beans." Beans was another activity recommended in the book, but we had done that one already.

Then one afternoon, I gave K a paper cup to carry around the backyard with her. She filled it with 2 rocks, a stick, and some flowers, and then brought it back to me to show me what she had found. She was exploring, on her own, without any intervention from me. As long as I did not plop her in front of the TV, she would be exploring, and thinking back to the games M & R used to play, they were always exploring too. In the spring when I planted my flowers, M & R spent hours filling buckets with dirt and transferring the dirt from one bucket to another.

So if exploration happens, what do we need the book Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds for? Many of the activities are so simple that they do not need any extra planning, and we normally have the tools and supplies needed already on hand. So I built a loose framework by putting notes in a text document in a table format. If we needed something to do, I would scan my notes, grab an activity that we could do easily, and mark it off my list.

What I found was that with this easy framework, I could get all three girls involved in learning the same skills using many of the same activities.

Exploration
While M & R wanted to explore beans, K played in the dirt, and they all loved to play with the water toys and explore water.

Spatial Awareness
M & R had their obstacle course and colored pictures that were taped to the bottom of the coffee table while K played hide and go seek in the closets. Then they all had fun together with building forts and playing pirate with the coffee table turned upside down as their boat.

Classification
M & R had already talked much about eye color and classifying the different members of our family by eye color. M has hazel eyes like Mommy and Grammy while R has brown eyes like Daddy and Memaw, and K's eyes are blue like Papa's. So it was very easy to expand this classifying, especially as we were learning to classify animals for our science lessons.

Patterns
We are currently studying patterns. M likes making up her own patterns. She uses blocks, people, and words. "Is that a pattern?" she will ask. And I take every opportunity to point out patterns to R, who at 3 1/2 is still just grasping the idea. And I started an action game with K, "Clap, Clap, Roll [your hands], Put your fingers up high, Reach down and touch your toes."

So the book Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds has a lot of fun activities that can be applied to ages 1 to 5 and helps you develop a lot of fresh ideas in keep children busy and active.

More Lessons on Sharing

There is another reason, a deeper reason why sharing should not be forced. Children are miniature adults. They are people with their own feelings, their own personalities, and their own preferences. So the question begs to be asked: How would you feel if the governing bodies of our nation forced you to share?

You just got a new car. It's a brand new Hummer, and all of your neighbors want to take a spin in your car. If this were a socialistic society, you would be told that you do not have a right to something so wonderful and that you must share with your neighbors. And oh yeah, now that you have a new car, you do not need that old one anymore. You will have to give that one away for free to the neighbor who does not have one.

Well, this is not a socialistic society, and if our government tried to play that game with us, we would be up in arms. We would be protesting on the streets, yelling, "What about my rights?"

Does a child feel any differently about their personal possessions? And who are we as adults to rob them of the rights of their own personal space and property? Just because they are smaller does not give us the right to decide when they will share.

R got a new set of toy pans for Christmas. They were shiny and just the right size for her. She loved these pans as she has played with them every day since. Within an hour after opening them, her baby cousin discovered that they make a lot of great noise when you bang them together and that they feel very good on sore gums.

R was not happy about her cousin playing with them even though she was playing with other toys at that time. She was worried that she would lose them forever or that they would get broken. Panicking, she tried to get them back, but the adults who were cooing over the baby told her, "Oh, just let her play with them." They did not even bother to look at R when they dismissed her concerns and feelings.

Because they did not even look at her, they did not notice how R was devastated. She felt completely helpless to the all powerful adults who treated her like she did not matter. The message she received that day is that her baby cousin is more important and more loved and valued.

Between siblings, this could become a source of resentment. In fact, it had been a source of contention in our house. R had a major problem with her little sister K for the longest time. She would scream every time K even came in the room, for fear that K would run off with her toys or knock over her building blocks. I would always say, "K is a baby; she does not understand."

Now, I say, "K, that is your sister's doll. Let's go find your doll." The changes have been slow as R needed to learn that she really was secure, that Mommy and Daddy really would defend her. It used to be that M & R could play well together, M & K could play well together, but R & K would fight. However, it's a real joy to see R & K play together now.

The other day, R was upset to find K in her room. Upset to be kicked out of R's room, K came running to me, and I said, "That is R's room." Very shortly, R came up to K with one of R's favorite toys and said, "Here, you can play with this." This act of sharing was completely on R's own volition. That is what makes the act so special, that she willingly chose to share.

Math Skill: Spatial Relationships

The girls had to go
around the chair,
over the couch,
under the coffee table.

Then they crawled
through the kitchen,
over the gate,
under another gate.

Then they jumped
down the hall,
into a basket,
out of a basket.

Finally they came to the playroom where they found cookies on a plate.

Sounds like a lot of fun, but what does this have to do with school?

When we started home schooling, I thought I would teach M & R the same level at the same time. One girl had just turned 5; the other was 3 1/2. Kindergarten for both would work out just fine. M & R both knew the alphabet, could both count to ten, and both recognized their shapes and colors. R likes to be just like her big sister, and sometimes we forget that she really is almost 2 years younger.

Our first attempt at math was to get kindergarten workbooks, and M flew through the book. However, R could not recognize her numbers, let alone draw them. Plus, she struggled with following directions because she did not understand what was expected of her. I realized then that R was her own person with her own educational needs. I could not lump her into M's lessons. So I went looking for a "non-paper oriented" math curriculum.

Knowledge is valuable, but it does not mean anything unless you understand what to do with the knowledge. You can recite the numbers 1 to 10, but that does not mean that you can count a group of toys. So I wanted games and activities that build the understanding before they build the knowledge.

I found Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds, a book that builds many pre-math skills, and hundreds of simple, easy activities fill its pages. M & R could both do the projects and benefit, not even knowing that they were learning.

Each chapter covers a different skill and contains more than 30 activities for each skill. These skills include (but not limited to) the following:

• Exploration
• Spatial Relationships
• Classification
• Patterns
• One-to-One Correspondence (prepares for division)
• Ordering
• Numbers
• Shapes
• Adding
• Subtracting
• Telling Time

Order Count on Math: Activities for Small Hands and Lively Minds online now!

A Lesson in Problem Solving

Ever had to mediate between two children who are arguing over the same toy, and you find that there is no way to solve the problem without more fussing?

This happened to us recently over two angel shirts. One was blue with rhinestones and had no size label, and the other was white with flowers and was a size 5. The rule is that size 5's go to M and size 4's go to R, so I put the size 5 in M's closet and the other in R's closet.

But M wanted the blue angel shirt with the rhinestones, and I was called upon to intervene. However, my attempts to solve the problem did not work. I stated the rule that applied, "It is R's shirt and she does not have to share."

Why don't we make them share? Two reasons:

(1) There is a more important lesson I want them to learn, and that is respect. By supporting the child who does not want to share, she learns what it feels like to be respected, that her personal space and personal belongings will not be violated, and she grows in confidence and feels safe in her environment. At the same time, the other girl learns an important lesson in giving respect to someone else.

(2) Being forced to share robs you of the opportunity to do so of your own free will. Sharing is not really a generous offer unless you do it because you want to, and forcing them does not help them learn to share. It only steals away the joy of giving. I find that the girls are more willing to share freely when they feel secure.

So I applied the rules to the situation, but M was still throwing a royal fit. I really wanted to just give her the shirt to make her stop whining and crying. Finally, I used a tool that I learned from Siblings Without Rivalry, which I had never bothered to use because I really did not think it would work.

This is what I said, "M wants the blue angel shirt, and R also wants the same angel shirt. The shirt belongs to R, and she does not want to share. But you two could talk it out and make an agreement. Maybe R could wear it on Mondays and Wednesdays, and M could wear it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am leaving the room, so let me know what you decide."

I was frustrated enough that I thought it would be better to not even be in the room. I went to the kitchen where I could hear a lot of screaming from them, and I thought, "This isn't going to work." I was tempted to go back in there and just confiscate the shirt, but instead I started making lunch. A few minutes later, M came out and said, "We decided that R will wear the white angel shirt and I will wear the blue one."

I think my jaw dropped to the floor; I had not even thought of that solution. I don't know who learned more: me or them! I learned that I don't have to be the mediator every time, and they learned how to problem solve for themselves.

You can order Siblings Without Rivalry: Help Your Children Live Together So That You Can Live Too through my e-store.

Reading Lessons

I tried the “whole word” method of teaching my girls to read, but I found that they were only pretending, memorizing the story and repeating what they remembered based on the pictures.

Then I tried a book called Reading Reflex, but the girls looked at me as if to say, “I do not understand. Just tell me the answer so that I can make you happy.” And I got frustrated with myself because I could not find any other way to explain.

I picked up this book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons out of desperation. My husband told me that M was fascinated by the pictures, and so I gave it a try.

The lessons include the following:
· Saying words fast and slow
· Rhyming
· Individual sounds
· Stringing sounds together
· Reading comprehension
· Writing

The book contains word for word what the instructor should say to the student. At first, I did not like being told what to say, and I did not like the special text that helps a new reader to adjust. However, the results speak for themselves: after 50 lessons, M is reading at a 2nd grade level, and she is only 5 years old!

She astonishes us every time she says, “Mommy, I saw a sign that said…” or when she picks up a new book and only needs help with a few words. On her own, she began to write her own stories, sounding out the words and writing the sounds she hears. Not everything is spelled correctly, but the more books she reads and the more stories she writes, the easier the stories are to read.

How We Got Started

I was home schooled for seventh and eighth grade, the two best years of my entire schooling experience. Being a very introspective child, I got lost in the schoolroom, but when my parents brought me home, I flourished, both socially and academically.

Believing that home schooling really was the best possible education, I dreamed of home schooling my own children, but trapped by jobs, my husband and I did not see how it was possible. I worked while TJ was the stay-at-home dad. How would I ever have the time?
The truth is that I was scared of failure. Whenever I would make an education plan, nothing would ever come of it. Considering myself to be disorganized, I believed that I just did not have what it takes. It has taken me five years of child rearing to finally realize that the planning method was at fault rather than that I was incapable.

The year that M turned 5, I was ready to give up, prepared to send my oldest off to school. The very idea of giving up my dream broke my heart. However, then M met her first bully, and it crushed her. We knew she just was not ready.

We determined that kindergarten would be our trial run. If it did not go well, she would only be held back a year; no harm done. This time I refused to be crippled by over planning. We jumped in with both feet, determined that something was better than nothing.

At first, I thought I would just do preschool / kindergarten for both M and R at the same time, thinking that they were at the same level. We sometimes forget that R is almost two years younger. They could both cite the alphabet and count to 10, and they both knew their color and shapes and could recognize the letters.

Not having the money to buy a complete curriculum, I began by making up games, printing coloring pages off the internet, and ordering books from the library. I read many books on “how to home school” and on “home school styles.” I studied activity books, science books, math books, and tried several different reading programs until I found what really works.
I quickly learned that M and R had very different educational needs. R could recite the numbers one to ten, but she did not understand how to use the numbers nor could she recognize the printed number, and where M had the attention span to learn to read, R just needed the opportunity to have someone read to her and discuss the stories at her level.
So I had to tailor the activities for the needs of each child, and thus I ended up doing preschool, kindergarten, and first grade all at the same time. Some activities were meant for R, but M enjoyed the fun too. Other activities were meant for M, and R had the opportunity to glean whatever she could understand.

Being that I was still working, I relaxed my approach, building a framework of learning rather than a strict lesson plan. Using a table with 12 subjects listed across the top, I kept track of what we did for each day of the week, and I kept file folders with lists of possible activities for certain subjects like science and math. When time came for lessons, I would check off an activity from my pre-made lists and mark it on my weekly tracking table.

Over time, I began to find not just good resources, but great resources. This is web site is meant to document what was most helpful for us.