The Long Journey Home Continues. Trustfalling( Or "Are We There Yet?")

Have you ever done a group team-building exercise where you stand on something like a chair and fall backward into the arms of the other teammates? When you completely let go of everything and blindly fall through nothing and hope everyone will be there to catch you softly?

 I have. It is very scary to close your eyes and let go. It is hard to not see where you are landing. But in the end, it is really fun. I could do it over and over. Partly because of my aforementioned acrophobia, it feels like a huge rush as you fall but it is such a short fall that it isn't too terrifying, just thrilling enough to have a good pay-off. You know that there are enough people that you most likely not land on the ground. They will catch you and you will be okay.

 There is another kind of trust fall between two people, though. One where there is only one person there to catch you.

That one, I believe, requires a lot more trust. It's just one person. They could choose to quit playing the game and walk away. Or, it could just be a matter of not being prepared for you, or not being strong enough to hold your weight. (Not that you weigh too much, they're just weak). You really need to know that person enough to let go. That is a lot scarier.

In a group, most of the people are going to hold your weight, even if some of them are weak, the combined strength will be enough, and most of them will also have a turn and would not want you to drop them, so they won't drop you, even if one or two walk away, you know that most of them will be there for you. With one person, its just you and them, and there are no guaranties. It takes all of your trust in them to step back and fall into their arms.

You are probably wondering where I am going with this and what it has to do with our home-buying process. As I explained in my post called The Long Journey Home, we are in the process of buying our first house. It has so far all gone much faster than we expected and it was all so exciting, after 11 years of waiting. We were told a few dates on which we might be "closing", which have now come and gone. The mortgage broker and realtor were optimistic that we would close before the projected dates, and it would have, but the underwriters are still nitpicking and taking their sweet time to figure out all the details, when we should be already approved and be done by now.
 I am getting stressed out by the unknown aspect of it all. When will we get the keys? When will we actually be able to move in? We gotta let the people helping us move know when we will actually need their help, because, as of now, we aren't going anywhere and we won't be getting the keys today, that's for sure.

I know this is par for the course for home-buyers. It takes a long time and the whole process is dragged out. This is our first home-buying experience. I had thought that things would go slower up till now, but everything has happened so much faster than anticipated that I guess I expected this process would, too. The worst part is just not knowing when. It's like being blinded. Not knowing where I'm going. We try to plan our lives around the dates we were given for the move, and we are hanging in the unknown so we can plan anything. This doesn't just affect us, it affects anyone who is planning anything that concerns us.

It is times like these when your faith is challenged.

I have often heard people refer to "Blind Faith" and to a degree I understand what it means and to a degree I agree with it, but in all reality, trusting in God isn't completely blind. We know who God is and how He operates and what He stands for. We know where we're going at the end of all things. We know what He's up to in the grand picture. It's these times when we can't see the very next little step He wants us to take that we truly feel blind. More like blindfolded for a part of the journey. For the one big step that for a few seconds of time leaves you falling in mid -air. Do you trust that He will be there to catch you when you land? Do I believe that I will be safe in His arms, in His timing? Do I cower in fear and worry that I just don't know what is happening because I can't see? Or do I let go and trust that He is in control? How much trust DO I have in Him? Just take that blindfolded free-fall and let Him catch me. He knows when we will be in our new house and He knows everything. I can trust in His timing and I don't have to stress or worry or fear. I don't have to care about what other people think. I know that God will be there. I can have total Faith in Him. Not blind faith. But maybe blind-folded-for-a-moment faith.

At this moment all I know is that they told us we "might" be closing on Tuesday of next week. So much for moving this weekend. But I am going to let go of my expectations and plans and know that God is in control. And try to enjoy my free weekend. Hopefully, we'll be in the house before too long and we'll have everything packed up by then. Meanwhile, I'm going to have fun falling into the arms of one that I can trust with my whole life.
Whee!

Read It and Weep

 It is so interesting when discoveries are made concerning your child's learning abilities. A light-bulb goes off when you realize why your child may learn one way or have difficulty learning another way. It explains so much!

Recall a previous blog when I talked about learning styles. This is similar, but slightly different.

Recently I have been having a lot of trouble helping my daughter with her 2nd grade reading assignments. She is a very bright little girl with huge imagination and great grasp of several academic subjects. But she would always give me issues when it came to reading. And other subjects would be affected due to the fact that she would skip reading the instructions about the lesson and just guess what she should be doing. Now, she has a very stubborn attitude about things and if she doesn't feel like doing something, it really doesn't matter how easy it is, she won't do it on principle. So for a long time it never occurred to me that she might have a problem, I just thought she decided she didn't want to.

Until about 2 months ago, when it suddenly hit me, an epiphany. Maybe, like some aunties and cousins and seconds cousins, she has dyslexia. I had seen some of the symptoms in her earlier on, but a lot of little kids have what look like dyslexia symptoms in kindergarten, but they grow out of them and it is no problem. It's only when it stays and becomes a pattern that it is a warning sign of Dyslexia.

For instance, she could never ever ever seem to keep her 'b's and 'd's straight. Or 'p's and 'q's. And sometimes she would even confuse 'd's for 'p's...

Also, she was afraid to read. Like, she desperately avoided it at all costs and when she made a simple mistake would break down and just quit trying. So sad.

I don't know why it took so long for me to figure it out. She is actually pretty good at reading on occasion, and she is really good at the other subjects. Ahead, and very smart. So I looked into the symptoms.

Google, my go-to searching tool. I typed in "How can you tell if someone has dyslexia?" I go some great answers.
Some of the sites I found helpful are:

www.dys-add.com/symptoms.html

www.dyslexia.com/library/information.htm

www.frameworklearning.com/dyslexia (This is the site of a Teacher named Emily Boles, MAT, Educational Therapist and mother. She will email you a checklist depending on your child's age that will help you very much with identifying whether it is a problem or not.)

When I took that list, I checked off the huge majority of the questions for my girl. It's like "Oh, my goodness, she has all these symptoms! Wow, how did I not connect this?" But I am not a licensed educational therapist nor do I have my masters in teaching. So it's okay.

Some of the symptoms are:

• She might see some letters as backwards or upside down;

• She might see text appearing to jump around on a page;

• She might not be able to tell the difference between letters that look similar in shape such as o and e and c ;

• She might not be able to tell the difference between letters that have similar shape but different orientation, such as b and p and d and q ;

• The letters might look all jumbled up and out of order;

• The letters and words might look all bunched together;

• The letters of some words might appear completely backwards, such as the word bird looking like drib ;

• The letters and words might look o.k., but the dyslexic person might get a severe headache or feel sick to her stomach every time she tries to read;

• She might see the letters o.k., but not be able to sound out words -- that is, not be able to connect the letters to the sounds they make and understand them;

• She might be able to connect the letters and sound out words, but not recognize words she has seen before, no matter how many times she has seen them -- each time she would have to start fresh;
•  Reading a paragraph might look something like this:
  
  

• She might be able to read the words o.k. but not be able to make sense of or remember what she reads, so that she finds herself coming back to read the same passage over and over again.

Reading symptoms:

•   She can read a word on one page, but won't recognize it on the next page.

•    She knows phonics, but can't—or won't—sound out an unknown word.

•    She has slow, labored, inaccurate reading of single words in isolation (when there is no story line or pictures to provide clues)

•   When she misreads, she'll often say a word that has the same first and last letters, and the same shape, such as form-from or trial-trail.

•  She may insert or leave out letters, such as could-cold or star-stair.

•   She may say a word that has the same letters, but in a different sequence, such as who-how, lots-lost, saw-was, or girl-grill.

•  when reading aloud, she reads in a slow, choppy cadence (not in smooth phrases), and often ignores punctuation

• she becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time

•  reading comprehension may be low for her due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words. Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension.

•  directionality confusion shows up when reading and when writing

•    b-d confusion is a classic warning sign. One points to the left, the other points to the right, and she is left-right confused.

•   b-p, n-u, or m-w confusion. One points up, the other points down. That's also directionality confusion.

•     Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning of the sentence, such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking

•  She misreads, omits, or even adds small function words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of

•    She omits or changes suffixes, saying need for needed, talks for talking, or late for lately.

Spelling:

•    Her spelling is far worse than their reading. She'll sometimes flunk inventive spelling. She'll have extreme difficulty with vowel sounds, and often leave them out.

•     With enormous effort, she may be able to "memorize" Monday's spelling list long enough to pass Friday's spelling test, but she can't spell those very same words two hours later when writing those words in sentences.

• She'll continually misspells high frequency sight words (nonphonetic but very common words) such as they, what, where, does and because—despite extensive practice.

•  She misspells even when copying something from the board or from a book.

•  Her written work shows signs of spelling uncertainty--numerous erasures, cross outs, etc.

Sorry if any of those were repeated, I copied and pasted that last one from a list. But you get the idea. If there are a bunch of these symptoms consistent in your child over kindergarten age, you could look into getting them formally tested. Some schools offer tests, so you can look into the local public school district near you to find out more, or you may be able to do it online.

Instead of it being a scary revelation that my daughter has "something wrong with her...", it was rather a huge relief to find out that was the reason she has had so much trouble. I knew it couldn't be that she wasn't smart, this kid is very smart. So to hear that there is a reason for her issues and knowing what it is means knowing the next steps to take to help her better, was a great burden lifted.

  Now I have something to blame her problems on, hahaha... Or rather, something from which to start and help her get better and more confident at reading. We got started back to basics with a phonics reader. She is really good at memorizing. I can help her to memorize small rules in phonics that will make sounding out easier. It's like we reverted back to kindergarten, but there's no pressure, no demand, it's laid back. So much better than before.

If you are worried that you are not getting through to a child in some subject, it might be something like this. Or, as in the case of one of my preschool daycare students, it could be their vision. That has a huge impact on their ability to learn, if they can't see. This kid had REALLY bad vision, and no one really knew.

It wasn't until I'd cared for him for several months that I connected the dots and drew the conclusion that he might need his eyes checked. Now that he has been to the eye doctor and gotten a lot of the problems straightened out, he is doing great in school.

( He is in kindergarten now.)  We had our daughter's eyes checked recently, and they are great, by the way :)

So don't worry, just open up to all the options of what could really be going on with your kids.  Once you have a diagnosis, things are easier to understand and find a solution for.

The Long Journey Home

I have been expecting to post the latest blog about our latest unit study (which was going to be on weather)

 for several months now. We ended the last unit in February, and I started doing research on it before March started. (By the way, it would have been epic, because March of '12 here in Portland was record-breakingly schizophrenic.)
However, something major happened in the very beginning of March that changed our lives and totally redirected our focus. In light of that, unit studies took a backseat, as did blogging, and we found ourselves doing the basics every day just to keep up with the upcoming home-school test for the 3rd grade.

I am going to take a minute to go over the testing for home-schoolers in a bit, but right now I want to tell you about the thing that happened that changed our lives.

When my husband and I first got engaged, we knew that the LORD was guiding us together in His timing, but it certainly wasn't ours. My husband worked a humble job as a maintenance worker for our church. It was, needless to say, quite a low-paying job, and mine wasn't too high either, being that you work for childcare because you love it, not because it makes you rich. We really couldn't afford rent, so when we got married, we moved onto his parent's property and converted one of the buildings on the acreage into a one-bedroom loft-style house for the two of us. After several years, children came along and our job situation went down and the economy went boom and 11 years later, we've been living with people basically our entire married life.

All along I had a dream to one day have my own home in which to host parties, board people in need of a room, perhaps foster parent or even adopt, and for sure run a daycare from my home. But I never had my own home in which to fulfill those dreams. I could never say to my friends of family, "why don't you come over to my place?" or "we could have that event at our house."

In November of last year, I really felt the LORD telling me in my heart to lay my desires of my home at His feet. I was really struggling to question when we were going to be able to see the dreams He placed in our hearts come true. I heard Him tell me that He had it under control and to stop trying to figure out what I wasn't doing enough to be able to make it happen. He brought Psalm 127 :1 to my heart:

 1 Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it; 

He told me to let Him have the dream and He had it under control. 

So that following New Year's Eve, we went out to the town where my Sis-in-law lives to celebrate the new year and I really heard Him say that this is the year you are going to get your home. 

I took that as a  promise and held it tightly in my heart. I also called my good friend who is a realtor and asked her to look into houses for us. That very day. 

Well, after the tax returns were sorted out in Feb, we submitted all our paper work to the realtor's home-loan lender and we submitted our application for the loan at the beginning of March. About 3 days later we were approved! For the first time in 11 years as a married couple we were approved for our first home loan! We started house-hunting immediately. After about 2 months of seeking and finding and thinking and praying, we found a town house that we liked and put in an offer, but it was for a "Short sale" which is Bank-speak for "longest process ever for buying a home." Good name for it, huh?

 So then we kept looking, and found a really nice little house about a block away from the other one, but this was a foreclosure, which is one of the quickest processes, and it wasn't attached to neighbors on both sides like the townhouse, so we put the offer in on that one. It was submitted on a Tuesday, and accepted on Wednesday. We signed papers for it on Friday. Wow!

So, as you can tell, all that home-seeking stuff, and packing stuff, paperwork and other details have kept me very busy, and quite distracted. Also in that time, we had several Holidays including: my baby's 3rd birthday and my daughter's 8th birthday, Easter, Mother's day, and my 11th anniversary, for which we took a 4-day trip out of town. As well as a lot of illness. It's spring, and the weather is constantly changing, and I find that people's immune systems are much weaker when the weather is constantly pulling surprises. We had the most snowfall of the whole last winter season this March, and some in April. All that to say: I've been overwhelmed with life and now I am overwhelmed with packing. And I've barely begun. 

The other big change is the town. We are moving about 20-30 miles East of the Portland area where I currently live and work. It's a small town. But there are familiar store chains and restaurants nearby. I love the neighborhood where we will be living. However, being that far out of the way means that the current daycare clients that I have are going to have other care. They would have to drive about 20 miles out of the way (one way) to drop their kids off and then the other 20 miles back just to start their commute the other direction in order to keep me on. That is asking too much. So we must part ways when I move in about a month. Bittersweet. Ouch. 


Change is a good thing, but very hard for me to process. Especially when it comes to saying goodbye to people I like or love and care about very deeply. When I quit the Child Care Corporation I had been working at for years in order to stay home with my kiddos, I cried a lot from missing some of the kids I had watched grow from infants. I loved a LOT of my kids, and even their families, that I had cared for, and I am still in touch with several of them. Change is very hard for me. So, although it is wonderful that we got a house in a wonderful neighborhood, and I will love getting new kids to love, I am really sad about not having these ones anymore. 

They have been very sweet and I know that the new care giver is going to be awesome, (it's one of the mothers of one of the babies) so that puts my mind at ease about that. All the kids are very excited  about the one aspect of moving that all kids love: BOXES! 

I am so grateful to the LORD for bringing this new phase into our lives. Like I said, change isn't easy, but in this case, it is very very good.  Our house ( which technically isn't ours yet until mid-end of June) is small but great. When we went out there to do the inspections, I took some pictures, and then I labeled them so you would know what you are looking at, since it's all beige and empty.

We are very excited to just be living in our own space and have our own things on the walls and everything. We are excited to be hanging out in our own back yard this summer and walking the 1-ish block to the closest playground together. We love the neighborhood, and some of the neighbors already.  This is a dream come true 11 years in the making. We are going to make the most of it, and have it be a house dedicated to the LORD. 


I will also resume my regular home schooling unit plans this Fall. The home-school co-op that we were a part of last year is in the same neighborhood as our house, so we can go back into activities with them as well. Yay for that!


Speaking of that home-school co-op, they are providing the location and overseer/giver of the assessment test this year that my oldest can take. He is finishing his 3rd grade this year, and that is the first grade that is required by Oregon law to be tested.  According to the law, you have to register with the county if your child will be 7 by September 1st in order to avoid truancy, but not before. Once they are registered, you have to re-register each year with the county you are living in that year. Then after grade 3, 5, 8 and 10, they have to take a test by August 15th of the year they complete those grades. You choose and pay for the testing to be administered by a state-certified tester. A qualified tester is a neutral party (not related to the child) who is a licensed teacher or psychological examiner, or who has met the qualifications for purchasing the test directly from the publisher.
That is why I am grateful to be a part of the group. They organize and arrange the testing and send the info to the parents in the group so that we can register our child/ren with the group to be tested. My good friend in the group who has a high school aged child, a 3rd grader, 1st grader and preschooler, told me that the test is only for your records. The state &/or county does not need to have this test. You do not need to give it to them. You have it for the sake of proving they did it, should you be required at some point to prove that. The only thing is that your child has to pass with a composite score in the 15th percentile or above, and then they don't have to be re-tested again until the next required grade (5th,8th,10th). If they don't pass above that percentile, then they have to retake it the next year.  That is all I know. For more info, look up your state/area's laws on the internet and to find out where testing might be provided this year.

As far as life-dreams go, the dream to be in my own house, educating and being with my children and taking care of others, has finally (almost ) come true for me!! That was the big bucket list one, so now to tackle the littler ones.....(like performing in a musical on stage again.) Some day.

Spacing Out

Welcome to the adventures of me attempting to teach on the subject of:
SPACE

Buckle  your seatbelts, folks, it's gonna be a weird ride.

 When I start a curriculum, I usually go to the library and look up all the books I can find about the subject the kids chose for that month.
Then I use the books as a guideline. I don't know about your library, but mine lets me borrow up to 50 books at a time for a whole month.
I try to find all the info I can on the subject and I try to find age/grade- appropriate material for my students. I also look for themes within themes and break down the month into weeks, giving each week a focused topic to explore within those sub-themes. For instance, When you're talking about space, you can learn about the stars and constellations, galaxies, our solar system-- all the main planets and then the dwarf ones, the moon, space exploration and shuttles and other space crafts, etc...
So I found books that covered all of these, then decided which to go over on which days, and which weeks.
I also then decide if there is a craft of some sort that would further explore that topic per day. And/or any other activity we could do, like music or a physical game. I plan out the month week by week, then day by day, breaking down each area of learning.


To start off, we began with learning about NASA, and what it would be like to go up into space. I read this book to them, which was geared for their grade-level.

Then I assigned them a paper on what they would like about being an astronaut, and what they wouldn't.

Then we did this art project.

I found a series of books that were perfect for my lessons, one book per planet, and other points of education in the solar system:

These are full of info I myself did not realize. The info is a couple years behind, so due to some of the space probes having sent back newer info since publication, there might be even better info out there in cyberworld. Perhaps, but these are still good resources nonetheless.

We read one book each day, and then did a corresponding art project of that planet per day. For instance, we learned that Mercury is a planet full of craters, since it has such a thin atmosphere that any meteorites just fly right through it and crash into the planet. So we made the planet look crater-full by sponge painting.

 We are attempting to construct a mobile out of these, the two planets, one made by each of the kids, will get glued back to back and we'll just have one planet each. So I tried to make each of them proportionate to each other, as best as possible.
 Here's Venus, which we learned is very cloudy with a very thick atmosphere, so we used marble painting to represent the swirls of the clouds, in the colors the book said it looks like:

 Venus is the only planet to be named after a Roman goddess. All the other ones are named after male gods.

 Next, we learned that the Earth is made up of a bunch of Tectonic Plates put together like a puzzle, so we made the Earth by gluing scraps of blue and green paper together like a tectonic mosaic:

We also learned that Venus and Earth are about the same size, with Earth being only sightly bigger.

Next we learned that Mars is rusty red- looking and full of volcanoes. So we used splatter paint to show the mountains and volcanoes on red paper, to show the rusty color:

The next planet order away from the sun is Jupiter. It is HUGE  compared to the 4 previous "terrestrial" planets. It is the 1st of the next 4 Gas Giants. So proportionately, it is much bigger to the other ones.
We learned that Jupiter is a bit "stripey" due to its storms and gas layers. we painted stripes onto the biggest piece of cardboard we had in the house, that I cut into a circle of a giant Tupperware(tm) lid I had, with an Exacto(tm) knife.

We tried to make it as big as possible with the supplies that we had, to make it proportionately big enough in comparison to the Earth, but it isn't quite big enough. Close, though, they get the idea.
Here's our Earth and Jupiter comparison:

And here is the book's version:

As you can see, their Earth is a lot smaller in comparison. Oh well, we did our best, eh?

After that, Saturn is just a little bit smaller than Jupiter. I found this cool project online to use CDs and Styrofoam balls to make the planet Saturn,

 but I realized part-way through the project, that I bought the Styrofoam to be the right size proportionately to Jupiter, and the CDs were way too small in that case. Had I gauged all the planets to be proportionate to each other on Saturn's rings being the size of the CD, Mercury would have had to start out so small it would have been very difficult to work with at all. So I simply found a big piece of poster board and cut into a circle big enough to look like the rings around the ball. Thusly:

 Here is what our Saturn looks like in comparison to the CDs we were going to use:

 It had to be bigger. This is the only planet that turned out 3D. All the others are 2D images, double-sided sandwich style.

Uranus is a large planet that is blue from the amount of methane gas that comprises it. Also, the planet is tilted on its axis so that its North and South are sideways compared to the other 7 planets. Like so:

Interesting fact: Uranus is the only planet to be named after a Greek god instead of  a Roman planet.

The technique  we used to make the swirly pattern of the clouds was to use a tissue-cloth like rag-painting. We tried to leave the ring white, but ended up painting white over it.

 Neptune is a blue-green mixture because it has methane and other gases, and it is very cloudy.
To get the look, and because of the appropriate size coordinating with the other planets,  we used a format of using a coffee filter and markers, then spraying it with water to cause the marker to 'bleed' a bit.

According to the newest findings, Neptune is the farthest planet from the sun in our solar system and there are a least 3 Dwarf planets. 


After learning about all the planets, I asked the 3rd grader (my son) to write a report about the planets in the solar system, including about 2 sentences of facts per planet. This should not have been a big deal, but to him it was.

 You see, part of the reason for homeschooling is his lack of focus on the writing part. He will learn all the facts by any means necessary. Reciting, using physical demonstration, arts and crafts, song and dance, games, you name it. But ask him to sit down and write out paragraphs is cruel and unusual punishment to the utmost degree. Also, he refused to write in cursive, apparently that would have been 10x worse.  So we are working on it. This is the part of the 'home schooling rocks, sometimes' that is not rocking. 
I'm gonna be real here, folks. We spent ALL DAY on this. We started at our normal 2ish o'clock school time (during toddler/baby naps) and we "finished" at 10:00pm.  P.M.! Not even joking. We took a break during dinner to eat, but that was maybe 1/2 hour. He just won't pick up the pencil, put it to paper, and keep working. UGH! So that is the frustration I am going through. It isn't anything like perfect around here. I want to be transparent, and not give some illusion that I am super-mom and setting the standard or anything. We struggle. We don't so much some days. But we are flexible and that is what homeschooling is all about. I know the set standard of school is something that might just kill my son. I want him to have a learning experience that actually help him learn. But sometimes I don't want to do it anymore. It is hard. 


Have faith, we will continue on. And I will show him that this project didn't kill him...