Saturday, October 18, 2008

Saturday Accountability 18 October 2008

I think I will just make this an informal summary of how various aspects of our life are going.
First, the big new of the week: Esther took her first steps on Wednesday. She has been standing up for awhile, but Wednesday morning at Co-op she stood up in the middle of the floor and took three very deliberate steps. She has repeated the performance several times since, with three and four steps at a time. Now I just need to capture a video clip one of these time...
I'm feeling pretty happy with our schooling. We're still not doing much with math, but that's not bothering me right now. That's the nice thing about kindergarten, there's really not that much math to learn!
Lily seems to be poised to take off with reading, so I've decided to focus our efforts on that. We started reading this week from the Book of Mormon together--it is actually a pretty good book to work with beginning readers on, the words are fairly predictable (lots of "and it came to pass") and the stories are already familiar to my kids. Right now we're just trying to read a verse or two at a time, with me reading the harder words and Lily reading the easier ones. I also bought phonogram cards that go with the "Spell to Write and Read" program. I have been investigating this program and liking it better and better, but I don't have the funds just now to buy the entire set. Basically, it teaches systematic phonetics that apply to probably 99% of English words, so you don't have to just teach a few rules and the rest is exceptions. I'm not explaining very well. Maybe once I own the complete program I will write a review!
If you read my first Tot School post, you saw the sugar cube pyramid we made. That came from a book about Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbours that I got from the library. It is full of activities. We are informally studying the ancient world this year, so the activity books is a good fit. We'll see what we do next.
I'm not doing so well with some of my personal goals. I have been exercising pretty regularly, thanks to my friend C. who goes running and to the gym with me. Personal scripture study is hit and miss. I have fallen behind on the Bible reading challenge, although I am still reading. And I have not been writing in my journal--although I have been blogging, which is a sort of journaling. I was looking through the book The Sneaky Chef, and thought I might make use of some of its suggestions to get more vegetables into our diet--suggestions include using a blender to puree vegetables to mix into other dishes--like macaroni and cheese.
And if you read this blog you know I currently volunteering with the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. Today we stood on a busy street corner with signs to encourage people to vote yes on Proposition 8. Some fellow came up the last hour we were there with a home-made sign saying "No On H8". Now I don't mind sharing the street corner, but I really don't get the claim that voting to retain the traditional definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is hateful towards anyone. Hm, I smella new blog post brewing...

1 comment:

Kelley said...

I find that (when I do it) a regular redirecting is helpful. I used to do it every morning, but that was before I became pregnant with #4, and am nursing all the time now. I need to sit down and re-direct right now since I've been off course because of my trip this last week.

I, too, don't understand how it is hateful to reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage. I guess wording makes all the difference when those who are against it are trying to push their agenda.