Monthly Archives: July 2006

Hearing Loss, Special Needs Kids, Wonderboy

I Hear You, Boy

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Yesterday morning, while I was stumbling around in my pre-tea haze, Wonderboy asked for a Signing Time dvd. He watched for a few minutes and then shouted, "MOM! Nee hee ai!"

Me: Um, what?

Boy (pointing at ear): NEE hee ai, Mom. Hee ai!

His tone was loud and patient, the way people in comedies shout at foreigners as if they are hard of hearing instead of non-English-speaking. Oh, right. Hard of hearing. The light bulb went off.

Me: You need your hearing aids?

Boy: (laughs)

He’s always been astonishingly tolerant of his hearing aids, but having him recognize that he’d enjoy his show more with them in was a very cool moment indeed.

Uncategorized

Speaking of Carnivals

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Treat yourself to another hilarious Carnival of Kid Comedy. Kim, our dedicated hostess, just had baby #8 and didn’t miss a beat!

While you’re there, scroll down and read more of Kim’s blog. She cracks me up. That Daddy-long-legs piece is a hoot! AND creepy, which is one of my favorite combinations. The idea of a thousand daddy-long-legs (hmm, I’m working out the plural here and can it really be daddy-long-legses?  Daddies-long-legs? Ha!) clustered together in a big hairy ball is the stuff of which nightmares are made. :::shudder::::

Day Planners, Organization

Planners for Moms: Your Suggestions

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The day planner series has generated simply scads of feedback—thanks! Here are some of the ideas you’ve shared in the comments:

Becky wrote,

I’m a geek too, but a cheap geek and lazy to boot. I found I just
don’t use the kind of planners meant to be toted around (I much prefer
a huge central calendar in the kitchen for things like that — and I
love the "Family Organizer" from More Time Moms, which sacrifices
pretty pictures for lots of spaces).

But I do like to keep a record of the kids’ work for the day, as you
do, Lissa, and I’ve found that a regular "student planner" at Staples
for under $10 does the trick. There was a lovely supermarket-brand one
a couple of years ago, but it seemed to be a one-off 🙁

Leslie recommended a planner I haven’t seen yet:

Be sure to check out the Familytime.mine planner from Tanglewood Press.
Border’s Books sells it. It has sections for seasonal, monthly, and
weekly views with large blocks for each day. It’s a 17-month planner
that begins in September and runs through December of the following
year. It is an 8.5 x11" spiral bound size, though, so it won’t fit in
most purses. About 5-7 of the moms I know use it and love it. I just
happen to be a PalmPilot kinda woman, myself.

And Ann came up with her own pretty and practical solution:

After reading your intriguing series of posts on Planners, Melissa,
I bought my own pretty (because, yes, beauty is *essential* in a
planner)hardback, spiral (it needed to lay open on the counter, if I
was really going to use it) journal, with some adhesive tabs and made
my own day planner based on the brilliant layout from the
MomAgenda…with several caveats… (A Planner for UnPlanners):

1. I didn’t label the tabs with all kind of subjects–I am only
labelling them as I actually find need to jot something down–that way
it is just what I acutally need and *use* as opposed to some imposed,
unecessary division I’ll never use. (So far, I have a tab for: Daily
Schedules, Grocery Lists, Items needed for Children)

2. I am writing only a loose skeleton for the day’s outline…no tight
schedule for me. And then as the day progresses, I write in (loosely,
only what I want to make note of) what I actually *DID*—like
**scheduling in reverse**. That is working for me. I can see what
worked some days, what didn’t, what may have been a stumbling point and
could be tweaked…and I feel a sense of accomplishment instead of
discouragement. Seeing what I *did* on a day motivates me for the next
day. And if I didn’t get to "a bone on my skeleton" for the day, I just
add it to the next day.

3. In the children’s squares, somedays I jot in what I’d like to do
with each child that day so I remember…or again, I jot in what we
actually did together. Nice to have a record of our days.

3. Finally, I am only making up one week layout at a time in the
journal… that way, if I choose not to continue (I am on my third week),
well…I still have a blank, pretty journal to write in instead of a
whole planner of scheduled, useless pages! ~warm smile~ (And one can
*always* use a journal!)

I am *most* grateful, Melissa, for this series…with some tweaking, I think this is a planner that works unplanners!

Anne-Marie prefers the high-tech version:

Me, I’m a computer gal, so Microsoft
Outlook is the one way to go. I keep separate calendars for my work as
an Usborne Books consultant, and a main one for daily appointments.
Each family member has their own color and I also color code the
different work things I do – MOMS Club, charter school, writing,
Usborne, etc.

My problem with written calendars is that either I run out of room
or they’re a mess from the constant changes. With MS Outlook, I change
everything online and just print out a new calendar to take with and
post on the ‘frige.

I’d love to hear from more folks about the planners you know and love. It’s so nice to know I’m not t he only one with this obsession.

Other day planner reviews:
momAgenda
Catholic Woman’s Daily Planner
Small Meadow Press — Circle of Days
The BusyBodyBook

Charlotte Mason, General Homeschooling, Joy of Learning, Methods of Home Education

Who Is This Charlotte Mason Person, Anyway?

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If the name means nothing to you, you may be wondering what all the hoopla is about. Charlotte Mason was a British educator and author of the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries. She wrote a lot of books and articles about education; she founded a teachers’ college and a correspondence school for families (the PNEU, or Parents’ National Education Union). She had a vision for a method of learning (and living) that was an antidote to dry, dumbed-down or excessively stern and rote systems of education favored by governesses and schools of her day (and still, in many cases, ours).

Her method was simple, rigorous, and lively. For each term, she (or her colleagues) drew up a list of what she called "living books," eloquent and impassioned prose for all subjects: history, literature, science, geography, civics, and poetry. No dull, committee-written textbooks for her students. All reading was to be of the highest literary quality.

The material was read slowly and thoroughly. In the early years, teachers or parents read the books aloud to their young pupils; as the students got older, they assumed more of the reading themselves.

As they read (or listened), the students narrated back the material. That is, they re-told what they had just heard in as much detail as they could possibly remember. Until age ten or so, children narrated orally; after that, they wrote out their narrations, thus developing excellent composition and retention skills.

You don’t really know something unless you can tell it back—we’ve all experienced this. Often when one of my kids says something funny I want to remember, I repeat it over to myself until it is fixed in my mind. That’s narrating, and it’s a cornerstone of a Charlotte Mason education. Such a simple idea—simply tell it back!—and yet so incredibly effective. At age eleven, Jane has a memory that frightens astounds me: she can often repeat back word for word entire passages she has read. I’d like to take credit for passing on brilliant genes (as if I had anything to do with them, ha!) but it probably has more to do with her early training in CM’s narration techniques. I therefore grudgingly give all credit to Charlotte Mason and, you know, God.

Living books, narration, exposure to a wide range of subjects and ideas—these are the chief elements of a Charlotte Mason education. She also enthusiastically encouraged firsthand study of the natural world. She wanted her teachers (including parent-teachers) to get their students outside every day for fresh air and encounters with flora and fauna. Shoot, where did I just read the funniest excerpt on someone’s blog about a person spotting a child in a tree—and then much higher up was the child’s teacher "who had been trained at Miss Mason’s college"? I’ll look for that link. It was delightful and a perfect example of the adventurous and lively attitude Charlotte Mason liked to cultivate.

When we bring Charlotte Mason’s ideas into our homes and schools, we find that education becomes—as she put it herself—a life, a lifestyle. Our children retain their eagerness for knowledge and experience, their appetite for facts and big ideas. Miss Mason didn’t want children going through the motions of learning, cramming for tests and then forgetting everything right afterward. And of course none of us want that for our children either, whether they’re in school or not.