Wow! Halloween has taken hold, and how!
We’ve been working on our math daily, and I have seen marked improvement with Keeker. Occasionally she hits a brick wall but she can usually find her way around it without too much trouble. We got her an additional workbook called, “Multiplication Made Easy.” She does 2 pages a day for now. Once they get past the easy ones we’ll probably slow back down to a page a day. She’s plugging away and staying relatively motivated.
Fish is back in Story Problem mode. I switched him because the words didn’t match the pictures. His reading wasn’t going to be able to pick up the slack quite yet. Now his reading has improved so we switched back. But it was like I was playing a cruel joke or something. He skimmed the word problems for key words like, “all together” or “left” and decided to add or subtract the numbers based on those words alone. Well, it turns out the pictures didn’t give him the right numbers to add and subtract. Just because the picture was of three hats and two scarves didn’t mean he was too subtract one from the other. The question was:
There are seven scarves and four hats in the closet. How many more scarves are in the closet than hats?
Because of the picture presented and the word “more” in the word problem Fish answered 3 + 2 = 5. Yes his arithmetic was correct but the problem was all wrong! It took us a couple of days to get past that hurdle but I think it’ll really improve his reading comprehension.
Keek has been re-reading her fairy tales and looking for others online. I think she’s ready for the rainbow of fairy tale books in the “grown up” section of the library. Thing is we don’t have those classics at our library. Grrr… we’ll have to make a trip to the big town for that! Fish has been avoiding reading all together. I can’t say that I blame him… I wasn’t a reader as a child either. He likes to be read to so I guess I’ll just back off and give him some more time to come to it on his own. I am comfortable in his ability to read enough to get by. If he were of age I’m sure he could fill out a job app and probably even vote. He just doesn’t like to read! At six I give the kids there email addresses but Fish has no interest. He said, “Eh, I’ll just call somebody if I want to talk to them.” Shocker!
The kids have both been active on clubpenguin.com; which has cool new Halloween decorum by the way. Fish just got a Webkinz! YAY! He loves it, of course and has been even more of a computer junkie lately! Keeker has been playing around at pbskids.org/zoom again and really enjoys the “did you know?” section.
We finally finished decorating the house, it was spooktacular! Fish helped Dad lay tiles in the back area and Keek helped with more spooky spiderwebs festooning the living room. The costumes were ready and the invites were out. The Big Birthday Bash was looming large on the calender and excitement sizzled in the air!
The night before the party a whole group of us went downtown to our little village celebration where Dh and I won the costume contest. The kids got plenty of candy and the grown ups got plenty of pictures. Talk about fun!
When the big day arrived we could hardly contain ourselves! The party started at just the right time and lasted much longer than was anticipated… but with wonderful results! The food everyone brought was delicious. The cousins came over and all kids had a blast! The presents were all big hits. Fish plays with the awesome shotgun and kooky alien creating machine every day! They’ve watched Scooby Doo 2 I don’t know how many times and *ahem* Fish’s aim with the bow and arrow set has greatly improved. teeheehee
It’s just not fair. Poor tears-in-her-eyes Keek told me, “It’s not fair that Fish gets his birthday so close to Halloween and I don’t.” So we’ve had a rougher than normal week but things are looking up now that the birthday party is behind us. Keek had a blast at the party and loved seeing everyone who came but I think she’s glad it’s all over too!
The optometrist said she probably won’t need to wear glasses after this year. Her Rx is only in one eye and it’s the lowest they have. She only wears the glasses for reading now and soon (6mo – 1yr) that won’t even be necessary! She got plastic cat eye shaped frames. They are black on top and clear on the bottom. So movie star diva chica!
There’s my happy silly little girl!
