The Fairy House, and an interview with Ella

This afternoon, Ella, Maddie, and their friend Brooke collected some nature items to make a fairy house.  Maddie suggested the idea, Brooke suggested the box, and Ella suggested the leaves and buttercups.

Some conversation about the contents of the fairy house:
we can use leaves for beds
we should use flowers for pillows
we put buttercup flowers as blankets
we made a bathtub with a container and filled it with clovers and flowers
we got pennies so they could wish on them and throw them in the bathtub
we could have made a stick roof but we didn't have time


Here is what Ella, age 10, hopes will happen:

"I hope that fairies will come and sleep in the beds, and in the morning they will still be sleeping so I can get a picture of real fairies!  I think they will be happy that someone cares for them and made them beds, also I think it would be embarassing if I saw a fairy naked.  A fairy in the bathtub!  She would go "aaaaah!" in her little tiny squeaky voice.  It would be cool if one of the fairies had a baby fairy.  Then I would be able to see a baby fairy!!! "

Wordless Wednesday

Maddie's chop-job

she had cut so much into the back that we had to take this much length off to even it up

Wordless Wednesday

Maddie soaking her foot in hibicleanse at the doctor's office after she sheared the top of her big toe off running down the street barefooted.  She actually didn't need stitches, but it will probably leave a scar.

Annelise, the Very Insightful Preschooler

Annelise turns 4 tomorrow.  She is precocious in many ways, but one of my favorite ways is her insight.  We often refer to her as "The Quotable Preschooler", because she has such mature insights into life.

Half an hour ago, she was dozing in the recliner, watching Thomas the Tank Engine with her little brother.  I had gone upstairs to change clothes and finish dinner, and Maddie (6) came down and scared her.  She came to my room crying, having been startled out of sleep. 

As we were snuggling and talking, Maddie came in, upset at our neighbor girl.  The neighbor, Jacey, had been telling her that the 16 yr old girl up the street couldn't possibly want to hang out with Maddie, because she is only six.  (We know this to be untrue, Amelia teaches Maddie how to draw and paint, and makes cookies and banana bread with her.  She's even been invited to a tennis match.)  I reiterated to Maddie that what Jacey was saying was untrue.

Maddie wandered off, but Annelise and I were still in the bedroom.  Annelise looked at me and said, very eloquently, "I wish our guest, Jacey, would quit telling Maddie that Amelia doesn't like her.  It's mean.".  I giggled, I told her she was right, and that she should go tell Jacey that.  So she did.

Jacey was embarassed that she had been called down by a 3 year old.  She apologized to Maddie, and listened to me as I gave evidence that Amelia really does enjoy spending time with Maddie, even if she is only six.

Annelise often displays correct behaviour that we wish her sisters would emulate.  Pretty difficult when the example is the preschooler!

Reading Motivation and the 6 year old!

Over the long weekend, Maddie suddenly developed reading confidence! Until now, she has had zero motivation to read, and doing so with her was like pulling teeth. I read her a Margaret Wise Brown book called "I Like Bugs" before bed on Saturday night, and she asked if she could stay up to sound it out herself. This was the first time she has ever asked to read after going to bed, and I agreed. She came out about 20 minutes later and read a large portion of the book to her father. She came out to the kitchen to find me cleaning up dinner dishes, and asked me to come into the living room while she read a more difficult book. Maddie, The Doctor, and I sat on the couch and helped Maddie work through the book "Ten Little Ladybugs". Some words she understood from the visual clues on the page, some were sight words, and others were brand new to her. She was very tired after she finished, but seemed very proud of her accomplishment!

Yesterday, Maddie went to work with The Doctor for a few hours, and on their way home, they stopped at Barnes and Noble to pick out some Level 1 books. Maddie wanted books that had a 1 on them (Easy reader level). She picked out one for herself, one she could read to Annelise, and one she could read to Teddy. The Doctor and I both thought that it was adorable, and admirable, that she would choose to buy books specifically with topics that her younger siblings would enjoy.

During school today, we will get out one of those Level 1 books and see how motivated she is. Stay tuned at http://Mimzywood Academy to see how school goes today!

y'all are gifted in different ways

I have another blog, specifically to record our daily adventures in homeschooling located at Mimzywood Academy . I have recorded our first week and a half of homeschooling, and have already come to a point where I need to step back and get some comments and feedback from others.

I am currently homeschooling my 6 yr old and my 3 yr old. I've never homeschooled a 3 yr old before. In May, Annelise busted out with a newly discovered skill: reading! I read to her a lot, and continued doing so, but added in doing some Kindergarten level summer bridge type workbooks with basic skills over the summer when I felt like working with her or she mentioned wanting to do school.

About 2 weeks ago, I started doing formal lessons with both of them. Maddie is beginning to read, but is not motivated at all. She is not nearly as difficult to work with as Ella was, but because she has ADHD, teaching her is its own brand of challenging. She is probably doing what one would expect to be average for a 6 yr old beginning first grade. She would rather design fashions, do tie dying, drawing, painting, sketching, dancing.. than anything else in the world. I love this about Maddie. She is fabulous. She is very very creatively gifted. It's not so good for trying to do schoolwork though.

Annelise LOVES doing school every day. She has made great strides, I think, just in the two weeks we've been doing school. I quickly discovered that she is able to do 1st grade reading/spelling, so I got the book Explode the Code 1 to work with her. There are 3 books in the series prior to Explode the Code 1, and I did a few pages with her in each of them, and she blew right through them. When I did the first 3 pages of Explode the Code 1 with her, she was well able to do what it asked, but it seemed like a little bit of a challenge.

I decided to get a different first grade level program for her, concentrating on letters and small words and reading and handwriting and phonics... rather than moving her up into doing My Father's World first grade with Maddie. Maddie hasn't said anything about how she feels concerning Annelise's reading ability. I can't say that it has motivated her to work harder, but it also doesn't seem to make her angry or jealous or anything. Yet. I wanted to avoid any comparing of the two of them regarding ability to do the same material with the 3 year age difference.

All of this to say...

How do I encourage Annelise in her reading and exploring of the world of words, and similarly encourage Maddie, who is at about the same reading level as her 3 year old sister? Is there anything I can say to Maddie when she does inevitably comment that Annelise can read words that she can't? I know ways that Maddie is talented, but will gushing about her ballet dancing and her painting ability make any difference to her when her 3 yr old sister can read a whole book and she is still struggling to sound out words?

I am a social media girl and a social butterfly in real life. I talk to a LOT of people every day via twitter, facebook, the phone, etc. When people ask what's new, what are we doing, how are the girls, how is homeschool going...should I avoid talking about Annelise's accomplishments in reading? I don't want to come off as a braggart.. I'm not doing anything~ it's all her. When I go on about Maddie's dancing getting complimented by a pre-professional ballerina from our local Ballet Conservatory, or about the tie dye business she wants to start, about her awesome watercolor painting, I feel like people can sorta blow that off, it's just a child being artistic. And Ella and Annelise don't seem to get ruffled. They hear me talk about their accomplishments too. But academics is a different thing than art, and giftedness in academics seems to take on much more of a competitive edge.

Where is it safe for me to talk about Annelise's new words, etc and to get advice about how to cope with siblings who may get jealous feel overlooked, etc? I have found a support network for moms who have girls with Aspergers.. Ive gotten wonderful feedback and advice from them. I hope I can find a community of people who are encouraging and helpful as I navigate this new territory. I am blessed to know one mom personally in real life who has two very gifted children, especially in the area of reading early. Also, I know Doublelattemama from twitter, who blogged about this subject today: Musing from the Mom of an Early Reader .

I want to love my kids well, I want to build them up and not compare them or tear them down. They are indeed all gifted in different ways, and while I've been vocal about Ella's writing and sketching and Maddie's dancing, painting, business sense and sense of style... Ella has not been jealous of Maddie being talented in different ways than her. Now Annelise has something she is good at, and I am hoping I can continue to encourage them to see that they are all gifted in their own way without really screwing things up.

I'd love to hear from you!!!