other goings-on

Ann Marie has figured out how to peel mandarin oranges. I kept finding her peeling oranges and I couldn't figure out if someone was starting them for her or not, then finally one day I caught her grabbing one and it turns out that she just bites them and then starts peeling. She's good about putting the peels in the garbage, though. Never mind, I just turned and found her peeling one and throwing the peels on the living room floor.

Kevin was working on collecting orange seeds and kept reminding all of us to put any orange seeds we found in his ziploc bag because in the spring he wanted to plant an orange tree. He didn't really believe Ryan when he explained that you don't grow orange trees that way.

Kevin's class had a music party for the last school day in December, and several of the kids shared holiday songs. I was surprised and pleased that afternoon when Kevin told me that he sang Picture a Christmas in front of his class. He also gave a Book of Mormon to our neighbor just before Christmas break, which was completely his idea. His courage and eagerness to share the gospel with others are so amazing and inspiring to me.

Words Ann Marie has learned of late: trash, color, pants, toothbrush, Heidi

Ann Marie also has learned to nod her head yes, which is adorable and very useful communication-wise.

With Heidi's preschool coop we are working on sounding out words and learning some sight words. Sometimes she's excited about it and other times she doesn't want to try. We're going to be using the Hooked on Phonics book that belongs to one of the other moms, and I wish I had gotten that book to teach my kids to read instead of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The thing I never liked about Teach Your Child was that it introduced some of the long vowel sounds before short vowel sounds. With the word read it made the letter a smaller to tell the kids not to pronounce the a, but I always thought it would be better to work on short e first and then later on introduce ea and talk about what sound it makes and what words have it. That is more like the approach Hooked on Phonics takes, and it still has a lot of the things I loved about Teach Your Child. So maybe when Ann Marie is older I'll look into Hooked on Phonics. I think the preschool kids are picking up on the reading pretty well. They really already know all the letter sounds, so we felt like it would be good to move on to sounding out and sight words and keep working on handwriting. It's really been a blessing to have this coop to help Heidi get ready for Kindergarten. She's not always as willing to try the school stuff if I'm the one teaching, so it's been helpful to have the other moms to help teach.

One day Kevin came to me grinning and said, "Mom, I'm the science kid in our family." Yep. He will sit and listen to non-fiction books for a long time, but Heidi declares that they're boring or scary, and we lovingly refer to Ann Marie as Jack the Bookripper. On a recent Walmart trip Kevin was trying to touch everything, but of particular interest to him was the battery display. How many kids do you know who want to stop and look at the batteries? His favorite pastime is taking apart VCRs and printers (which are frequently discarded by the dumpsters here).

This winter has been a little rough on Kevin of late. For a while there I was wondering if he even needed occupational therapy anymore because he was doing so well, but now I know we still need it. When the weather is nice and we can play outside for two hours every day Kevin is great because he can move and get so much of the tactile and proprioceptive input that he needs, but with the cold weather we haven't been able to play outside and Kevin is going crazy. He's back to crashing into things, being impulsive, laughing maniacally (when I hear that laugh I know we're in trouble), ignoring us, whining, and letting out that whoop that makes your ears ring. If we had a backyard I would probably send him out in the cold anyway. It's still better than it was a year and a half ago, but hopefully we will get some nice days soon so we can get him better regulated.

On the bright side, about a week ago Kevin finished reading his first chapter book, the first Magic Tree House book. He got a little ambitious and checked out four or five more from the library even though we already own the first four books, but I was glad he was excited about it.