Todays Lesson~Reading

I love to read. I love all manner of stories and I find them most entertaining. I also know as a daughter, sister, and mother of dyslexics reading is not always an enjoyable experience. My son who has dyslexia has not really found much joy in reading yet. He is now 13 and A is doing so much better with his reading that I am consistently proud of him. We however have used audio books to spark an interest in his desires and I think its really helped. We found this web site called 'Books should be free' where there are hundreds of classic stories all with free mp3 downloads. I have enjoyed many books myself this way. it is nice to be able to sit and crochet or craft and have someone else read me a story.

Today we are going to listen to "The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus" by L Frank Baum (yes thats right he wrote more then the Wizard of Oz)

Today we are working on site words for the little ones, They already have a love of books. They love when someone else reads to them. Now I want to encourage them to read to themselves. Until now neither of them showed the signs of reading readiness. We believe that until the children show signs we do not force reading, or reading practice. We learned early on in our homeschooling adventures that pressing kids to early can cause frustration and anger. Some kids are ready early some are ready late but at any rate when you allow a child to learn at their own pace and when they are ready they learn quickly because they are ready. So this morning I found this site where all the dolch site words are in puzzle form in groups of about 10 words per puzzle. I printed off several for each child to practice today. I then created a printed page with lined paper for them to practice spelling the words, I wrote 10 of the 20 words on the practice paper and had them practice writing the words. We will probably repeat the same ones in a few days just to see which they remember and which they don't. I am also in the process of writing little stories in word format to go with these that they can practice.

ahhh the joys of reading, it all starts somewhere.

new look

So I spent way more time then I intended to spend editing my background and redoing a whole bunch of stuff on my blog. What else is new?

Life has thrown some serious curve balls at us but we are regrouping as best we can. We are blessed with great friends, who are supportive in more ways then one. We also learned some people are not as good of friends as we had thought. So goes life.

We only have a few weeks then its Christmas. For the first time in 17 years my husband and I will be apart for Christmas. I know being that he is a Marine I should count myself lucky that he has never been gone for the holidays but with everything else that has happened this year it just feels like Icing on the proverbial cake. The kids and I are going to make the best of it. We will be baking and making lots of goodies for friends and family. We will have fun searching for some recipe that is vegan friendly for my sister, and looking for wonderful things to make for my parents, brother and other sister. This will all be worked into their lesson plans for the coming weeks. We are looking at the Great Depression and learning a lot about life back then. How families worked together and how it applies to our current situations. Life is not always easy but if you learn how to make the very best of it and enjoy what you do have you will get farther in this world then if you are a negative nelly.

So for the most part the moving is over, most of our stuff is in storage, a few more boxes must go to storage and a few need to come back because they accidentally went. Moving will happen soon enough to a permanent location as yet to be named. It will be decided by the Marine Corps. Hopefully sooner rather then later.

I am going to be back to blogging on a fairly regular basis, hope you all didn't miss me to much.

Interactive video Andy Grammer

I know I said I was going to be away for a while but I just HAD to share this new interactive video by Andy Grammer. My good friend Zachary Rudolph is the Bass player in the band rockin the dreads in the video. Have fun changing the video around and discovering alternate views, its a load of fun!

Stepping away for a bit

There are a lot of life changes going on at the moment and I will be away for a little bit. I am not real sure how long it will be but I hope to be able to resume blogging before thanksgiving.