Journaling for 6 year old

For the new year, I have decided to give my son his own composition notebook to start journaling. He has so many thoughts that I figured it would be a good idea. He is excited to start. I was reading other people’s thoughts on how to go about the journaling, as to whether or not it is to be kept private or shared. I think at this point, he should be able to keep a few thoughts for himself. He is pretty mature for his age, so I believe it would be appropriate.

He also likes to share much of what he does, so he more than likely won’t be doing much private journaling till he is older. That’s fine by me, too. I kept a journal around his age and have always in some form done so. It’s good to be able to freely express yourself without judgment.

He leads me

We are still doing the Bible study line by line of Psalm 23. We are up to "He leads me beside the still waters". My son is already asking what "still waters" means as he writes the sentence. We get in grammar, reading, spelling, punctuation, and writing practice at the same time we do Bible study, critical thinking, and analysis. I am glad that we can do so much with the Word of God.

Mental Math

We have begun our journey into mental math. He is a very visual learner, so it is easy for him to picture the math problems in his head. The only problem is his dyslexia getting in the way of him reading me the answers in the correct order. For instance, he did 32 + 32 in his head and told me the answer is 46. Right numbers, wrong order. This is just another hurdle in the walk.

His reading has improved drastically, so much so that he can read entire 2nd step books almost completely without any help. He may have stumbled twice the last time he read a full book. I am proud of his progress. His handwriting is also improving. From last month, his handwriting was extremely neat and legible in comparison to April of this year.

All in all, he is progressing nicely. We are working on Psalm 23 now as a line by line Bible study.

I am still struggling with my consistency in keeping notes on what he does. I have tried every way I can think of to make notes. The final straw will be for me to video tape everything we do, but then I wouldn’t get around to editing it LOL I really have to get better at this!

Disappearing Jelly

We acquired a clear wafer on Thursday of last week. It was a dead jelly fish, which I had never seen before. We usually see them with tentacles and still gooey. This one was just a wafer. My friend said that if we leave it out overnight on a paper towel it will be gone by morning, only leaving perfect circles of sand where it once was. Lo and behold, she was not joking. We did our little science experiment and voila! Gone by morning! Taz’s hypothesis is that it evaporated like water because it was pretty much made of water. I think that’s a pretty good observatory hypothesis, don’t you?

science week at the Y

He had a great time, coming away with more knowledge about dinosaurs and their bones than he had before. He also came home with something else totally new: pink eye. Joyful! I got him some homeopathic eye drops to alleviate the pain and swelling while he is inundated with this craziness. Other than that, he ran, he laughed, he played, he looked at T-Rex bones, colored pages, and had a great time!

Delayed Vaxes and Doctor Drama

Yesterday was mortifying, but thank God my son didn’t notice. We were asked more than once if I was pregnant, what race we consider our child, and then they had the NERVE to ask if we were LEGALLY wed when I said we were married. Uh, excuse me? I bet if I were not in a Medicaid situation, no one would have ever asked me that. How do I know? Because before Medicaid, no one ever had.

We would have walked out at that point if it had not been that my son needs care. He has this weird bone spur type thing on his chest under the skin. I want to make sure it is nothing serious. They cover xrays, so we stayed.

I also got him the last of his series of polio shots. The doctor kept trying to get me to do all 4 shots that he is missing. I told him we will NEVER do the chicken pox shot. We will NOT be doing any mixed serums, either. Then he asked me (respectfully, which was a shocker) why. I then gave him just a bit of my knowledge of vaccinations and their risks. He then says “Autism has not been proven” to which I retorted “Well I would rather not take that risk with MY child”. He respected my opinion! *more shock* After the treatment we received from intake, I would have expected the nurses and doctors to act in kind. Thankfully, that was not the case. The nicest person we saw all day was the one who gave him the vaccine. If she had not been, I would have demanded a different nurse!

Anyway, he came through it with flying colors and no real side effects other than the tell tale sore arm. All in all he had a great checkup. Nothing wrong with him other than that weird bump that is only bothering us, his parents, and not him LOL. Isn’t that always the way?

We are waiting for the paperwork confirmation to get his xray done. He also has to do a blood test because he has not had one since 2004. *We are mostly anti-doctor around here.*

All that said, I still left them a nice little comment on the bottom of the survey sheet they had in the doctor’s office about their service. I even put my name, which was optional. I am not ashamed of my opinion of them and therefore HOPE they call me on it. I expressed that they need to have people more mentally capable of dealing with multiracial children and people who are on unemployment. Here’s hoping they call so I can let them know EVERYTHING that went down while we were there.

Not Mommy anymore

He has all of a sudden begun to call me “Mom” and say things like “Yes, mother.” I guess my son is truly growing up *sniff sniff*

Trip Planning: Bronx Zoo

Since we will be moving to the Bronx in the near future, I wanted to see what they had to offer at the zoo. Looks like we will be heading out on Wednesdays.
They have a “do your best donation” thing going on those days. It’s cost effective, that’s for sure. We can plan to do the entire park in 3 weeks and just dedicate time to each section as we see fit. We might not take those trips till October, though.

Simple Schooling Curriculum Contest

So I just entered a contest to win a free curriculum from Simple Schooling. All I had to do was submit a picture of our classroom, a brief description, and my name/email addy. Easy, right? Voting starts on the 17th so I would love it if you all voted for us. Our entry is here.

DaVinci is planned

WOOT! Thanks to the fact that I am a homeschool teacher, I get to check out the Davinci museum with my family FREE of charge. From there we will decide if we are going to make it a regular part of our curriculum. We are scheduled to go out there at the end of June. Should be a blast!

Last night we talked about the differences between crocodiles and alligators, then looked over various species of reptile in his Charlie Brown encyclopedia. FUN!