Rainforest Cafe

We took Jimmy and his friend to the shopping mall this weekend. It was Jimmy's birthday, so we celebrated by going to Rainforest Cafe. Everybody loved it...I think the big boys enjoyed it just as much as Timothy did!!

Note the train in the picture. I let the guys shop for a couple hours while I pushed Timothy around the mall. He's still not walking because of his hurt foot, and he's a bit sick with a cold, so he wasn't in the best of temperments. We went to Choo-Choo Station, where they sell trains, and Timothy had a TOTAL meltdown. It was one of those terrible 2-year-old moments where the best you can do is get out of there quickly...

This picture is PRE-meltdown, though. :-)

Counting

Timothy was counting today so I turned my camera to "record" and captured as much as I could. Of course, he's standing by his number line but he's not really using it for anything...

Chinese

For me, the best part of being a parent to Timothy is seeing how easily he's able to learn new things.

Tonight, we were driving in the car and Jimmy started speaking Chinese to Timothy. Timothy repeated words like crazy and in a few minutes he had learned 5 new words in Chinese. Then, I suggested Jimmy sing a song and he sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in Chinese. Timothy LOVED it, and after Jimmy sang it only twice Timothy was able to sing it, too. My two year old...singing in Chinese.

It was such an amazing, empowering feeling. Jimmy kept saying "Whoa - his Chinese pronunciation is very good!!"

Children can learn ANYTHING - anything!!

Just Playing

Nothing's better than watching a child play and have fun. Kids are learning all the time...

Frog

Last week, David and Timothy were playing outside.

Timothy spotted a frog and pulled David over to come see it. David talked about how it used to be a tadpole, how it changed throughout its life, etc.

Timothy was interested but he wouldn't TOUCH it.

The End.

Music Skills

My sweet husband, David, has never had any real music lessons. He was in choir for a short time, but as of one month ago he didn't know how to read music or play an instrument.

He LOVES violin lessons...he comes home excited every week. He's learning to read music and count beats and hold the violin. More importantly, his teacher is showing him how to teach Timothy with lots and lots of games they can do, activities, etc.

David can play the first four lines of Twinke variations (Suzuki) very well. Actually, when Jimmy plays his piano accompaniment it sounds pretty darn good, but it's just the first four lines so far.

David's had violin lessons for about a month. Jimmy's never had violin lessons, but he's had piano lessons since he was 4. What do you know - yesterday he picked up David's violin and played the entire Twinkle, Twinkle song. It was squeaky, but the notes were right.

It just goes to show that having music training is helpful for your own instrument, but it's also helpful for knowing music in general.

David can't wait for his first "conert" - Jimmy can play piano, David can play violin, and Timothy shall do whatever Timothy decides to do (2-year olds are fickle). Mommy? Mommy shall take pictures...

In the meantime, though, even in my dreams I hear the sounds of the violin and David chanting "Mississippi stop stop...mississippi stop stop..."

His First Sprain (and Splint)

Timothy had a bad run-in with a slide yesterday that bent his left foot backwards. After screaming in pain and collapsing as he tried to walk, we went to the ER where they did x-rays. He has a sprain in (between?) his growth plates and he's pretty swollen.

He can't walk for 3 days and he's in a splint. He had a terrible, miserable night last night and he's in considerable pain.

I think we're going to do Bits, watch movies, and play easy activities (like Mr. Potato Head) for the next couple of days...if we can get him to stop crying long enough.

Tylenol, elevation, rest, ice...that's all we can do. It just needs time to heal.

In the meantime, though - pray for us!! Non-walking 2 years old in pain are not fun!!

No More Momma-Spanish

Timothy spent today with Maria. Once again, he had a wonderful time with her. She's really fabulous!!

She told me, as we were driving to her apartment, that Timothy was just talking and talking in Spanish. He said 3 or 4 new words today.

He's always played games with me in Spanish before. I'd say Donde esta tu nariz? and he'd point to his nose. Tonight, I tried to play "Where is your head? Where is your mouth?" in Spanish and he was having nothing of it. Finally, exasperated, he said, "Momma speaks ENGLISH."

I was a bit surprised. No more Spanish games for me. But I quickly asked him, "Who speaks Spanish?"

Maria, Einsteins, Barney, Brian

I guess it's no problem for Barney to speak English and Spanish, but mommy can't. Or maybe it's that my Spanish is so terrible he doesn't even want to hear it (ha ha).

I See the Moon

Today we went to MOPS again - Mothers of Preschoolers. Timothy walks right in now and can't figure out why all of those other kids are crying (it's just two hours...). They feed the mom, they feed the child (good food), and he gets to play with other children.

When I went to pick him up today, he was sitting on a stuffed boot chair. Just sitting, watching all the other kids play and frolic. I waved. He continued sitting.

Me: Timothy, what are you doing?
Tim: Sitting on a boot.
Me: Are you ready to go?
Tim: Noooo....
Me: What do you want to do, then?
Tim: Sit on a boot.

The teachers said he isn't a bit of trouble and he's an absolute joy to have in the class. He pretty much sticks to himself and watches all of the other kids play. He's very observant. They said that he'll notice if a kid puts in another kid's pacifier. He'll say"Ewww, yuck. EWWWWWW yuck."

As we left, it was dark outside. He looked up in the sky and said "I see stars!!" There were stars all over the sky - we can see them so clearly in our rural area. We looked for Draco (his favorite constellation) but couldn't find it. Then, he got upset. "Where's the moon??" I couldn't find it, either, so we spent a few minutes in the parking lot looking all over for the moon. Finally, we found it.

I didn't realize it, but one of the leaders had been watching us from her car. She was a veteran teacher of 30 years...she taught fifth grade. As she backed out, she rolled down her window and said, "It's a good thing you're homeschooling - you can't tell me that a teacher can offer anything better than that. That child LOVES to learn and a teacher wouldn't know what to do with him."

Chinese

Poking around looking for some more Chinese resources, I found this:

http://www.chinese4kids.net/index.php

They have printable PDF lessons (just like Bits) in English/Pin-Yin/Chinese. They also have a lot of links to free Chinese games and resources online. It's an amazing, fabulous site and I'm very glad that I found it!!

And just for the record, Disney's Mulan also has a Chinese language track. Usually DVDs have English and Spanish or French...Mulan's the only one I've seen with Chinese!!

(I like Big Bird in China, too. The actual video is in English, but they say some Chinese words and it was filmed in China. It's really cute. We watch it after we do our Chinese "lessons" for the day.)

What's Different?

As I was talking to David last night, we started thinking about how our approach to education has changed.

When Timothy was a baby, we presented him with materials that we thought would interest him. Now, he tells us what interests him and we have to follow his lead.

When Timothy was a baby, we would prepare to teach him things, reviewing materials, making sure we knew it all. Now, we have much less time to prepare. When he says "look - red bird" we have to either know what it is and tell him or say "Yes, it's a beautiful bird!!"

When Timothy was a baby, we thought the "best" way to learn was through small, unquestionable facts in the form of Bits. Now, we know he's learning all the time. He learns from bits, but he also learns from books, and computer programs, and cartoons, and talking to people, and singing songs...

When Timothy was a baby, he would surprise us by doing something new each day. Now, he surprises us by doing something new each hour! We didn't realize he could sing the ABC song (the ENTIRE alphabet song). We didn't realize that he could identify the note "D" on the piano. It's amazing what a child can do!!

When Timothy was little, we made sure to always speak in "real" language when we were around him. Now, we realize that a little bit of nonsense speak doesn't hurt. Yesterday, Timothy said that Noah went poopoo and elephant had a bowel movement. He understands both words. (And I wasn't encouraging him to take Biblical play figures to the potty. That was all his idea).

We still do bits and math dots, but we also sing skip counting songs. We play trains. We sing the days of the week song. We hunt for ladybugs and count cheerios and play flashlight tag. We experiment. We guess. We read Thomas the train books again and again, then Timothy reads it to us. We memorize scripture. We're learning everyday. Some days we never pick up cards. Some days we read books and do little else. Some days, we do the Boobah dance and laugh ourselves silly. We're learning all the time!!

Music

It's become very musical around here!!

David's been playing his violin...he had his first lesson yesterday. We found a homeschool mother in town who does violin lessons...and she does SUZUKI!! She doesn't take children until 3 years old, but David's taking lessons now so that he can A) Get Timothy interested and B) Keep up with Timothy once Timothy starts learning.



Jimmy's been playing piano quite a bit, and he's an AWESOME pianist. He loves to show off and we love to listen. Of course, Timothy loves to get up and "help" him too. The interesting thing is that David and I both noticed, aside from one another, that Timothy's piano is really much better. He used to bang on the piano, now he plays chords. It's not good and it's not a song, but it sounds much more like piano playing and much less like a little kid playing around with the piano. That's been really awesome - we didn't expect that!

Right now, though, Timothy's favorite instrument is soup pot....