Quick reflection

It's around this time ... when I get closer to a new baby arrival ... that I hold my youngest in my arms and sadly admit they will no longer be my baby. Soon they will look like a giant to their new sibling. It's a bittersweet moment.

I am down to weekly midwife appointments and I have to say I've had mixed emotions this time around. With this baby, I have seen my chosen midwife probably a maximum of four times. The other times I have been seen by someone else. No, that's not a problem and in fact I like the other ladies, after all, Tuia did deliver our last two babies and I enjoyed having her. So, on the one hand, I really don't mind if Tuia is the one I have to phone to deliver tama 4, but it's been sad not seeing Aroha (my chosen midwife). A minor quibber, but it's made me feel less special. Just because I'm having my sixth child, does that warrant me any less of a client? Okay, it's probably not by design that Aroha is not available to see me, but I really like her and get on well with her, so I just wish I'd seen more of her because she's been my midwife for all the kids.

Another thing I find interesting is that I have been asked to see an obstetrician. When I asked my midwife why, she said it's because of my age and the fact that I've had so many kids already. What a hoot!

At first I really wanted to decline the appointment but then I started to reflect on the learning experience for the children (well, possibly ... it all depends how busy they are and whether it's a simple "in/out" type of appointment). But I also told myself that I will attend the appointment so that the obstetrician has the "privilege" of meeting "me"!!!!

Apparently he will want to explain the risks involved. I suspect he will also want to try and convince me that six is enough and give me the old "have you thought about contraception?" speech. Well, he'll be in for surprise! My body, my choice.

But yes, I held my little man this afternoon and for the second afternoon running, he fell asleep in my arms. He hasn't done that for a very long time, so I don't know if he is picking up on my body shape and that a change is fortuitous or whether he simply wants a cuddle, but I've enjoyed holding him. Soon he will be a big brother, no longer the baby.

Bittersweet.


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It's so much fun when you receive a package

Wednesday the 9th

9.00 am-10.00 am

I browsed around the WatchKnow wiki site. In all honesty that's all I did ... "browsed" ... but it looks inviting. It feels safer to me to have the kids use this sort of site rather than stumbling upon unsavoury videos on YouTube. It's well-categorised and I do like the way you can use an age filter to only look for clips that are age-appropriate. It's still in the early stages of development, but I'm sure it will gain momentum very quickly.

☺☺☺☺☺

10.30-11.00am

The children and I were very, very excited today because our eagerly anticipated Math-U-See textbooks arrived. It was particularly exciting for me because I had ordered three levels ... Primer for tama 2, Gamma for tamāhine 1 and Delta for tama 1.

It's neat looking at the bookshelf to see we now have a growing collection ...

Primer .... α ... ß ... γ... δ

I enjoy having children who love maths. I had the warm fuzzies when I walked in the door with the package today. The kids told me they had been sitting on the couch waiting as I yakked to Martha - our postie - trying to guess what colour Delta would be. Turns out tamāhine 1 was right. Kōwhai (yellow). As soon as we had it open, the kids were all nose-to-books scouring the pages.

They were all very keen to start using their new textbooks, so it wasn't long before I had three students with three different MUS levels opening their clean, crisp new textbooks. It was so obvious tama 1 wanted to get stuck in because no sooner had I put the δ DVD into the computer and was watching intently to see what pointers I could pick up on, when suddenly tama 1 comes over and plonks himself next to me chatting about it.

As we watched the first few lessons on division, tama 1 was answering all the questions with ease. As soon as he registered just how simple divisions were, he was keen as mustard to work on the first lesson.

All three had their first lessons completed within minutes.


Considering I maybe could've/should've started tama 2 on Primer months ago, I decided to wait until now and I'm glad I did. I haven't done any formal maths with him prior, but he's been confidently using numbers of his own accord. As he worked on the first lesson (or was it lesson two?), I asked him to try and skip count in two's. To my surprise he did indeed count in two's. That was neat because it's been months and months since he's listened to the skip counting songs on the MUS Songbook and CD.

Late this afternoon I started looking for our Math-U-See DVD's because I feel I need to watch them again in case I've forgotten anything important. After an hour of tearing my hair out I had a rest and then went to it again. By this stage I'm getting extremely hot and bothered, and grumpy. As soon as whaiāipo got home I took advantage of the kids bombarding dad to head upstairs and look in the boxes of miscellaneous goodies. What was a tidy mess is now a disaster zone. I couldn't find α (Alpha) or ß (Beta). Talk about throw me into a frenzy. I finally gave up, had dinner and suddendly remembered ß (Beta) wasn't in the proper DVD cover as I had bought it off a friend so it was in a CD case. Phew! I found that one ... now, where was Alpha?

What do you do when you're in a flap? You jump on Twitter and tell the world you're losing your marbles.

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Thursday the 10th

But what a good idea it was to blurb it on Twitter. Why? Because my girlfriend sends me an email this afternoon to let me know she read the Twitter message and she in fact has the Alpha DVD. Yay!!! I hadn't lost it after all !!! Thank goodness for that. At least I know where it is now. There's no urgency to have it, but you know what it's like when you're organised and have things in set places. When you can't find it where it should be, then you get very tetchy and restless.

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Well, I had actually planned to write about some other things as well as math, but MUS seems to have completely dominated the discussion. So, I think I'll leave it there and try to come back with something else over the next few days.

The summer heat has been quite intense these past few days. Our house gets the sun in the main living areas by 1 o'clock and we are under intense heat until 8 o'clock, so you can imagine how uncomfortable it is downstairs. Because we live so near the lake we can't leave the doors open after dark because we get inundated with troutflies which is no fun whatsoever. This being the case, I can't stay downstairs too long because it's simply too hot and my pregnant feet are feeling it tonight. So, I shall leave it there and head on my merry way.

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Rock on Supervision Allowance. Sure hope I see my bank account has a pleasant figure appear for me on Friday morning.

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The last few weeks ... in brief

Gosh, I started this post over a fortnight ago but now look at me! The last day of November '09 and I'm finally publishing it. Because I've run so far behind, I'm sure I'll be leaving out vital chunks (as usual).

I am definitely finding it difficult to keep up with the blog because when we're home, our entire day is school-oriented and any so-called "down-time" is busy with little ones, tidying up and feeding everyone. If I'm not feeding them then I'm washing dishes afterwards etc etc. Then we're back into school work. But I'm sure you know exactly what I'm saying, huh?!

Tama 2 turned five on Friday just gone and he officially starts school today. Although he doesn't have the same schedule for school work, he does account for a little attention to introduce him into the wonderful world of continued education. So that's three students, two toddlers and the 'bump' of course who can, by himself, make my days uncomfortable.

My girlfriend asked me recently if I'd be purchasing another computer and I jokingly replied I could do with buying a laptop because I find being downstairs too tiring at night. If I had a laptop I know I would happily tap away upstairs as I lay in bed. Considering I wake up most nights and can be awake for what seems like hours, I do wish sometimes I had a laptop. I could easily while away my time doing something constructive ... like plan the next school day, draft a blog post, or simply surf the net, lol.

But then again, it's not long before baby arrives so I really should be making the most of my nights ... be they unsettled or not.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm sorry I haven't been able to post as often as I would like, but my days really do race by too quickly hence big gaps between each post for a while longer.

Anywho, let's get the ball rolling with the kids progress over the last few weeks ...

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Reading

Tamāhine 1 read the following (Cat on the Hill by Michael Foreman) from the Big Universe

while Tama 1 read (Migrating Animals of the Air by Jacqueline A. Ball) also from Big Universe.

We discovered there was a quiz to go along with the Migration book which was great so we gave that a go too. Although I've recorded the questions and answers, I don't think I can post it to the blog because I'd hazard a guess I'd be breaching a copyright law for sure.

Actually, it would seem quizzes were a bit of a recurring theme the other week (ie 16-20 November). Let's think ... we did a Moon Quiz and a Meteor Quiz. Tama 1 and Tamāhine 1 also worked together on a quiz about The Hubble Space Telescope. They took turns writing out answers - Tama 1 cursive and Tamāhine 1 printing. Very tidy writing from both of them.

Observation: That particular week, Tamāhine 1's writing was better when I dictated to her than her copywriting. That's not to say there was anything wrong with her copywork. I simply noticed how much tidier it looked. Perhaps she finds it easier writing on a single sheet of paper than writing in an exercise book, ie she doesn't have the uneveness of the middle joining found in an exercise book?

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Maths

Tama 1 steadily worked on Lesson 27 over the last fortnight. I'll provide two examples to give you an idea why we spread the workload over the fortnight:

Example 1
Write in words: 318,611,353
Tama 1 then has to write out: Three hundred and* eighteen million, six hundred and* eleven thousand, three hundred and* fifty-three.

*whether you use the word "and" like we do or not I don't know, but this is one thing I really can't change. Our kids aren't confused when we say "and", so I choose to keep it that way. I understand what MUS uses, but we can't change that one ... not yet at least!

Example 2
Write each number in place value notation: 321,618,818
Tama 1 then has to write out: 300,000,000 + 20,000,000 + 1,000,000 + 600,000 + 10,000 + 8,000 + 800 + 10 + 8

Quite exhausting just looking at it huh?! You have to make sure you have enough zeros eh?!

Tama 1 has moved on to Lesson 28 this week and completed A&B today. All going well, he will finish through to the Test lesson by the end of the week.

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Language Arts

Tamāhine 1 worked on :

(1) Spelling exercises
(2) Reading comprehension called Max the Dog
(3) Synonyms and antonyms
(4) Nouns
(5) Similies
(6) Differences between dashes and hypens
(7) Sequencing of events

Tama 1 and Tamāhine 1 worked together on a few Language Arts lessons. One in particular we really enjoyed was Smart by Shel Silverstein. You may recall we learned the American coin currency the other week? Well, there was a reason for that ... Smart by Shel Silverstein.

Having spent the time learning pennies, dimes, nickels etc we were able to come to the conclusion the boy made a big mistake trading his money. I really enjoyed that lesson and at 43 I have actually learned how much a dime etc is worth. I bet you anything that if I wasn't teaching the children myself then it would have taken a major win on Lotto to take a trip to the USA before I'd ever think to know the American currency. What a hoot!

Last week we finally picked up a copy of Mercy Watson to the Rescue from the public library. This was a book I tried getting out of the Mobile Library WEEKS and WEEKS ago. Well, it may have taken us a month (if not longer) to get our hands on it, but we finally got it. So, Tama 1 and I have read it and started our exercises for this book.

Firstly, Tama 1 worked with Tamāhine 1 and Tama 2 to make a simple booklet about their favourite food/s. We then completed the sequence of events and have started a discussion about emergency services. There's still a lot of work to do with it but I'm glad Tama 1 enjoyed reading it. I wasn't sure if he'd take to the story at all ... don't ask me why?! Perhaps it was because we'd waited for such a long time to check it out of the library that I wasn't sure if I was making too big a deal over it.

Tamāhine 1 read Soup and the Sandwish and wrote a little story about celebrating a special event and what kind of food was part of that celebration. She used her knew terminology of "firstly", "then", "next" and "finally" and illustrated it also.

Tama 2 read "Go, Go, Go" and "Big". These books were very simple (24 words each). I'll ease him gently into things and stick to what we have been doing pre-school but introduce writing etc in coming weeks. I could be wrong, but I'm sure he's daunted at the idea that he might be working as much as his older siblings.

Tama 1 worked on "The Neighborhood Mystery". Just like Tamāhine 1 they tried to predict the story and as we progressed through the reading we discussed if their predictions were correct etc.

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Last Thursday the children and I were heading into the city and were driving past the Rotorua Airport when Tama 1 excitedly called out, "Wow! Look at that big plane! It's an Airbus A320-200" ... he honestly did say Airbus A320-200!!! [I could remember Airbus but flag the rest of it!!!!]

I turned the van around and pulled into the parking lot. If I'd known the plane was going to be here I'd have arrived a lot earlier to take the kids into the terminal, but because I could hear the engines going, I knew I didn't have enough time to park in the "paying carpark", and get everyone into the terminal quickly enough. So we stayed where we were and watched it taxi out. It wasn't long before it came roaring down the runway and we were all like, "wow!" when it lifted and was in the air within seconds.

I really wish I'd known it was here so I could've brought my digital camera, but at least I had my mobile phone I guess. You'll need to use your imagination to count the "crowd" of 4-6 people standing by the fence. There was another guy with his camera on a tripod to our left and two other guys in their car as well. Quite a crowd eh?!!! Well, I'm sure there would've been more indoors (perhaps) but we felt quite privileged to watch the new plane. We did see a group of at least 20 or 30 official looking people walk out onto the tarmac to watch it leave too.

My brother who works at the airport was saying it was meant to be on the down-low because the plane was here more for the staff to familiarise themselves with it. My mum said there was something in the paper the night before ... but we don't get the paper, so I was none the wiser.

The official trans-tasman date is 12 December 2009.

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Before I finish off, I simply had to share our discount card from The Mad Butcher at Te Ngae. The plan was to leave using it closer to Christmas but it was a case of needing it today. It felt great walking out with "free" meat - it really did!!! It took weeks to build up the stamps, but I was ever so grateful to have it today.

This deal is only available at the Te Ngae branch, but no doubt other meat shops have their own loyalty systems. I always went to the Ti Street branch straight after the supermarket but they don't have a loyalty scheme so it's Te Ngae for us now. And anyway, Te Ngae is heaps closer to home so it makes more sense eh?!

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I'm quite sure I've missed out some good stories about school, but if I don't hurry up and publish this post then it'll be another week down !!!


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What a week!

Now that we've made it to the weekend and can relax I'll try to record a few [schooling] moments because although we experienced many interruptions, we did manage to accomplish some things.

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Firstly, Math-U-See. As you know, Tama 1 is working through Gamma. We're steadily working through Lesson 25 at present and we're making tremendous progress.

A Big Thumbs up for Steve Demme's method

Honestly, it is just wicked! Once I sat down and figured out how to do it myself, it was incredibly simple to implement. In a matter of minutes I understood the workings of it and I have only word to describe it - awesome! Yes indeed, for my little non-mathematical brain to have understood it is jolly impressive.

(double-click to enlarge)

[When you see how tidy he is in his approach to writing things out you can see why we're only doing one page per day at the minute.

I realise that in the new manuals, MUS have printed on both sides of the pages to cut down on the bulkiness and cut down on paper wastage. Speaking for ourselves, we actually prefer these older-style manuals because the kids do all their workings out on the left-hand side. But that's just something we will have to adjust to. I guess it won't much matter now that Tama 1 is actually working on larger equations because there's not enough room in the manuals to do his workings out anyway.]

In all fairness, I can say that Tama 1 understands both the 'traditional' method and the 'Math U See' method, so he's flexible enough to move between the two if need be, ie recognise different methods. The problem last week had nothing to do with using the traditional method, but rather, it was the fact that he had bigger multiplications to do, ie not just single or double digit numbers. Now that he's advancing into triple digits and upward thereof, he was simply daunted by the amount of work to do; or more to the point, the amount of work to do on his own. When I sat with him (acting as nothing more than his study-buddy) he managed the equations all on his own because simply by having me nearby he was able to relax. I can relate to that. I can remember being quite frightened being wrong in front of my fellow students and teacher when I was his age because it was at the multiplication stage of my short enjoyment-in-life-of-math that everything went pear-shape for me. In my case "embarrassment equalled failure."

Returning to last week again, I figured out quick-smart that one of the problems for Tama 1 when doing the bigger multiplication problems, is the fact that there's no columns or ruled lines across to act as an aide for the child. As soon as I drew lines down and across, hey presto!, he mastered each equation. Once he's run out of room in the manual, he moves to writing on a pad of paper [... hence the photo included above]. Tama 1 takes pride in his presentation, which I freely accept he gets from me! lol. In order to keep his workings out with the manual, I think I'll trim the sides to fit and glue along the top of the workings page then pop it in the manual that way. He prefers to draw the lines as opposed to mum printing out the grid pages and that's fine by me. Whatever makes it more enjoyable and understable for the kids then that's the way we'll do it.

The main thing is, Tama 1 is doing fine with his multiplications. It's still rather intimidating to look at more numbers for him and I know he is daunted at the prospect of working on even bigger equations (having glanced further along in Gamma). However, I know we have worked out a way to assist him and if I'm honest, I'm actually quite keen for him to do more than one page per day so we can get to those bigger equations already!!!! (tsk tsk mum! So much for learning some patience, lol).

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Saturday, 8 o'clock at night

Tama 1 takes a pad of paper to whaiāipo and says, "I think this is how many hours there are in a year ... and this is how many in a leap year." He was absolutely correct on both accounts.

Then he decides to calcuate how many minutes there are in a year! Now THAT was a big equation so I helped him out just a little, ie indicating it was a two-part equation and explaining he'd need to add an extra zero when calculating as he would be multiplying by three digits. (There's probably a technical term to explain this, but I'm sure you'll understand what I'm saying. I know it's to do with place value, but if there's a special term I apologise, but I can't think of it right at this time.)

1. There's 60 minutes in one hour and there are 24 hours in a day. He multiplied 60 x 24 without a problem. Total = 1440
2. Now for the biggie - 1440 x 365. That's where I needed to teach him to add an extra zero:

Now, if you aren't familiar with MUS's method or you haven't reached Gamma yet, you may or may not understand how this works. It's a neat way of carrying over your figures. You write them in the body of the equation as opposed to placing them at the top of the equation. Such a simple yet very effective method!!

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SOTW Volume 1

It's been an eternity since we did any History studies and I feel dreadful about that.

If I had an excuse as to why we haven't done SOTW for so long, well, I would probably say it's because I've allowed the children to actively pursue their interest in other areas. For example, Tama 1 loves engineering so for weeks now he's devoured the books at home here on engineering structures, machines and such like. He has drawn so many inventive plans of buildings, aeroplanes, ships and goodness-knows-what-else that I've not for a moment felt he's fallen behind with studies. Considering History is chock-a-block full of inventors, who's to say our son won't be in the history books himself one day?

(double-click to enlarge)

But anyway, this week I dragged out SOTW Volume 1 and the above photo is what we worked on this week. We discussed Hammurabi and the Babylonians. I asked him if (next week) he'd like to type out his notes (1) for his typing practice, and (2) as an alternative method of note-taking. He likes that idea, so I'll be sure to include a photo of him working on that next week. One point he enjoyed learning about the Babylonians is the fact that they were the first people to divide a year into 12 months, divide a day into 24 hours, and an hour into 60 minutes.

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Tamāhine 1 has been working well this week on all areas of her schooling. There is one area though that I have neglected a little and that's her handwriting practice. I got a little lax about practicing daily, so over the past few weeks I have made a more committed effort to re-establish it into our routine. I'm sorry the photo below isn't as clear as I wish it could be, but I was trying to provide an example of how she's come back to it like a duck to water. It took her a lot longer to produce her work, but once I reminded her to sit straight and relax her arm, she found it easier. The tendency to lean onto the forearm initially certainly exhausted her so I sat with her and with subtle yet encouraging reminders of what to do, she soon found her feet again and as the days passed, all aspects improved.

(double-click to enlarge)

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Tama 1 and Tamāhine 1 worked together during the week to learn US currency. So far we have learnt about American coins:

Penny = 1¢ - Abe Lincoln on the front, Lincoln Memorial on the back
Nickel = 5¢ - Thomas Jefferson on the front, his home of Monticello on the back*

Dime = 10¢ - Franklin Roosevelt on the front, torch on the back
Quarter = 25¢ - George Washington on the front, Eagle on the back*
Half-Dollar = 50¢ - John Kennedy on the front, Presidential Seal on the back

* For us to distinguish between the two we noted that Jefferson had a wig with no curl and Washington has a wig with curl.

We had a lot of fun learning the coins and adding up with the American currency. Okay, so it's not quite so relevant living all the way over on the other side of the world for us, but at least we'll be prepared if we ever get the chance to travel over there, lol.

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And finally, just a quick reminder to any whānau members checking in. Hopefully you have sent in or voted online (like I did).

I thought it was pretty flash to receive the form with secret code to vote online. Tumeke alright.

I cast my vote on receipt of the form on Friday rather than wait because (1) of the ease of convenience to vote online; (2) even though I have until 10 December, I already knew who I would vote for; and (3) we have a busy few weeks ahead what with two birthdays within six days of each other and getting myself organised with baby clothes etc for our new baby arrival. Besides, it's a good feeling knowing I've got another task out of the way (albeit small).

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So there's a quick wrap-up of our week. I've tried to include everything that was achieved and hopefully I haven't left anything out. Time to get a coffee me thinks! and get outside with the kids and whaiāipo.


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