Another Shorty And A Stupid Mistake

Tonight is another short update.

In the last week we finally had RAIN!! Much needed for these parts. Our part of the country has been ridiculously dry, so the rain comes with great sighs of relief. Until the night it flooded our chicks. Our lovely little Cochin chicks, two surviving turkey poults, keets and random silkies got flooded in their outdoor pen. We had a few unfortunate losses, and ended up bringing the whole lot of them BACK into the living room to dry off, warm up, and hang out until we had a better shelter set-up for a few days. I had a few weeks of barn-free living at least. While I don't mind the occasional inhabitant from the farm staying with us briefly to nurse wounds or as wee little babies, I really do enjoy when they can join the general population again outside. It also reminds me of how dusty chickens can be when they are in an enclosed space. It makes me sneeze just to think about it!

I also made a very stupid mistake this week. We had received a bunny (Holland? It is black with a white stripe) as a companion for Claire's rabbit. We were told it was another female. I didn't even THINK to check said bunny's anatomy to be certain. If it had been a castrated male, a male partner for a female bunny would be fine as long as they got along well together. A female companion for a female rabbit is fine too, as long as they like each others company. However, a MALE rabbit in the company of a female rabbit tends to produce baby rabbits. For some reason I didn't even think to turn this new rabbit over to check for dangly bits. I trusted this woman, who seemed to have more experience than I did, that it was a female. I am sure that by now you can guess what gender said new rabbit is.

As soon as I put him in the same cage, he jumped on top of our female rabbit and, well, did what boy bunnies do. I took him out after about ten minutes, as soon as my brain had enough time to process his actions and realize that it probably wasn't your usual domination efforts by a female rabbit. When I turned him over and saw the tell-tale testicles (after feeling like doing an immediate rabbit castration and thumping my own head against a wall for my ignorance!), I put him back in seclusion and did some frantic searching on the interwebs for information regarding what to do if your bun has a bun in the oven.

So, a brief lesson in rabbit gestation here, to fill in everyone so we are all a little more knowledgeable. Rabbits breed quite quickly and readily (hence the term, breeding like rabbits). A rabbits gestation lasts 28-31 days. Yikes! That means little Bunny-Foo-Foo can multiply a ridiculous number of times in a year. Ovulation actually starts about 10 hours AFTER the mating act occurs, as rabbits are induced ovulators. This means our little girl bunny is probably already pregnant. In a week or two I can probably palpate her abdomen to see if I can feel any babies in there. Usually folks will breed their rabbits around 9 months of age. Since she is not spayed, and already several years old, I am HOPING she does OK and survives this whole mess. Bugger all. I really didn't want baby bunnies until we had some large breed meat rabbits and were set up for them. Silly me. I will definitely be checking next time and NOT be taking anyone's work for it on a rabbits gender.

So much for a short update. Night all!

Reading Eggs (A Review)

I thought I would do something a little different tonight. I read (well, scan, since I don't have a lot of time to actually READ, and I can absorb information readily enough by scanning quickly)quite a few homeschooling websites, newsletters, blogs, etc. in an effort to figure out ways I can help my children learn concepts more effectively. I know that they have different learning styles, and I suppose that some of this effort is in trying to figure out HOW they learn, so I can help them learn better. Does that make sense? I hope so.

Tonight I thought I would put up a review of a program we are trying out. I received an offer from one of my many resources to try out the Reading Eggs curriculum, an online program designed to support a child's learning to read. I had looked at this program several weeks ago, but wasn't sure if it would be the right kind of program for my 3 and 5 year old kids. Plus, I was not sure that with a two-week trial period I would get a good feel for whether the program would actually help them in learning to read or not. They love several online reading programs already, but they tend to use one for a few weeks, then another, so I never get a good feel for how much the curriculum is actually helping them out. We also do some book-based reading fundamentals (phonics, vocabulary, phoneme awareness, etc.), but their response is rather tepid so far. So I figured that with a longer trial period (in exchange for a review, which did not have to be positive, mind you, just honest), it was worth a try to see if it actually helped them in the process of learning to read or not.

I have to say that after they have been using the program for 4 days, I am very happy with it. My kids love the program, and my daughter (5.5 years old) is *whizzing* through the lessons and loving it! She could easily spend hours in front of the computer with little to no help in the program. She has also already written her first story (I spelled the words she wanted to use, while she typed it all in), and she seems to be gaining the confidence and familiarity with the various concepts presented in the program faster than some other programs we have used. I don't know that it is necessarily the program itself, or if enough information has soaked into her brain that it is all coalescing into a better grasp of reading by using this program. Either way, she is learning a lot and enjoying the lessons.

My son loves it too, but he definitely needs a little more guidance to go through the lessons, since he seems to get a little more frustrated with some of the repetition. He can spend a lot of time in the "playroom" though, so I feel that the program is benefiting him at least as much as some of the other online programs do.

At this point, I like that my oldest child can navigate the program herself, and it seems fairly intuitive for her to follow. I also like that I can keep track of her progress easily, and she needs very little input from me to help her use the site.

From what I understand, the part of the site for older readers (in the 7-13 year old range) is very different. Since I have not accessed that section I really cannot comment as to whether it is useful or not. I can say that the "early reader" area is great for my kids, and might be useful for children who need a little extra review or a slightly different approach than more formal schooling takes.

My only complaint at this point is the pages of "golden eggs" that are seen when the main lesson pages are loading. They flit by so fast (often in less than a second) that she can barely see them go by, much less actually try to play them to gain more "eggs" to redeem. It would also be nice if the stories/books they create could be printed once they have been saved. You are given one chance to print them out (which I didn't see until too late), and there were no other obvious opportunities to print them. Other than those relatively minor problems, I like the program, and I hope that my kids will continue to enjoy and learn from it over the next several months. If they continue to use it through the trial period and it is still a benefit, I will seriously consider getting a subscription for at least my daughter.

Can I Meet A Normal 5-Year Old, Please? Anyone?

One of the problems of having children who might be considered "gifted" (a term I am not terribly comfortable with using, but seems to be an accurate description) is the disparity between a child's physical and intellectual growth and their emotional and social development. Termed "asynchrony" it pretty much sums up what I bang my head against all day long. Kids that are really smart, well beyond their physical years, having massive tantrums that are totally appropriate for a much younger child because they did not get to have something "right now".

I am copying this brief quote from the Hoagies' Gifted Education page, because it is just so...my children. I should note, this description fit myself and my husband as well when we were children. Educators and Parents had other, less pleasant words for it: difficult, anti-social, disruptive, non-conformist, Bah! Too many negative words, that I heard all to often. I don't want to put those words on my children, yet they can both be so frustrating to deal with at times, that I fear I may use them anyways.

"The Gifted Child.  No individual can be more exhilarating, or more frustrating. The parents and teachers who deal with these wonderful children can often be described in a single word: Exhausted. The gifted child can speak as an adult one minute, comparing the emotional relationships in Les Mis with relationships in her own life, or discussing potential conflicts between evolution and the bible, and in the next minute throw an impressive tantrum because she didn't get what she wanted... right now! She can have you in awe of her theories on accelerated space travel, or pulling your hair out in frustration over her argumentative refusal to do her part in everyday chores. "

I have very few "normal" three or five-year olds to compare them to. I suppose if they were in formal public schooling we would be able to see the differences more clearly. However, these are the two best examples that we have! It is also more frustrating remembering my own childhood and where my parents made choices that were not the most helpful for me in the long run. That is one of the reasons we chose to homeschool - I think they will have a better and stronger learning experience with us. I feel that public school would completely kill their natural curiosity and desire to learn like it has with so many other children.

Yet I don't feel I really need the comparison except when I start feeling depressed or stressed about their behavior or what they are learning (or not). I know they are intelligent people, that they have feelings that can easily be trod upon, and that there is a core of determination that I want to encourage even when it is the same quality that drives me mad because she won't go to the bedroom because her behavior is currently unacceptable to be around other feeling, sentient humans.

It is a frustrating world indeed, and I hope I can help them learn to navigate it a little better than I have.

Organizing Our Homeschool

I used to think I was a super-organized person. Ask me where a particular important paper was from 3 years ago, and within short order I could usually find it. I was always so proud of myself for my organizing capabilities, and ability to find whatever I was looking for in whichever stack of paper or box of stuff it was in. I was awesome and proud of it!

Note the use of past tense here. A couple of years ago I had a terrible realization. I actually wasn't organized at all. I had piles of papers, here and there. Boxes of previous years worth of receipts, articles I intended to read, artwork of the kids, and ideas for art, business and more cluttered our storage room and every flat surface in the house. It was a harsh disappointment I faced.

I discovered the reason I was so good at finding things was not my stellar organizational skills, but my own inherent finely tuned visual memory. To this day if I am looking for something (last months gas bill, a toy my kids want to play with, something my hubby lost), I get a clear picture in my head of where I saw it last. I used to be able to use this skill in school to great advantage, pulling up mental images of my notes or pages in a book to recall answers for test questions. It is an awesome skill to have, for sure, but comes with its own drawbacks. Like trying to explain where something is to a family member. Translating my mental picture into words seems to freeze my tongue, until I can make a verbal map to the item. Frustrating, indeed.

So, how does this actually translate into homeschooling our kids? Well, to be honest, it is something I am still trying to work on. I have managed to print out our state standards as a bare bones minimum for us to keep a hairy eyeball on. I wanted to have them partly just for my own records as well as to make sure we don't miss anything (I may not follow any particular curriculum, but we are not unschoolers either). I have also started keeping some 'sample# pieces the kids work on so I can see/show them their progress.

I am still trying to get into a regular time during the day to sit down and practice reading, writing, math, etc. but the whole time-management aspect doesn't stick for long. We ARE good about teaching them different things in a more hands-on fashion throughout the day, so I guess that is a positive. It is a struggle though, and it makes me wish that much more for our own private space again. I miss having our own home, and there are days I feel like I am failing these two amazing, bright kids of mine.