Graduation day...sort of

Sophia has been in Chinese Kindergarten for three years now, it has flown by. Her class size grew to 57, way too big, but she survived, and has done well. After 'big class' most children go on to Chinese first grade, where the class size is even bigger and the competition starts. Those students not ready or who have late birthdays go to an in-between grade that is still a part of the Chinese kindergarten campus. 

I went and sat in on one of these classes and was impressed, we really hope to send Sophia in the fall when we return, but found out today they have almost 80 students who want to go. We will not send her unless they split the class, so we will just wait and see. She has a spot reserved but we will decide then if she will attend or not.

But....everyone else and Soph included 'graduated' from 'Da Ban' or the 'big grade' of kindergarten. Cap and gown and all. And afterwards, if the parents decided, they could continue to send their child for 3 more weeks to make up for the first month of missed school when it was under construction. We decided to keep sending her. It is so nice, her class has 28 students, it is relaxed, her friends are still there, and she is still enjoying it.

Here are pics from her 'graduation day' which was July 19th.

 The view from the 4th floor of the building. The Pagoda in our town.

The teachers did a puppet show which was quite cute, but all the students kept running behind the board to see the teachers.

Getting ready to do their dance/performance. 

 I actually let her wear a 'dress-up' dress that CC had sent. It was pretty, and formal, and the teacher said to wear 'pretty'. There was a variety of outfits, but she was not overdressed, there were plenty of girls in frilly dresses! She was happy to be able to wear this out.

 What a big girl!

One of her favorite friends: 'my twin' as she calls her, though she calls her by name when they play of course.

The cap and gown thing surprised me, for kindergarten, but maybe that is normal (not when I was in Kindergarten, but now possibly?!)

 Of course a parent game was involved.

 We are proud of you Sophia Grace. Keep up the good work.

Somewhat Rare moments of Kiddie goodness

I say somewhat rare because our kids are maturing in their obedience, though it takes constant training. So the days of kiddie goodness are becoming more and more, not altogether rare. But there are days that surprise me, I am geared up to play referee or manage or discipline, and the smoothness and peacefulness surprise me. 

On this day, Sophia had a friend over for a play date and then another friend came over, Tobin woke up and got in the mix. This usually always causes some sort of angst in someone. Sometimes there is exclusion, fussiness, whines, tempers, the usual (hitting by Tobin, he can sock a punch). 

But this day. These five kids played. They played so well. Now, they were playing house, and each had their role, maybe that had something to do with it (doesn't God know how roles help in order and peace, the Bible tells me so...I won't take this analogy too far with these kids, but it was interesting). 

There was a dad, a mom, a puppy dog (Bella, she loves it), a girl in college, and Tobin was maybe just a kid doing whatever they told him.

 It actually was not raining, but they made a house and started in on food, had beds, etc.

 Bella does tend to do the opposite of what we ask (like 'smile')

 Goof ball of fun....she is. Still this was a good day. Surely if all five were mine they would be at each other's throats??? who knows, maybe not.

The next morning, David said, quick, get the camera. They were all sitting so nicely together during family devos. Usually I am helping Tobin sit still with a book, while the girls are expected to fully listen and engage. But this morning, they were all there. 

 And, I highlight these moments because they are good, and we do celebrate, but the day in and day out of impatience, fear, pulling-my-hair out in parenting is way more common, and in those moments I do not grab the camera, I cry out to the Father, and try to rest in His wisdom of raising these blessings. Mostly I rest in His forgiveness for failing to cry out and depend fully on Him in those moments (just being honest).

Photos from Feb!

I may have posted these way back when, I have no idea! This is what David, Bella, and Tobin were doing while Sophia and I went to the Homeschool conference. 

They hung out with the youngest L boy, and his dad J. They went to the zoo in Bangkok, among other places. In this zoo, the monitor lizards wander around in the wild....

They became good friends.

and for fun, a monkey on a bicycle....

Upcoming Homeschool year at a glance.

This week we will officially start school, though we haven't quite stopped completely. I will add a few things in and we will start CC cycle 2. I have also changed a few things in regards to curriculum, and am still undecided as to when to start Bella in math or handwriting formally. Either way, here is a glance at our upcoming year, with the disclaimer that at any moment in time I may just ditch it all and read aloud to the kids all day, certainly when baby 4 enters the mix, this will be our staple!

(another note: The girls are still in Chinese school for 3 more weeks because their school started a month late due to construction.)

I came up with a daily list of things that need to be checked off, most of which they are doing with me.

Sophia (First grade):

• Bible: with daddy. sticking with our catechism and memory verses, and daily reading 'The Gospel  Story Bible'. We are also working in some 'Hymns per month', the goodies and oldies like 'It is Well' and 'Come Thou Fount', David usually plays these on the piano so that adds to our family time tremendously.
• Math: we switched to Singapore math and I even bought all of the Miquon books. I heard such rave reviews I couldn't pass it up. We started on this maybe 6-8 weeks ago entering in Singapore math at level 1B which was mainly review for her. I have only worked in a little of the Miquon, but it is easy to pull of the shelf and find matching 'lab sheets'. Sophia has enjoyed the Singapore workbook, and we will start 2A this week! I also really like the layout and teaching method of SingMath, it is similar to Right Start Math in approach, but not quite as teacher intensive, yeah for me!
• Reading/Writing/Grammar/Spelling: Yes, an all-encompassing curriculum. I shelved the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (we were almost done), and started on The Phonics Road. Sophia is already a good reader so she can read all of the readers, but I still started her on the first level for all of the spelling and rules involved. We are really liking this! It takes about an hour of prep per week (watching a video), which is fine with me because it is extremely thorough and all the songs, readers, etc. are way better than others I had seen (OPG, Phonics Museum, etc.). A new friend at a home school conference introduced this to me and I am so thankful, it is exactly what I was looking for. This series will move into The Latin Road.
• History: Story of the World, vol 1. I considered doing this last year but decided to wait. This year I will have both girls listen to me read the section, then we will practice some narrating back to me, and for Sophia we will work in some dictation and copywork to go in a history notebook. Both girls will do a coloring map activity as well. On day two they will listen to the audio (which is really well done!) of the very same thing and do a corresponding coloring page. Even Bella will put her pages in a notebook, though she won't be doing the dictation and copywork.
• Literature/Reading: Since we are still early in The Phonics Road, there is not much reading involved yet. Therefore, I need to add in reading for Sophia for practice. A friend lent me all of her vol 1 and 2 of Veritas Press' 1st grade Literature Comprehension guides and we will try to work through these. My plan is to have Sophia read the book to Bella (they are great books/stories that both girls already know and love like Curious George), and Sophia will do some of the writing/comprehension activities while both girls will do some of the other fun pages, like coloring, etc. I just decided to do this somewhat last minute, but I think/hope they will enjoy it. 
• CC Cycle 2 + Review: this will add in 1x/ week Science activities and Art, plus all the other memory work, some of which I will supplement with readers, etc.
• Chinese: This will be new, our helper will work with Sophia 4x/week on her Chinese characters, for just 15 minutes or so.
• Poetry: this is on their daily list and just means that we will review poems they have learned, and I will add in 1 a week or every 2 weeks, depending. This is purely for fun/creativity. They usually love these. I want them to memorize them but I am not a stickler about it, they usually get it anyway. I pulled about 8 poems from two different poetry books I had bought.
• Mom reads aloud: the favorite part of our day, we read classics, I try to do about 45 minutes at a time  during mid-day rest. Then another 15-30 at the beginning or end of the day, which may be daddy reading. We just finished 'Twenty-One Balloons' which was quite fun for all of us since I had never read it! I hope to have some of these correspond a bit with whatever we may be studying in History or CC cycle 2 History.
• serve: make bed, toys away, after meal help, and more
   

 Bella (k4). Bella's list is quite the same so I will only elaborate if needed:

• Bible: same
• Reading: 100 Easy Lessons, we took over a week off for our trip we are on lesson 48 and doing well! We do not do the writing with this.
• Calendar Time/notebook page. I printed a K4 notebook of activities and will guide her through it each day, this has a bit of tracing, ABC, shapes, etc. and then has dividers in the back for her History coloring page and Literature coloring pages. 
• Math activity: I will not be  stickler about this, but usually while I am teaching Sophia something I will let Bella choose some Manipulatives to play.
• CC cycle 2 and review
• Mom reads aloud
• extra: history 4 days, Sci/art 1 day
• poetry
• serve: make bed, toys away, after meal help, and more

With Chinese school it is hard to get all this in. But they have a 3-day break, so our first day today went well. Sunday night I introduced them to some of the new things we would be doing and reminded them that homeschool is a gift from God, and read to them a little pledge/motto that I tweaked from someone else.

With today's schedule (no Chinese school), the day went well (except Tobin cried a lot, and is basically uncooperative, even when we give him what he wants, not feeling good I think). Some extras that I do almost daily is curl up with Bella on the couch and read books of her choice, and we pull the Draw Write Now series down and pick something to draw, they love this, and I do too, it makes me feel like I can actually draw. 

1 day down, a zillion more to go.

Prego pic, quotables and other quick takes

 

30 weeks ++!!!

• In the airplane Sophia: 'when we go up it feels like someone is pushing down on my head'. Good description, especially on these flights out of our town the pilots ascend quite quickly to get over the mountains, I am always clutching my seat.
• In a taxi in Thailand, a conversation with Bella: 'what is that?' pointing to the picture of a Buddha statue on the driver's sunvisor. I answer her and tell her that he probably believes that the picture brings him blessing. Bella: 'oh, I don't want to talk about that anymore.' I leave it alone, and later retell this to David and we ask her why she said that and she said: 'because I don't like to talk about Buddha'. (so interesting, :))
• This was the first ever airplane ride where Bella asked very matter-of-factly, 'are we going to crash?' The turbulence wasn't that bad, so I am not sure where that came from. None of our children have ever asked that or been worried, and I don't think she was super concerned. This may have come from two things, who knows. 1.) our trip out to Thailand happened a day after the plane crashed in SanFran and it was all over the news in the airport where we were, not what you want to be watching when you are about to board a plane. Bella's question came a whole week after this. OR 2) almost every time we get on a plane the girls pull out the safety cards and start looking at all the things to do in case of an emergency. Bella asks me ton of questions about what the pictures mean, etc. maybe she was just thinking about it. Who knows?
• Tobin today: 'this momma, a big this' (in English). I reply: 'a big what?' and I went to go look as he answered: "zhizhu momma, a big zhizhu", apparently he didn't remember the English word for spider.
• We leave in about 6 weeks for Bangkok. Until that time I will start Sophia's 1st grade and Bella's K4, we have slowly gotten back in after a week off, and will start some new things. I will post about it soon, hopefully. 
• I will just be honest about this pregnancy thing, I am not enjoying it. I am not complaining, I am just stating the facts. Sleep isn't great, due to varicose veins my right leg looks like a fake leg that you would see all bruised and swollen in a movie or something, and I am feeling old, and tired, could be because I am old, and tired.
• BUT, we are very excited about our coming baby girl....we have started thinking about names...some, not a ton. This always gets later and later with each child. We welcome any ideas.
• We moved Tobin to a 'big boy bed' (a normal single bed), he is on day 3. He naps there too now. He has done great! He has not gotten up on his own, and has slept great. It has got to be a ton more comfortable than his pack-n-play! So far zero problems. Probably when he gets a little older he may realize all the mischief he can get into. 
• Another huge milestone in the works is Bella's no thumb-sucking. You may recall that we used 'Mavala stop' painted on Sophia's thumb when she was 4 also. At that time Bella did it too but would never nap, but now that she is done napping, and loves sucking her thumb more than Sophia did, we knew it was time. She asks us to take the stuff off, but knows we can't and really she is doing fine with it, it is just a process that will take awhile to get used to. She has called at night but not much. She forgets and puts her thumb in her mouth then may cry a little or just call for us or just cough. 
• we do want to potty train Tobin, and I think he wants to too. Today he took his shorts off and tried to take off his diaper and said: 'pee pee mommy'. I let him go try but he would not stand and face the toilet, he only wanted to sit, and really he just wanted to play, he did nothing, then said 'all done'. I personally thinks he likes flushing the toilet. I have no idea how to potty train boys. I will have to do a little research. I wasn't planning on doing this just yet. But we may just go for it....

New outfits

 Awaiting us when we got home was a fun package from Aunt Beth. She sends some CUTE outfits, always. The girls loved them. And Tobin did too actually though I couldn't quite get a good pic of him. His is 3T and fits him fine. He is a big boy.

 The girls put theirs on right away and wore them to school the next day.

 Sophia, who will always pose, and Bella the nonconformist (when it comes to smiling for a picture).

Sophia, will you help your sister smile please?

This is not Tobin's new outfit, what on earth is he doing? David said: show us your Belly Tobin, and he ran through the house like this. Fun-ny!

Back home...

Sophia with what she calls her "English teacher", she means 'English-speaking'. She had a great week with new and old friends! One highlight was her Toys-R-Us gift certificate for completing reading the book of Mark.

Tobin is too cool for school, can't you tell. He did cry every day. By day two he would say at drop off, pointing to his teacher: 'no more this mommy' (we all thought this hilarious, including the teacher).One day someone in the elevator tried making friendly conversation saying something like: 'tomorrow you will get to play with your friends....' Tobin immediately started saying: 'no friends mommy, I don't want to see friends'. But he did do fine and on days 3, 4, and 5; he cried a little but still went to his teacher, instead of clinging to me!

Bella boo girl cried some too, but on the last day with a promise from Sophia of a lollipop if she didn't cry, looked at us both, smiled and waved. She loved class every day, but still struggles leaving us.

Perhaps the biggest news, but not really, is that the doctor confirmed another girl is in our midst, and she looks very healthy. I am still in super clean-up, clean out, get ready mode, though now it has shifted to homeschool prep and plan as well.