Spelling Test

Proud Mommy showing off Anastasia's spelling test, she typed all the words herself and she is only 4.

Cathy

Click on image to enlarge.

Anastasia has been ill.

Anastasia has been ill the past two days. I will BLOG again when I have the time.

Anytime is learning time.

Anyone who has read our site knows I am a huge fan of personal responsibility and parents having the right to educate their children as they see fit. One way that can be accomplished is having a one income household. A none to popular stance I have is, why have children if you are getting leave the raising of your children in someone elses hands. I never understand people having babies and than putting them into day care when they are six weeks old.

One of the great things about being a stay at home Mom is that anytime is learning time. A while back on the way to the recreation center Anastasia said that she knows that the Sun is made of plasma and gas. She then went on to ask, What is plasma? I explained that it was made up of elements, I further explained that everything is made up from elements. I touched on the periodic chart and explained that she would learn more about that when she was older. This is not what she would learn in preschool.



One day while driving my mother commented about birds on a wire. Anastasia's (a four year old) responded, " Actually Mom, that is a flock of birds."

Today, while doing some research I ran across the following; By the spring of kindergarten, children should be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet "quickly and effortlessly," and understand the letter-sound relationship at the beginning and end of words. By the spring of first grade, most children should be recognizing words by sight and comprehending words in the context of simple sentences." This was published at the National Institute for Literacy website.

Anastasia has been able to identify her letters since 18 months, identify the phonetic sound associated with the letter at two years, identify the beginning and ending sounds of words since age two and read at age three. Now at age four she has no problems reading such stories to herself as Rumpelstiltskin, Twas the Night before Christmas, and Pinocchio. She is currently reading at least at the second grade level. The other day she picked up the Eagle Times and was able to read the front page story.

Anastasia loves learning she often does it on her own, Anastasia thinks learning time is play time. I don't want her quest for knowledge to be destroyed by public schools. When Jim was at a meeting at Newport he explained how Anastasia his four year old daughter can read. A teacher replied, "A four year old cannot read." It is no wonder that Newport schools still haven't figured out what to do since failing to achieve adequately yearly progress for a sixth year in a row.

Cathy




Cathy

What happens when a 4 year old...

is asked to keep an eye on her little brother?



Never leave a cannister of popcorn, an 18 month old and a 4 year old alone with a cannister of popcorn.

Cathy

Power back on after six days without electricity.

What a roller coaster, the power turned on after six days at about 9:00 last night. A broken breaker caused the power outage to our home a five-minute fix for the power company. Six days without power was not too bad, my major concern was that my Mom is coming for Christmas and I was concerned there would not be power for her. After a while you kind of get the hang of things. We were plenty warm we bought an 80,000 BTU wood burning stove this summer so it kept the first and second floor warm the basement was a balmy 50 degrees during the outage.

My regrets were not turning on the dishwasher the night before (didn’t want to waste energy thought I could put four more
dishes in the next day) and not doing the laundry. Early on we retrieved water from our waterfalls to flush the toilets later on we went to the town well for water. In the future I will fill the tubs with water before bad storms. Day three we took our laundry to the laundry mat and on Monday I boiled water to do the dishes I felt much better. Those of you who can empathize with my neat freakishness understand where I am coming from.

The weather reports about the storm were not as accurate as they were in the past, only Jim’s friend Comrade Dave the Socialist from Vermont was privy to what was headed our way. Actually my sister Julie sent me an email a couple of hours before the power went out she must have heard the weather was going to be bad too.

Alexander and Anastasia were troopers during this time, much of my time was spent hauling wood, water and doing things just to survive the outage. Jim charged the DVD players at work so we could watch some movies at nighttime. During the weekend we showered at Jim’s work. Jim showered at work every morning. Jim was dealing with an eye infection throughout this ordeal (still is) so he was not too happy. It was the kind of eye infection that turns his eye bright red and the white of his eye swells up around the pupil.

A special thanks to Ron (yes you), Mary and Dan for you all gave us light throughout the six-day power outage. Ron gave me some candles and flashlights as gifts a long time ago and Mary and Dan gave Anastasia a lantern that helped her find her way in the dark. Jim and I now have to decide if we should buy a generator or not, we have been told that we should expect a power outage about once a year.

Random Thoughts

The other day Anastasia and I were working on her U.S. geography lessons. Anastasia was looking at a blank map of the United States and identifying said States. For some of the States she would say the capital instead of the state's name. For example she would say "Boise" and I would say, "Whose capital is Boise?" and she would say "Idaho." I love learning time with my daughter it is amazing to watch her, sometimes you can actually see her think and see the light come on when she gets the answer or understands the concept we are teaching.

On Monday we went to gymnastics. One of the girl's Mom left to go home and do something. As the mother was driving away the little girl said to Anastasia "We have an Obama sticker on our car." Anastasia replied, "We voted for McCain. " Before the election my daughter saw an Obama sign and my daughter said, "There are some more Obama idiots." My daughter is very sensitive when I told her Obama won she was very sad. She said, "I hope he does not take all of our money." She also asked "Will we be able to still homeschool?" It is clear that the election was discussed a great deal in some households including ours. My daughter still mentions she wants McCain to be president when we see signs I always explain to her that Obama will be our President and we hope that he will do his best to lead our Country.

I don't remember being four but it is clear that we need to be a little more careful about what we say to our intelligent little girl.

Raising boys to me seems more difficult than raising girls. Alexander just does not seem to understand "No!" He is into everything so much that a great deal of my day is spent cleaning up after him. He loves to help out around the house and sometimes to my dismay. There is no point in putting him in the crib or playpen because he just fusses, screams or cries until he is free. It is best to let him do his thing because it is so hard to concentrate when he is fusing. Here is my little helper, helping with the laundry and throwing out garbage.

Peyton Wolcott

I received an email update from Peyton Wolcott on November 24th. I do not update or tend to this BLOG as much as I would like as my priorities are with my one year old and four year old.



Peyton has an excellent site on school accountability. In her email she reported that nationwide a number of schools are posting their check registers online.

She has a piece on her site that I am copying below because it is so great.

"A BRIEF HISTORY: WHERE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WENT WRONG,
OR, HOW THE FROG GOT FRIED*

Over a century ago our industrialist robber barons began pushing for an education system which would produce a compliant working class unable to think for themselves along the lines later adopted by Nazi Germany and the Soviets; prior to that, public schools drilled and pounded facts into students' heads with the result that students were able to draw upon those facts later in life and make their own decisions and start their own businesses. They could and did read the classics and could tell you what 8 times 9 was, from memory.

Business began "partnering" with schools in order to feather their own nests. In addition to the contractors who have inflicted worthless Taj Mahal high schools on our landscape, others were curriculum shills pushing crappy products, unproven programs such as fuzzy math and whole-word reading instruction.

The federal government began dumping huge unsupervised revenue streams on local public schools as a means of pushing social reform (eRate, NCLB, Reading First). The lack of supervision of these monies guaranteed a steep upward spike in corruption.

With God and the classics removed from American classrooms, the stage was set for a consumer-driven culture of senseless greed. We now have college graduates who were stupid enough to fall for adjustable rate mortgages and who worse can't tell you why they voted as they did in the presidential election earlier this month.

If you haven't read it, here's Marc Tucker's "Dear Hillary" letter dated November 11, 1992. Look for: Marc's suggestions for enforcing a new "training levy" for businesses, national exams and national standards.

*How you fry a frog: Lure him into a pan with bait, add lard, then turn up the heat so gradually he doesn't realize what's happening to him until it's too late."


Please be sure to view all the other great information on Peyton Wolcott's site. Peyton said that she has been working on the site for two years I could have sworn I have known her longer than that, but I digress.

Cathy

Funny of the Day

Filed under kids say the funniest things.

Our four year old Anastasia has already learned all the 50 States. She is in the process of learning the capitals of the states.

Anastasia said she would like to visit Kentucky. Jim told her that we could go to the Patton Museum and see a lot of tanks. Anastasia responded back "Will we see a lot of fish in the tanks?"

Cathy

Sarah Palin in Laconia

Yesterday, the children and I went up to Laconia to see Sarah Palin. A little lesson in civics for Anastasia. It was exciting even if she was late. There was a crowd of about 3500.

My daughter asking "I am so excited! When is Sarah Palin going to get here?"



Senator Sununu



Sarah Palin



The event was interesting we arrived at about 11:00 Governor Palin was expected to arrive at 1:00 p.m. I was surprised at the make up of the crowd behind us were two gay woman from Connecticut. The one woman was a life long democrat who supported Hillary she said the Democratic party has left her and she was supporting Sarah Palin because she was a Washington outsider who is for real reform and reformed her own State. Another couple standing next to us was from as he said "The Peoples' Republic of Vermont." I was surprised at the number of people from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine at the event. Sarah Palin did not arrive until 2:15. Despite the extra long wait the kids were patient and the people surrounding us were impressed as to how well behaved they were.

I wore a shirt that said "I am voting for" and a picture of Sarah Palin and below it said "Oh yeah and that old guy too." A number of people loved the shirt about 20 people took pictures of the shirt. I picked up the shirt on Ebay.

Who are the Presidential Candidates?

I asked my four year old "Who are the Presidential Candidates?" She responded, "Obama and McCain."

Everyone thinks their kids are smart...but mine really are very smart.

My children just turned one and four in July they bring me such pride and joy. Yes it is hard but watching them make their way around the world and watching them learn new things is just so much fun. Neither are school age but we believe any time is learning time. When the formal education process is to begin we will most likely homeschool unless school choice is an option when they reach the age required by law to begin schooling.

There are things my daughters knows which make me swear she is not four years old and than there are things that she says that reminds me that she is only four. Than there are some things that she says that are just so darned cute.

A lot of people responded "Sarah who?" when I mentioned Sarah Palin's name. I have been following her for months and was hoping John McCain would pick her. I wasn't excited about either candidate and would have preferred Sarah Palin to be at the top of the ticket. I voted for John Cox in the primary...but I digress. When Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's VP pick I was jumping around for joy and so excited. Anastasia said "What are you so excited about Mom? I told her that I was excited about Sarah Palin being announced as the vice presidential candidate. She said, "I thought Dick Cheney was the Vice-president. " I told her that we elect a new president and vice-president every four years. I explained that Sarah Palin may be the first girl vice-president. Anastasia started crying "But Mom I am suppose to be the first girl president."

Earlier this spring at the playground a little girl said to my daughter "I am in preschool." Anastasia responded back very proudly "I am in homeschool."

As I said we believe any time is learning time grocery stores are great for learning time. Anastasia has been able to read since she was three, she also knows her numbers, can add, understands fractions and can do simply math. People will comment how smart Anastasia is or asked where she learned something she proudly responds, "I learned that in homeschool."

Cathy


Funny of the Day -

A short break.

My son will be a year old soon so I thought it was time to take a few days off from blogging and get to the papers that have been piling up on my desk. I also had two boxes of papers that I have been meaning to file for some time as well. I was amazed at the decrease in blog hits because of the short break that I took. Actually I am not sure if it is that or just summer approaching. Our Blog like our old CRAFT website gets more hits during the school year and a good majority from "teachers." Speaking of the old website I really need to update it but my children have been keeping me busy. We still get a number of hits to that site so I should keep it up to date when possible.

Yesterday Alexander took his first unsupported steps he was able to walk about six steps before falling down. Anastasia was 8 1/2 months when she started to walk so I was surprised that it took Alexander so long since he has been cruising around furniture since February. Anastasia's reading is coming along and she enjoys just sitting and reading a book on her own.

Cathy

Milestones this week.

This week our three year old read Go Dogs Go by Dr. Suess all by herself and our 11 month old was successfully weaned from his bottle in one day.

What does a three year old do with a marker.....

while Mommy is in the shower?