1. R.I.P. Camie
This week, my grandfather's wife, my step-grandmother, died very suddenly. Our family is grieved, especially for Grandpa left behind. Our ten-year-old enjoyed a special correspondence with her grandmother every couple of weeks. Please pray for the repose of soul of Grandma Camie. I hope to fly out for her Memorial next month.
 |
| July 2018 |
 |
| June 2019 |
2. Weekend Social Activities
On Saturday, the girls were delighted to attend a Colonial Tea!
Three little boys at Mass sparked a poignant memory for me because this was the first day David (now 24 months) fit into this Mass outfit that I had bought for Thomas two years ago to wear to Grandpa Neil's funeral.
After Mass, we hosted dinner for a dear old friend.
3. Sickness
We caught our first bug of the school year after so many months of wellness that I can't remember our last sickness. That's something to be very grateful for, even if our respiratory illness caused us to cancel a field trip (apple harvest farm field trip with school tour! disappointing!), music, school, and Scottish Dance.4. Closed on our House!
This week, we closed on selling our former home! A seemingly lovely new family is moving in at the same exact stage we were in when we bought that home: They are moving into the home in August with a 2-year-old son and at 7 months pregnant with a daughter, while we moved into that home in July with a 19-month-old son and at 5 months pregnant with our daughter.I walked down memory lane by reading this blog post of our first week living in that wonderful, memorable home.
We will be able to watch them grow up since we can stand in our back yard and see their driveway and back yard!
Chris and I stopped by our old home once last time to walk through it and I photographed a piece of memorabilia I could not take with us: the windowsill where my firstborn, preschooler John, carved his name "JOHN," thinking he'd never get caught. I sure liked seeing that windowsill over the years and will miss it!
5. Awards
What a week of recognition! My dad won a statewide award for his dedication for decades planting and caring for hundreds of trees in his city and my husband won a recognition award from his international company which only four other people in the entire nation earned. Congratulations to two fellas who well deserved kudos!Even I was at least nominated for an award. My kids' orthodontist is running a silly contest for patients to nominate their favorite teacher, and one of my children wrote a little essay about ME (which I won't share for fear of embarrassing said child).
6. Outdoors
We were entertained for three days straight by huge trees being felled two houses down. We'd go out a few times each day and watch.
Among whichever children were well at the time, they spent all this week capturing crickets: many, many crickets. Houses were constructed, food was prepared, names were bequeathed.
7. Mozart to the Rescue
Some young people can tune out movement and noise pretty easily, but others are driven to distraction by the hustle and bustle of a homeschooling house. I am trying to create a quiet, studious environment, even teaching little ones that this is a quiet school time, and the set hours when they are not allowed to go into certain parts of the house, but it's a long, slow instruction (by which I mean years and years).
I remember reading the biography of a homeschooling mother once and she taught her twelve children to sit quietly at the kitchen table all morning and do school (all workbooks?) together. The idea of having everyone under my direct supervision so they can't escape, delay, ignore instructions, or fall behind sounds absolutely dreamy, but I cannot comprehend how she got that many bodies to be quiet and still, particularly with the wide range of ages. I'm still failing in that department (as I do in many).
Our seventh grader has discovered this year that listening to Mozart via headphones is very helpful for him. He likes Mozart best and listening does help a lot, although there is now the problem that, because he is musically trained, his ear is really hearing the music in a way that mine does not, causing him to pause it and talk to me enthusiastically about this or that technique, this series of notes, those dynamics, this emotion evoked.
Readers: What are some techniques you have found to help students, especially middle schoolers and high schoolers, focus on the more intense studies?
For more 7 Quick Takes Friday, check out This Ain't the Lyceum.
So sorry to hear of your loss! Seems like there's been a lot of mourning for your family this year. Prayers for Grandma Camie!
ReplyDeleteI don't have any tips for middle school concentration, but I would be interested in hearing any suggestions you receive. Seems like a useful idea for a post.
My two cents as a tutor:
ReplyDeleteI think every person is different in what helps them focus, and I am like your son in finding that music helps me focus. My music is usually Bach instead of Mozart. :) (I am a Baroque music junkie.) Some of my students find that setting a timer for 45 minutes and then taking a 15 minute break to walk is helpful for them as well. Others sit on an exercise ball, which enables them to wiggle a bit while they work. (My son with ADHD has a wiggle chair at school that has half of an exercise ball on top so that he has to keep moving to stay seated upright.)
One of the things that my specific tutoring program does is have tutoring students take a learning styles quiz to find out how they learn best. During one of our monthly tutor trainings, all of the tutors had to take the test! I thought I would be either a visual or auditory learner, but I'm actually an equally visual and kinesthetic learner. I barely registered at all on the auditory scale! Once all of us had taken the test, my boss had us talk about things that help us learn that are based on our learning style. One of my friends talked about a teacher having her read while walking up and down the hallway to help her absorb the material, and she also talked about our Business English class where she and I would sit and crochet while our teacher talked about grammar and such. This made sense to me because I find that I can repeat entire conversations verbatim if I am sitting and crocheting during them.
I'm starting back at the college next week and have my first student on Tuesday. I'm helping her with Accounting, so I might take my highlighters to our session and have her color-code her notes if she is a visual learner.
Jen, thanks for such interesting feedback! Yes, my Mozart-listening, antsy son has a wiggle chair as well. You are reminding me that his Woodcock-Johnson tester said that he learns most strongly aurally, and I can see some areas in his schooling where I might make some adjustments about that.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes starting back at college net week! Are you a professor there?
I am not. I'm a tutor for the TRIO program (https://www.skagit.edu/trio-support-services/), but I have been doing this for almost two years now and tutoring in general since middle school. (My middle and high schools in California had a peer tutoring program, and my high school was the national pilot program for peer tutor training.) My current boss has established monthly tutor trainings, and we are required to do some continuing education in methods on our own. It might be overkill, but I am learning so much about how people learn. I have been the sole tutor for the Office and Business Technology department most of the time, and this means that I have effectively run my department's tutoring program because it is so hard to find tutors for this area. Unless they have someone else trained, I do all the drop-in tutoring for my program at my campus and most of the one-on-one tutoring. I graduated with both degrees in the department in June (I already had a B.A. and part of a Master's degree in something else), so I am coming back this fall as staff instead of student/staff. (My son is finishing a behavior therapy program at the Autism Center in Seattle, and I have surgery coming up this Tuesday, so I needed something flexible.)
ReplyDeleteAuditory learners are the rarest type of learners, and they need to hear things and talk through things to learn. If you'd like, I can grab a copy of auditory learning strategies on Monday when I head to campus.
Jen,
DeleteI would be very interested in receiving a copy of the auditory learning strategies from you! Thank you so much! I'd also love to pick your brain over email (but without abusing your time because that isn't fair) as this son of mine is so bright but sure makes learning difficult.
My email is katherinetlauer [at] [gmail] [dot] [com].
I pray your surgery goes well and uneventfully!
Blessings,
Katherine