The School Report

In school news this week, Caroline has fallen in love with the Silent E rule: A Silent E makes the vowel say it's name.  So, 'hop' has a short 'o' sound, but if you add a Silent E at the end, it makes 'hope' with a long 'o' sound.  I always had her spell out the short three-letter word on her white board, then add the 'E' at the end to say the new word.  She kept asking for more words, which was really fun to see the gears cranking in her brain.  Now she wants me to just say the short-vowel word and she'll tell me the silent E/long-vowel word without writing anything down.  She loves it.  It has unlocked a ton of new words into her reading vocabulary, too.

Studious Caroline (Todd's glasses)

In Caroline's writing program this year, each week we read two short passages from a classic book.  For two of the days, I'll read a passage and then ask her questions about it (and the other days she writes, hence the writing program...).  This past week, we had a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  The passage was about the Knave of Hearts on trial for stealing the plate of tarts.  In the question portion, I asked Caroline, "What was on the table in the very middle of the court?"  The answer was, the plate of tarts.  Caroline answered just as sure as she could be, "Poptarts."  Close.  Very close.

Many years ago when Josiah first started reading, I made him read aloud to me every day so I could make sure he was reading all the words and also comprehending the story he was reading.  Then as we moved on to reading chapter books, I always had him give me a recap of whatever he read for the same reasons - comprehension, fluency, and if he had any words he didn't know what they meant.  This kid has never had a problem with reading comprehension.  His recaps of the stories/chapters have always been so detailed it's almost like he's reading the actual pages of the book, but alas, he's not.  This week he started Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  He naturally gives me recaps because he likes to talk and he loves telling a good story.  He was in the midst of retelling the first few chapters of Mrs. Frisby when he said that one of the mouse babies had 'puny-monia.'  It gave me a good chuckle.  Now he can file pneumonia away along with pterodactyl, psychic, and psychology.   

Josiah is his own little man.  For his CC presentation this week, he wanted to talk about the original Muppet Show.  Todd had him do some research about the history of it.  Then when Josiah gave us his practice presentation at home, he spoke about Jim Henson, sang the theme song, spoke a bit more, then finished it with singing 'The Rainbow Connection.'  Two songs was probably one too many for a short presentation.  He went with the theme song.  This kid loves to perform.  He loves an audience.


Caroline has gotten a lot stronger and is able to walk around without her sling now.  She says her cast is light now and she is behaving completely normally.  We're always having to tell her, "Don't run, you have a cast!" "Don't jump!" "Don't twirl and leap around like a ballerina."  At church today she was on the floor playing Twister.  She informed me, "I can't do the left arm ones."  You really shouldn't be doing the right arm/left leg/right leg ones either.   We have to protect her from herself now, and protect others from her.  She's banged up the boys a few times by smacking them in the face with her cast.  She always says it's an accident, but I think she's learning that her cast is an effective weapon as well.

The boys had a birthday party at a pool this weekend.  They had a lot of fun, and I made them stand for the obligatory photo.  This was the same cool pool they went to last year, which had a lazy river area.  They spent a lot of time circling around the river.  Josiah also made his way into the hot tub quite a number of times.  The boy loves his hot tubs.


While they were at the pool, Todd took the casted lady out to eat and they spent some time looking at the Home Store.  Caroline found her Christmas tree - a lovely rainbow tree.  They had a very nice time out together.  The kids are always so good one-on-one.