The van: I love it. I love love love it. I would also love if it got 45 mpg, but hey, nothing's perfect, right?
Dima: Dima is struggling with being expected to actually do work on his own now that school is out and we are homeschooling over the summer. And yes--it's pretty much full, all-out school with reading, writing, math, etc. And you can't play until you finish your work, which on one day took him until 3:30. See? A full school day (we start right after breakfast). Dima's learning that if he stays focused and does his work that he gets done faster. This is a great lesson for him to learn now. :) There are some areas where we feel we were grossly misled as to his abilities coming out of kindergarten. I'm not sure, honestly, that he is really ready for first grade. We're going to ride out the summer and re-evaluate when school starts again. Dima has speech therapy twice a week and his therapist is really excited about the progress she's seeing with him.
Zhenya: Zhenya is breezing through the work he's had so far this summer. It's a pre-kindergarten "curriculum" to prepare him for kindergarten so it starts out with a lot of very basic concepts that he already knows (shapes, colors, etc.). I'm ramping it up a bit with him to make sure we get to the things I want him to see/know before he starts kindergarten in the fall. Other than that, he's our resident mouth who likes to talk just to hear himself. He and Danielle (our resident "twins") are two peas in a pod and are nearly inseparable.
Danielle: Danielle also participates in "school" in the mornings. We introduced numbers in English this week and she has been able to remember and apply them in every day life. Her English is coming along very quickly and her new favorite word is "silly," which is aptly applied to her two brothers quite often.
Emily: Emily can now mostly dress herself including putting her shoes or slippers on and off. She can nearly go to the bathroom independently but needs help getting up on the toilet. We have stools but they tend to get moved by one of the bigger kids--go figure!--and she doesn't move them if they're not where they need to be. She's not entirely potty-trained yet. She won't let us know she needs to go to the bathroom if she's doing something fun or playing outside, but she's doing great about letting us know other than that. She's doing much better about communicating with us through both signs and words and will hopefully be starting speech in the next few weeks.
Me: I love being at home. I love being with the kids all day. I do not always love working with Dima on his schoolwork. He can be as stubborn as a very thick brick wall. But I'm making progress on figuring out what works best for him.
Mark needs the computer so I'll have to update you on him later. He's staying busy with work and base ball! :)
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4 comments:
Your kids sound like they are doing fantastic!! I was wondering how old are the boys and girls? I get the impression that they are all about the same age. I was also wondering to what level does Danielle have CP (i sure hope I'm right on that, ha) Does Emily have any medical problems besides her cleft palate?? If these are too personal you dont have to answer, I'm just curious.
Thank you for the wonderful update! The kids sound like they are doing so well. :o) Keep on Dima: he'll catch on and then if he learns this concept, it'll make life SO much easier with so many things, as I'm sure you know! Sounds like it's going well. :o)
Sounds like fun at your house:):):).
It took me forever to figure Solomon out as far as his learning style goes, and it took me forever to get it through Noah's thick skull that it would behoove him greatly to get his work done instead of sitting around complaining about it. So I can commisserate. Dima will get it eventually but sometimes those hard headed kids will buck the system until they figure out that it won't do any good. Then they settle down and work. It took me YEARS to get through to Noah but now he is our fastest school-doer:).
Sarah--Right now the kids are 6, 5, 5, and 3. As of September they will be 7, 6, 5, and 4. :) We don't know yet that Danielle even has CP. There is a chance that she is just an ideopathic toe-walker (which I think may be brought about due to her lack of depth perception from her strabismus). Hopefully we'll know more after we get her into the CP clinic. Emily doesn't have any medical concerns other than the cleft palate, but she does have significant delays due to being in a crib a lot for the last few years.
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