Dear Raccoon

You have dyslexia, a weakness for reading surrounded by a sea of strengths. The very thing about your brain that makes reading hard is also going to help you be an amazing scientist, inventor, or whatever you decide to be. World-changing.

I am glad we are doing school at home. What matters is not how fast you read but how well you think. You will do just fine with that.

We may still be in time to help you be a fast reader. If so, great. If not, I will read to you, give you hands-on experiences, and help you chart a non-traditional path through this world. I will always be your biggest fan.

Love,
Mom

No reading, no worries

Raccoon is just not ready. He knows the sounds the letters make. He can put sounds together. But it's just not clicking. And that's okay. I had a very heartening talk with my aunt the other day, who also homeschooled her three children. She laughed at my worries and said that I shouldn't be worried until he's 8 or 9. Perhaps an exaggeration, but it made me feel better. It's okay if he's five and not reading. Phew.

Sorry Raccoon, I know I've been pushing you kind of hard the last few weeks. All that happened was frustration for both of us. We're going to go back to our relaxed homeschool and both be happier.

Reading will come. And we have all of next year, first grade, to work on it as well. Once it clicks, I know you'll take off. Monster mommy is going back in the closet, or maybe to the moon. Back to fun school.

Letting Go

No matter how good something might seem, it may just not work for your family. I think this is especially true for homeschooling.

"...we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions." Alain de Botton

I am not going to do typical sit-down school with my son. I have known this for awhile, but somehow I keep coming back to it. I need to accept it, the sooner the better, and find instead what will work for us. As a little girl, I would have loved for someone to supply me with endless, increasingly difficult workbooks on various topics which I would have then happily completed. (By upper elementary, not so much. All I wanted to do at that point was read.)

Although it may seem like a trivial thing, I came to this realization (again) about our "school" by reading a post about a program called Reading Eggs (to which I'm not affiliated in any way). It sounds like a wonderful program and has worked for many families whose blogs I read. It would have worked for me as a child, for sure. But my son may never enjoy sitting down at the computer to complete a lesson, no matter how engaging it is designed to be. And definitely not now.

This isn't a bad thing, and at some point in his development there will be a need for seatwork and computer programs, but I have to accept that for now at least, this isn't us.

A Little of This and That

What have we been up to lately for Tot School?
Not much, but here are a few of the things that Raccoon has done on his own lately.

 

This was one of the first times that he's asked

me to take a picture of something he's made.

 

 We're still slowly working our way through my mom's alphabet book, making two pages for each letter. We love the dot paints that my mom brought down for Raccoon in February.

 

"Dd is for Door Knock Knock Who's there?

Dd is for Did. Noah did all that God commanded him. Genesis 6:22"

 

"Ee is for Envelope, inside is a note.

Ee is for Everywhere

Jacob ran, but God was there."

 

 

This was supposed to be our "Ff" page, but Raccoon enjoyed making dot patterns so much that we made it into a separate work of art instead.

 

 

"Ff is for Fish

Swimming in the sea.

Ff is for Friends. Friends stick together. Prov 18:24"

 

 

One night Raccoon wanted me to cut out numbers for him to glue on a page. I just did it freestyle which is why they are all different sizes. Then we played "Where is the..."

 

Another night (hmmm, I'm detecting a pattern here), he gathered a bunch of different materials. Then he insisted that he wanted to take a picture of Daddy. He was so excited that he dropped the camera and broke it. After a lot of tears, we found a picture already on the computer and printed it off. I had no idea what Raccoon wanted to make, so I just followed his instructions, helping him cut and glue.

 

He wanted a framed picture of his beloved Daddy up on the wall with our other important pictures.

 

Raccoon has also been "reading" to Robin (2 months old), which she seems to enjoy. She smiles whenever Raccoon is near.

 

For some great ideas, check out:

 

 

 

 

Early Exposure - Reading vs. Math

I overheard a dad saying that he thinks many kindergarteners arrive at school with little to no math exposure, even less than reading in some cases. In his opinion, it is because of this that most schools' math curriculum is very basic until 3rd grade, when differentiation and/or acceleration frequently starts. 

This really made me stop and think because it is true for Raccoon. I am more of a verbal than a mathy person, and this is definitely reflected in the activities that I choose for Tot School. Raccoon is growing up in a language-rich environment. He has just started to bring me things with words on them and ask me, "What does this say, Mama?" So I feel that reading will come naturally for him whenever he's ready. 

What would a math-rich environment look like? We cover the basics - counting, adding, subtraction, shapes, and patterns - but I have often wondered, what do mathy moms do and talk about with their children?

MTR - October 2012

Raccoon does not like having his picture taken. I am glad that I at least have more pictures of him now that I am taking them for Tot School and now Moments to Remember. He currently tolerates the camera as long as it doesn't flash in his face and I don't take more than a couple at a time. Capturing a smile on camera is impossible at this point, so I do some video now and then when he is playing happily, but even that can be a challenge.

 

Recently, I was looking through our pictures and noticed that although there are some of Raccoon in the last few years, there are very few of him and me together. My husband also avoids the camera, so any picture taking is up to me. This is my first attempt at taking a picture of us reading together, something we do often.