In an attempt to restrain myself from blabbing on and on about the rugrats, I've started a blog to upload photos and videos and the occasional story for your internet browsing pleasure.
Amelie has been taking piano lessons for one whole year! (And a half! Now that this blog entry is so late.)
She had a recital back in May and she played two songs - one was a duet with her teacher, who is endlessly patient.
Here's a video that Sam took - he was unsure about posting it, since Amelie had said at one point not to film, but then afterward she was very interested in watching the videos on my phone.
It was a roller coaster of emotion (for me, the parent), but she did beautifully despite some high emotions early on about a miscommunication about where she was supposed to sit (up front or with us), and then there was some later panic because her name was skipped in the program and she ended up going out of order - last but not least! And then I think another of our party's cell phones went off. BUT, as I said, we got through it, and she completed her first recital - a major milestone!
She was so proud of finishing!
She only wants to practice for about 3 minutes per day, though.
Well, this is a little unusual for the Baby Buffaloe Blog, but I thought if it was so useful to us, that I might as well put it out there on the internet.
Amelie and I have had a time with her multiplication tables - even with lots and lots of repetition and many different approaches, she was still struggling with the memorization. So I googled "multiplication facts strategies for dyslexia" and found one idea that we hadn't tried is to learn a story to trigger the fact, and I thought to myself, "Yes, Amelie will be able to memorize this complicated story easier than she's been able to recall her math facts."
There are a few different books/story sets out there - one is Times Alive. Here's an example video:
We went with Times Tales, since it was available for checkout from the library. Here's a sample page:
We watched the 30-minute Part I immediately, and Amelie learned the stories and multiplication facts for her 3's and 4's just in the time it took to watch the video. It suggested waiting a week between Part I and Part II, and Amelie decided on her own to do two pages a day from the printables that came with it. She did the first two pages in about 3 minutes with no hassling from me (which is fairly different from our usual math homework routine) and repeated the performance with the next two pages the next day - done in a snap with all correct answers!
Part II is the rest of the 6's, 7's, 8's and 9's. We followed the program the way the DVD suggested, by watching the video and practicing those for a week, then watching part II of the DVD and practicing those for another week. We have reviewed it very briefly off and on since then, but it's been several months and she's retained the facts (and still knows the stories) in a way that didn't click before. It did still take practice, but it was really pretty painless.
With the Times Tales, they associate each of the numbers 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 with a character and then there's a story for each of the character pairings (so, 6 is always "the 6th grade class" and 4 is always a chair, like in the example page above). If your elementary schooler has been struggling with multiplication facts, I'd highly recommend it.
Nana Jana very considerately brought it over to play with. I just put it out in the recycling this past week. They took it in their bedroom & put it in the closet and argued over it, then had it downstairs in the basement for a bit as well. Look how long Amelie's legs are!
I'm a fan of this three-photo sequence. Watch Leah gradually go down, and Amelie get back to work.
Video:
Leah's saying the box is a cat shuttle, and Amelie corrects her that it's a rocket ship.
Amelie had back-to-back birthday parties on my last weekend off work and James was feeling a little neglected, so while Sam was at the party, I took James and Leah to the Moberly Mini Train. We'd been meaning to go for a while, but had never made it up there.
It was $7.50 for the three of us to take the ride around the park. The conductor said we were going 10 miles an hour and it took about 11 minutes.
I forgot to get a photo of the engine, so I took this one from the city's website. You can tell it's from warmer weather than Sunday, but one of the volunteers told me that they run through the end of October, and have Halloween and Christmas events if the weather's mild.
I took a picture of James:
And then I gave him the camera so that he could take photos. Here's the station:
He took several selfies!
And candids of me and Leah. Ha!
I look more delighted with the ride than she does for some reason:
After the ride, we played on the playground at the park - and ran into some other kids from Ridgeway while we were there. Then they left and we had the place to ourselves for a bit so I took pictures of James and Leah playing in this tunnel.
We went to the zoo over Labor Day weekend (it was actually not too crowded!) I did not take very many pictures, but we stayed about six hours and ended up having a good time (it was touch-and-go over the map for a minute.)
The kids had ice cream while we were waiting on the sea lion show to start (that was ice cream break #1)
James had Dippin Dots for ice cream break #2, which we're pretty sure he's allergic to. He said, "These are spicy," then "My mouth is burning," and then developed a gnarly case of hives.
Everyone liked the penguins, even though the kids thought it was too cold (see how their arms are tucked up in their t-shirts?) and Amelie thought it was smelly.
Amelie at the children's zoo, exhibiting her new transitions lenses.
Whoa! Meerkat!
Whoa! Frog!
I'm pretty sure Amelie spent about an hour just reading books in this spot when she was Leah's age.
James being James.
The big kids are about as tall as a pigmy goat. Sam's approximately the size of a llama.
We rode the train:
More playing in the children's zoo area. One of the bonuses of having big siblings is that they'll take you down the slide:
James was a big fan of the misters, even though it was actually a pretty comfortable temperature.
We got to "pet" the sting rays (though Sam sat this one out). If you put your hand in the water, they'll just come up and rub their backs against you - a little like a cat asking to be petted.
James got fantastically wet so he changed clothes afterwards. Amelie only got moderately wet, and unfortunately we just brought one big-kid change of clothing.
We went ahead and got a membership, so there may be several more zoo posts over the next year.
