Browngirl Speaks

So, now the “mystery” of McCain’s running mate has been revealed: Sarah Palin. A woman who’s still a mystery herself. Now, did McCain think he was trumping Obama with this lame move? I sure hoped that he would give the Republicans, and the Democrats for that matter, a little more credit for being a tad bit smarter than to fall for this. Palin is in no way substitution for Hilary Clinton. Clinton supporters wanted a liberal Dem in office, not conservative Republican.

I’m sure the Republican mothers are not thrilled at the idea of a mother of five, including a newborn with special needs, trying to run this country. They’d probably appreciate it more if she finished rearing her children. I mean, let’s be real here, McCain is 72! The White House is not conducive to aging gracefully. He will not make it through four years as president! So, does anyone want to see this fly by night chic he called up last week and asked to be his VP running mate be his successor? I think I hear a resounding NO!

My dad reminded me that many would consider this his first act of showing his leadership capabilities. Enough said on that.

Palin herself should be insulted even at the gesture. However, she looks to be an ego-tripper. She may be trying to get in where she fits in. My dad, however, thinks she’ll wake up tomorrow and say: “What in the hell have I gotten myself into?”. For neither she nor McCain has really thought this through rationally. McCain all but said she’s not really ready for this when he pointed out that “she’s not from around these parts. She’s not from Washington D.C.”. Exactly! She has no idea because, now, the issue at hand is going to be preempted by the digging up of dirt on this chic.

To end on a light note, I’ll share my mom’s theory. She says, “What if McCain knows Obama’s gonna beat him? Maybe he thought he could pull this stunt and then to save face when he losses, blame Palin”. Oh mommy, you’re such a card…

So, America’s Got talented was on, more watching me than I watching it. Anyway, suddenly I hear David Hasselhoff tell this group of guys:

“You’re exactly what this show is about. You are as American as the OLYMPICS!”

Can someone please tell him:
#1 America lays no claim to the Olympics other than a consistently high medal count.
#2 The Olympics actually belong to Greece first, then the world. sheesh…

Wondering what our "school" looks like?

It’s really not dark in that space.  It’s actually very well lit by the natural light through the window. 

Oh yeah, that’s "Officer Zion" taking a Cheerios break.

I know it’s hard to tell, but he’s wearing a police officer hat and holding a police badge.  Cute huh?

Here are my bookshelves.  Yes, every shelf is TWO rows deep.  Help us Lord!  I need more bookshelves desperately.

And here are my bulletin boards.  I did make these, please hold your applause.  

I <3 spray adhesive!  It’s so awesome and I got it at Wal-Mart for just under $3.  I consider myself a novice when it comes to crafts, but I’ve never done anything requiring this type of adhesive, mostly jewelry and painting figurines.  I used some foam board, an old skirt (that’s the brown background), some $.20 pieces of felt I got from Michael’s and ribbon.

I also used these wonderful removable picture hanger strips to hang them.   They’re basically like strips of velcro, but the Command strips have the pull down tab so they remove cleanly from walls.  They work great with lightweight items like my bulletin boards!

Today’s Web Resources:

police officer hat and badge 

The Sight Word Buddy for Windows is free and does have to be downloaded.  I have done so with no viral issues and it functions great.  It’s actually very simple.  You hear a sight word and there are three "arms" with a word and the right one has to be clicked.  It will show results, but they can’t be printed.  Zion did 120 in about 15 minutes today with 95% accuracy (5 missed words).  It’s setup where you can alternate between pre-primer, primer, first grade, second grade and third grade drills. We focused on pre-primer and primer words today.  It required no explanation on what to do and Zion really liked it.

Random #1: Matt Lauer and Al Roker are so funny. This is why I love The Today Show.

Random #2: I’m not sure lowering the legal drinking age is a good idea. I understand the notion that this stems from– a sort of reverse psychology approach. Yeah, college freshman will have easier access thus, presumably, making it less enticing to get sloshed. Maybe fewer young and blissfully ignorant girls will be sucked into the party of the frats notorious for having every type of alcohol imaginable and playing every drinking AND finding themselves in some compromising position or worse. But for all the pros, there are cons. High schoolers are already part of the binge drinking culture; this would just make it way too easy. Or perhaps the advocates of lowering the drinking age think the same positive effects will happen for that age group. Though, it seems only college students are factoring into this theory and even that’s not a guarantee.

Random #3: I’m really pissed that Alicia Sacramone was robbed in such a shameless manner of the bronze medal for the individual vault. That damn Cheng Fei chic F****** FELL!!! I don’t care about a higher degree of difficulty, she FELL ON HER KNEES! The execution score was too high. Alicia should have gotten the bronze. They even had Bela Karolyi fired up stating that it was “a ripoff”.

And speaking of shady business in Olympic gymnastics, those Chinese gymnasts, with Cheng Fei as the exception, ARE NOT 16! The Olympic committee has been bamboozled. They are great gymnasts but they have not and will not meet the minimum age requirement this year. It ain’t right…

I didn’t plan anything for this week.  Not on purpose.  Fortunately, the spirit moved today and led us to rhyming words.  We reviewed some things, but I was suddenly compelled to see where he is on rhyming.  Good thing the spirit moved.  I started with the whiteboard and simply going over sets of rhyming words and we did two pages together in a Reading Readiness workbook we have already.  Naturally, I knew I should find something online for him to do as practice.  He loves being on the computer!  I very quickly came across a site that led to another with a great game for rhyming words.  The first site has several links to online rhyming word practice as well as many other literacy and math skills for Kindergarten and PreK.  Internet4Classrooms has their links grouped by skill which made to very easy to find those specifically on rhyming words.  It gives a brief description of what each activity involves so you can pick what will work best for your child.  I chose the link to a Scholastic game.  Yes, the same Scholastic that has a book club that I even belonged to as a child.  This game was so perfect for Z.  He could pick from a variety of places which included a store, home and zoo.  Then he simply clicked a top picture to hear and see the word and chose from three others to find a rhyming word.  Very simple.  There are audio instructions, words and pictures and it’s all done using the computer mouse.  This works great for all types of learners, i.e. auditory, visual, etc.  I’ve been on this site a number of time looking into books for early readers and never checked out the other resources like games and printables.  So there’s games and stuff for K-8.

Today’s Web Resources:

Rhyming words game 

We love to own our books in this house but we do utilize the local library.  So, here’s what Z checked out this week:

I See, You Saw  Nurit Karlin 

Oliver  Syd Hoff 

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV   Stan and Jan Berenstain 

Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky   Elphinstone Dayrell

Stuart at the Library   Susan Hill

Stuart at the Fun House   Susan Hill

Stuart Hides Out   Susan Hill 

Several of these are in the "I Can Read Book" series.  I See, You Saw is a "My First I Can Read Book" and it was great to hear him read all but two words in this book on his own the first try.  If you’re focusing on sight words as I am, this and the Stuart Little books in the series (those are all by Susan Hill) are great choices.  If you search "I Can Read Book" under children’s books on Amazon, it will list all the books in that series which is multi-level (we’re reading level 1 books) and includes Amelia Bedelia and, my fave, Frog and Toad.  Happy Reading!

I’m spending quite a bit of time at my other blog: oatmeal and raisins. This is our “official” homeschool blog. We’re in our second week and I’m already spent but I press on. I always knew if I were to ever teach it would have to be college students, maybe high school seniors, and I’ve proven myself to be RIGHT! My patience is lower and my expectations are higher, exponentially, since it’s my own child.

So, anyone interested can head over to my other spot to see what’s up in mom’s kindergarten class of one. Of course, I’m still here.

Today went very well and…very long.  Several interruptions for me but I was able to keep Z busy, fortunately, and on track.  We did three quizzes today on color words, number words and days of the week all online and he gor three perfect scores.  I was so excited for him.  Especially regarding the days of the week, because we’d only been reciting them daily and I had no idea he could actually read them and out of sequence.  I guess my "soft" approach worked.  

By "soft" approach I mean not excessive drilling on things that simply require memorization.  Just a single daily recitation until it’s learned.  We didn’t even use flash cards for the days.  I only typed them and the months on a single sheet together and he’d glance at it sometimes.

I found a nice nine minute video on youtube on fire safety for kids.  There a re a few others I’m sure we’ll watch before the week’s over for refresher and to not be too repetitive.

I had to ditch the coloring and activity book I was trying to use as part of the Noah’s Ark lessons.  Thankfully there’s tons of stuff online and even more so that my mom got him this neat set of Hooked on Bible New and Old Testament.  They each have materials for three major biblical stories including activity book, story book, cd w/ relevant songs and scripture cards.  It also has a cute reward chart and stars.  Since he’s not too fond of coloring, though he loves to paint, he surprisingly liked doing the trivia questions at the end of the story and got them all right.  I think she found both sets at Marshall’s for less than half the retail price, thanx Mimi (Z’s name for my mom)!

Today’s Web Resource:

candohelperpage.com — many activities for language arts on this sight.  this is the one we used for today’s three quizzes,though, for math: days of the week calendar activity #1, color words activity #2,  number words activity #3

Today was a rough day. My patience was quite short and drinking 3 cups of coffee did not help.

Zion does not want to color, which is odd. He gets tired of it very quickly but I think it’s because he expends so much energy coloring very hard and on the same spot for far too long. So, he he gets sore fingers and it takes him 10 minutes to color something that should only take maybe 30 seconds.

His handwriting and coloring need much improvement. Though these basic skills are not up to par, he is satisfactory or excellent in everything else.

He has picked up on the pattern of the 2’s addition family when going over the flash cards in sequential order. I’m now writing problems on the whiteboard at random and teaching him how to use the number line in the process.

His recognition of color words in Spanish and English is moving along very quickly and easily. The same goes for the alphabet in Spanish. I’m having him spell, in Spanish, the color words as we do exercises in his Spanish workbook. And, I found a neat online game of matching color words– the link is below.

Fortunately, several lessons seem to conveniently overlap this week like in Science and Social Studies we’re learning about fire safety and fire fighters. Colors are being learned in Spanish as we learn the color words in English. Also, there are exercises in our fire safety activity book that reinforce recognizing color words.

Hopefully, I will be more patient tomorrow…I pray.

Today’s Web Resources:

match the color words

Today ends our first full week of kindergarten, YAY!

It was productive. I really see where we achieved some of our goals for the week. His confidence is improving where he doesn’t seek my approval on every answer before he writes it. He is very comfortable with adding by 1 and numbers 1-10 in Spanish. Like many children, he could count in Spanish around 3 or 4 yrs. old but now, he recognizes most of the Spanish number words and can translate them out of sequence.

Handwriting needs a lot of work still but I’m not too concerned. I won’t stress it too much, just some light practicing daily. I’m allowing him to do as much typing as I can incorporate since he likes to do so.

Also, Zion has totally mastered my 1a list of sight words: the, to, a, I, he, and, you, it, of, i.
This has been one of the lessons where typing has been an activity. Today I decided to have him type the words as I called them out instead of him reading them on his own. Sure enough, he could spell them all. I feel very comfortable moving to the next 10 words next week.

Overall, we’ve had a good first week. I’m feeling good about the next.