School Stuff and Other Stuff
Friday, January 29, 2010 by Amy
I had a conference regarding Avery at her school yesterday. Just a routine catch-up on what the new kids have been doing so far. They say she is an absolute delight and "really, really bright." The teacher talked a lot about Avery's pencil grasp, as it is quite unorthodox. They said that her drawing, painting, and writing are all above normal, so they don't want to mess with her grasp, which I am totally onboard with. She said that she has a pincher-grasp, just seems to have found a better way to hold her pencil. It does really frustrate her when someone tries to correct her grasp. Her school is of the mind that changing it would interfere with her creativity and such. They also said that she could order the Color Box 3 without any difficulties at all, which is very difficult for her age, and is something that most elementary schoolers can't even do. Honestly, I've tried it and can't do it :) She just has the perfectionist artist's eye. She also knows letters and numbers far beyond what is expected of her age, which I attribute to "playing" in that school for the past three years while Riley was attending, and just absorbing things as Riley learned them.
Speaking of Riley, she is really blossoming as a reader. The director of her school said that every once in a while they have a Kindergartener that really "gets" reading. Last week, after storytime, she sprawled out on the floor with books and just started reading them. Wow.
However, because she's so into reading, she's not doing all that much math work at school, it seems. Remember that Singapore math curriculum that I was so excited to get? A long time ago? Yeah, we haven't started it yet. Need to do that! Riley is really into games right now, and we're running out of games to play sometimes, so I made up my own game to teach her about money. I got four little cups and filled each with quarters, dimes, nickles, or pennies. I got a 20-sided dice (die?) from the school store. We take turns rolling the die and take however many cents we rolled from the cups. As we got more change, we would trade the small coins in for the larger coins. At first, if Riley rolled a 9, she would just take 9 pennies, and then I'd teach her to trade in 5 pennies for a nickle, and so forth. She caught on really fast, and in no time at all could get the right change without trading. She also realized very quickly that if she collected, say, two dimes and a nickle, she could trade for a quarter. Fun stuff. Of course, we still have to reinforce the idea, but she caught on faster than I thought she would!
Math seems to come easy to Riley, but just doesn't interest her. She's been doing simple multiplication and division on her own. She will just randomly say that 5 times 4 is 20. Or that if we buy 12 doughnuts (yeah, right!) we each could have 3, or if we ate them when Daddy was sleeping, the three of us could each have 4 (LOL how sneaky!), etc. I know for an absolute fact that she is not doing multiplication or division in school, so I don't know where she's picking it up.
I have started looking into preschools in Maine for Avery. There are some really nice ones there, totally earth-based, many are mixes of Montessori, Waldorf, and Emilio Reggio. I am not totally sold on sending her, especially since it will cost us quite a bit, but Rudi is pretty set on sending her. I guess requesting information never hurt anyone. Being unsure of where we will actually live, and what Riley's school schedule will be, it's hard to determine where, or if, to send Avery. I mean, there's a really really really awesome-seeming school (River School House) which has tuition similar to what we would have now, but it's in a town just a tad north of Portland. Not too shabby as long as Riley's school starts at a different time, or if she rides the bus, or if we actually end up living in South Portland rather than Portland proper. There's just so much we don't know yet. And our move is only 6 months away! Yikes!
Speaking of money, there is another 100% disabled veteran in one of my classes this semester. During one of the first classes, we had to introduce ourselves, and he went first. When I introduced myself, I mentioned that Rudi was also 100% disabled and that I was getting educational VA benefits too. After class he stopped me and asked if Rudi was collecting Social Security Disability. I told him that we applied and were denied. He said that everyone is always denied at first, but if you request a hearing, the judge will never go against what the VA has already determined. He said that disabled veterans don't even need a lawyer, that's how clear-cut it is. The rationale is that the VA has already really tried to find a veteran not disabled, that once they finally do find a veteran 100% disabled, there's nothing that SS will do to counteract that. Nice! However, we had 60 days to appeal the denial, and it's been just a tad longer than that, so we have to start over. There's a good chance that this won't be taken care of before we move, but thought that there's no harm in trying. If it doesn't get finished, we'll just start again in Maine. No biggie.
Speaking of Riley, she is really blossoming as a reader. The director of her school said that every once in a while they have a Kindergartener that really "gets" reading. Last week, after storytime, she sprawled out on the floor with books and just started reading them. Wow.
However, because she's so into reading, she's not doing all that much math work at school, it seems. Remember that Singapore math curriculum that I was so excited to get? A long time ago? Yeah, we haven't started it yet. Need to do that! Riley is really into games right now, and we're running out of games to play sometimes, so I made up my own game to teach her about money. I got four little cups and filled each with quarters, dimes, nickles, or pennies. I got a 20-sided dice (die?) from the school store. We take turns rolling the die and take however many cents we rolled from the cups. As we got more change, we would trade the small coins in for the larger coins. At first, if Riley rolled a 9, she would just take 9 pennies, and then I'd teach her to trade in 5 pennies for a nickle, and so forth. She caught on really fast, and in no time at all could get the right change without trading. She also realized very quickly that if she collected, say, two dimes and a nickle, she could trade for a quarter. Fun stuff. Of course, we still have to reinforce the idea, but she caught on faster than I thought she would!
Math seems to come easy to Riley, but just doesn't interest her. She's been doing simple multiplication and division on her own. She will just randomly say that 5 times 4 is 20. Or that if we buy 12 doughnuts (yeah, right!) we each could have 3, or if we ate them when Daddy was sleeping, the three of us could each have 4 (LOL how sneaky!), etc. I know for an absolute fact that she is not doing multiplication or division in school, so I don't know where she's picking it up.
I have started looking into preschools in Maine for Avery. There are some really nice ones there, totally earth-based, many are mixes of Montessori, Waldorf, and Emilio Reggio. I am not totally sold on sending her, especially since it will cost us quite a bit, but Rudi is pretty set on sending her. I guess requesting information never hurt anyone. Being unsure of where we will actually live, and what Riley's school schedule will be, it's hard to determine where, or if, to send Avery. I mean, there's a really really really awesome-seeming school (River School House) which has tuition similar to what we would have now, but it's in a town just a tad north of Portland. Not too shabby as long as Riley's school starts at a different time, or if she rides the bus, or if we actually end up living in South Portland rather than Portland proper. There's just so much we don't know yet. And our move is only 6 months away! Yikes!
Speaking of money, there is another 100% disabled veteran in one of my classes this semester. During one of the first classes, we had to introduce ourselves, and he went first. When I introduced myself, I mentioned that Rudi was also 100% disabled and that I was getting educational VA benefits too. After class he stopped me and asked if Rudi was collecting Social Security Disability. I told him that we applied and were denied. He said that everyone is always denied at first, but if you request a hearing, the judge will never go against what the VA has already determined. He said that disabled veterans don't even need a lawyer, that's how clear-cut it is. The rationale is that the VA has already really tried to find a veteran not disabled, that once they finally do find a veteran 100% disabled, there's nothing that SS will do to counteract that. Nice! However, we had 60 days to appeal the denial, and it's been just a tad longer than that, so we have to start over. There's a good chance that this won't be taken care of before we move, but thought that there's no harm in trying. If it doesn't get finished, we'll just start again in Maine. No biggie.
