The Small Family     

Hello all! In case you’re wondering about this week’s blog title, I’ll share a little story with you. My grandfather (my Dad’s father--Cliff) was reportedly a big fan of Lawrence Welk. According to my Mom, when Lawrence Welk was on, my grandfather thoroughly enjoyed it--and thought everyone else probably enjoyed it too. My Mom…not so much. So one day before my parents were married, as my grandfather was reveling in the glory of Lawrence Welk, he announced, “This is the best hour on television!” and my Mom replied, “It’s certainly the longest”--much to his chagrin!

And now, Chris and I have experienced this.  On Saturday, Chris turned on the TV while Theo was eating dinner and was idly flipping through the channels. He stopped on Lawrence Welk--mostly as a joke, but partly because he thought Theo might enjoy the instruments. And oh boy, did he ever! Theo was positively rapt--and delighted to see a tuba, a trombone, and a saxophone, among other instruments. (He knows all of these and many others by sight, which always surprises me, since some instruments look quite a bit like others. But somehow, he can tell them apart.) When the “longest hour on television” ended, Theo was rather distraught and yelled, “The instruments! The instruments!” Yep, I think it’s official: We’re raising a band geek. :-)

Before I move on, let me apologize for the lack of pictures this week. We had a very busy week, and unfortunately I didn’t get to take any! However, I’ll make up for it next week (albeit a bit later than usual), because on Wednesday we leave for a long weekend in Seattle and the San Juan Islands! We’re visiting Auntie Lisa, Uncle Chris, and Cason, and the six of us (plus doggie Ava) are renting a house in the San Juans for the weekend. I can’t wait--I’ve heard for years how beautiful they are! If anyone’s curious, here’s a link to the house we’re renting: http://www.vacationhomerentals.com/vacation-rentals/San-Juan-Islands-Washington-vacation-rental-home-proID-33821.html. We won’t be home until late Sunday night, so I probably won’t get the next blog posted until Monday or Tuesday. But rest assured, we’ll have lots of pictures!

So why was this week too busy for pictures? Real estate! We met with our realtor Tuesday, had the house on the market by Thursday night, had five showings Friday, three Saturday, and two Sunday (with two more already scheduled for Monday), and by Saturday evening we had our first offer! Our realtor has advised us to wait until Monday evening or Tuesday to select an offer, though, as he believes there are a couple more coming in. The first one is a strong offer: full price, and the buyer wants 3% back in closing costs. But because the banks are so picky about financing with short sales, Todd (our realtor) thinks we should see what the strongest offer is on Monday/Tuesday and then select one. If someone is all cash, for example, the bank is far more likely to accept it than an offer with financing. I do kind of hope the first offer gets it, though--I really liked the woman. She came in and immediately spent time talking to Theo, and then she was delighted to see that we actually have a landscaped yard. From what I could gather, she’s looked at several units in our complex and didn’t think any had yards, so she was really excited to see that we have one. It was nice to have someone appreciate our yard, since we do take a lot of pride in it. Plus, anyone who’s nice to my son is usually a good person in my book. :-)

Whatever offer we choose, the actual closing/approval process will take anywhere from four months to 14 months--so this is far from over. But at least it’s a very big step in the right direction, so we’re excited!

Our other big event this week was Parents’ Night at Theo’s preschool. Chris actually ended up dropping his accounting class (too much going on for us this semester--he wasn’t able to devote as much time to homework/studying as he wanted), so he was free to go with me on Tuesday night. And I’m really glad he came, because they gave us a great peek into exactly what they do there, and it was really enlightening for Chris. I had a better idea of it than him just because I’m there several times a week dropping Theo off and picking him up, and I’ve interacted with the teachers. But Chris had only been there the one time when we visited, long before Theo was ever enrolled, so a lot of it was new to him.

Oddly enough, it turns out one of the parents of a little girl in Theo’s class is a woman Chris worked with 10 years ago! Small world, eh?

Anyway, after introductions and a basic overview, the teachers demonstrated some of the “jobs” the children do at school. (Think I’ve mentioned this before, but learning activities at Montessori are referred to as “jobs” or “work,” to distinguish from free play.) We were really amazed, actually. I mean, we’ve both seen Montessori materials, and they’re fairly basic-looking. Usually made out of wood, metal, or glass, they appear very simple. However, they are surprisingly complex in their design! Each job is designed to appeal to multiple learning styles: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. (Kinesthetic learning is hands-on learning, sometimes called “tactile” learning. I mention this because from what I’ve seen of Theo over the past three years, this seems to be his dominant learning style. Here’s a link to a very, very basic description of kinesthetic learners, though much more detailed articles are everywhere: http://www2.yk.psu.edu/learncenter/acskills/kinesthetic.html.) For example, a popular alphabet-learning job uses sandpaper letters. The child sees the letter on the card, traces over the sandpaper letter shape with his finger, and says the letter sound aloud. That’s a pretty basic job, and then there are more complex, related jobs that build on it, all the way up to full-on reading--but virtually all of them incorporate all the learning styles, so that each child, no matter what his learning style, gains something from the job. As people who studied assignment/curriculum design in our master’s programs, we were amazed at the complexity that must go into designing these curricular materials. I mean, they’re simple enough for a young child to accomplish them, but they’re remarkably complex in considering the different learning styles of children. Impressive, really…

Anyway, every Montessori school is a bit different--just as every school anywhere is a bit different. Ours has six core areas, really: language arts, math skills, life skills, music, art, and outdoor activities. Most of these are relatively self-explanatory, but life skills might need a bit of explanation: These are jobs that actually prepare the children for real-life tasks. This week, for example, they dug potatoes from the school’s garden and did a job that taught them how to carefully wash and dry a potato. Last week, their life skill was cutting and serving bananas. They have a child-safe chopper, and the child could cut up a banana, put it on a serving plate, and then offer pieces to his friends. (The teachers said they were so sick of eating bananas by the end of the week!!) Next week, their life skill is learning how to clean apples and then make applesauce. And the ongoing life skill is snack time: The children can help themselves to the day’s snack, take it to the snack table, pour their own drink, eat their snack, and then clean up their dishes when they finish. This one has really struck a chord with Theo, who is preparing his own meals lately--but more on that later.

So it was cool to see a little bit of everything they do. When I pick Theo up at school and say, “How was your day? What did you do at preschool today?” the answer is the same every day: “Do some jobs. Feo do number flashcards.” And I figured he was doing more than just number flashcards, but I couldn’t get him to tell me what. Well, now we know! I asked Ms. Beth to show me what sorts of things Theo’s been doing (and what these infamous “number flashcards” are), and she showed me several jobs he’s been interested in lately. Not surprisingly, they’re virtually all math-related or music-related. Also not surprisingly, he’s apparently drawn to the jobs that are technically well beyond his age level. Our school organizes the jobs in various rooms: one for language arts, one for math, one for art, etc. And within each room, the jobs are organized from left to right, with the simplest jobs on the left, moving to the most complex on the right. And the children are taught this organization so that they know if they’ve completed a job and want to try one that’s a bit harder, they can move to the right and pick one from there.

But Theo being Theo, we were not at all surprised to hear that he is apparently interested in one of the math jobs that’s designed for older kids and is located on the right side of the room: it’s a logic-based introduction to the decimal system. (Hard to explain it without a picture, but it uses rods of 10 beads each to show to 10 times 10 makes 100, and then 10 times 10 times 10 makes 1,000. Evidently, this is a precursor to the decimal system.) Ms. Dorothy, the head teacher and owner of the school, was rather surprised to find that he actually did really well with it, apparently. She said she sat down with him to work on it, and he picked up very quickly the concept and understood and recognized the number 1,000 after being shown it once. (He evidently went and got it out the next time he came to school and proudly showed her the 1,000 cube.) I love the school’s philosophy that they will never discourage a child from trying something that’s technically beyond him--rather, they’ll work with him to understand it, and if he’s frustrated and doesn’t want to continue, they’ll just say, “Okay, we’ll try that again another time. Why don’t you put this away and get another one out?”

Our other fun moment of the night was talking to the new teacher, Ms. Asha. When I introduced myself, she said, “Oh, you’re Theo’s mom!! Wow, he really loves music!” She went on to tell us a story about how she saw him staring at a poster with about 25 musical instruments on it, and she could tell he was talking, so she went and stood next to him. He proceeded to tell her the name of every instrument on the poster--and she was shocked, because, as she said, “I don’t even know the names of all of them! There are like five different types of flutes on there! But I looked at all the labels underneath, and he had them all right!” She said she was so surprised and amused that she went home and told her family about it. In case you’re wondering how he knows all of those, my guess is that one of the other teachers at one point must’ve told him what they were. And if you tell Theo something once, it’s permanently etched in his brain. So I’m not surprised that he remembered them all. He’s like a human computer that way.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m boasting here, because I certainly don’t mean to. It was just really nice to hear positive things about him, particularly because he so loves preschool. And to be honest, we’ve had some discipline issues with him at preschool, so the positive comments were a really nice balance to that. His teachers seem to really find him wonderful, despite the fact that he’s challenging them, and that makes my heart happy. Actually, I asked Ms. Beth to show me the infamous “teacher cymbal,” and she was smiling as she did. She said, “I have to tell you, after the first few days of him going after that, I told Ms. Dorothy, ‘That is one determined child!’ I mean, he will stop at nothing to get it!” Indeed--that’s the Theo we know and love at home, too. Oooh, it makes parenting a real challenge sometimes, but you’ve got to have a grudging admiration for how persistent the little guy is. I also had to laugh at his resourcefulness--and Ms. Beth was laughing too, as she told me. Evidently, the “long stick” he most recently used to hit the teacher cymbal is not just any stick. I assumed it was something the teachers use to hit it, and he just found it. Oh, no--it’s part of a set of long sticks for a measuring job. Theo simply realized that the longest one of the bunch would make an excellent tool to hit the coveted cymbal with, so he re-purposed it as a cymbal-stick. I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that he decided, “Aha! This is for a math job, but I can use it to get that cymbal!” Resourceful little booger…

Our latest challenge involves circle time. Theo has a very hard time sitting still and quietly during circle. And this doesn’t surprise me--in fact, it’s one of the main reasons why I felt it so important to find a preschool that has a lot of freedom of movement, because I know very well how difficult he finds it to sit still. Even as an infant, he would thrash all over as he ate--he never nursed or took a bottle calmly, without wiggling everywhere. As a baby/toddler, if you held him to read to him, he would wiggle and squirm until he was practically standing on his head--he loved being read to and would pay attention the whole time, but he couldn’t do it without moving. When he sits to eat, he always has to be kicking or swinging his legs. And if you read to him now, same thing--he listens attentively but wiggles and squirms and kicks the whole time. It’s like trying to hold onto a Mexican jumping bean. (All this movement, by the way, is very typical of kinesthetic learners--it's one of the reasons why I suspect that's probably his dominant learning style.)

Anyway, he doesn’t have to be perfectly still and silent during circle time, but he does need to be reasonably calm and quiet--and that’s been a real challenge for him. So, his teachers have been working with him on it, but they’ve had to remove him from circle numerous times, because all his movement is distracting the other kids. And we’ve been talking it up at home, telling him how important it is to try to sit quietly if he wants to enjoy the circle, too, etc. Well, Friday afternoon, we finally achieved success! I was waiting outside the door to pick him up, and Ms. Dorothy opened it and whispered, “Take a look, Mama!” and pointed to the circle. Ms. Beth was singing a song, and Theo was sitting quietly with the other kids. This particular song was one that allowed the children to get up one by one, when their name was called, and jump in the middle of the circle. And when it was Theo’s turn, he scrambled to his feet and jumped, and the look on his face was just 100% pure joy! He was so proud of himself for getting to stay in the circle and participate--it almost made me cry!

So, we’re making progress. And it is wonderful! I’m just so happy we’ve found a really caring preschool staff that sees all the positives in our little guy and is happy to take the time to work with him and get him to the point where he can enjoy all the activities they have to offer, instead of just punishing him for acting up. In the end, I think this will be a far more effective approach than just “learn by repeated punishment” approach. He does face negative consequences when he acts up (mainly in that he loses out on the chance to participate in the activity), but they’re far more geared toward accentuating the positives and working toward that, which I think is really important.

Last but not least on the Theo front, I promised to get back to snack time. As I said, his school has children do their own snack prep and cleanup. And suddenly, he’s doing the same thing at home, which is lovely! He has long been able to go into the pantry and get crackers and things like that, which he’ll take over to the table and eat. But now his meal prep is much more thorough, and he often cleans up after himself. The other day, I came downstairs to find that he had gotten himself a bowl of leftover pasta from the refrigerator, as well as a cup of juice, a carton of soy yogurt, and a spoon. He was calmly eating the cold pasta at the kitchen table while he waited for me to come downstairs and peel the top off his yogurt. (He still doesn’t quite have the dexterity for that.) And when he finished his snack, he put the dishes up on the counter by the sink. A few days later, I came downstairs when I heard plates rattling. Sure enough, he had gotten a peach out of the refrigerator and then pushed a chair over to the cabinets and climbed up on it in an attempt to reach a plate. (We were keeping those in high cupboard.) I praised his independence but then told him I was nervous about him falling off the chair, so I was going to move some small plates down into a low cupboard, so he can get them without standing on a chair. I did, and the next morning he ran over to the cupboard, got a plate, and took it to the kitchen table so we could make his breakfast. Hmmm, I love this indepence--should I start making him prepare all our meals from now on?!

And that, my friends, was our week. Pretty soon I’ll stop boring you with preschool tales, but the truth is that a lot of my recent Theo stories relate to preschool because that’s a big, exciting part of his week! But for now, we’ll close with a bit about Chickpea, who is now an 18-week fetus! She is now 5 ½ inches long and weighs about 5 oz. She is also able to yawn and hiccup now! And her nervous system is undergoing quite a bit of development these days. Less than three weeks until we learn the gender!!

Last but definitely not least, happy birthday to Grandma Diane tomorrow! We’ll be going out to Turkish food to celebrate…yummmm…..

Have a wonderful week (and a half), all!