Bookworm

I had to bodily remove her from the car because she was so entranced in this book that she wouldn't stop reading long enough to get out under her own steam.  Then I set up the hammock and she retired there, cup of Trix in hand, and I didn't hear a peep from her for an hour.  It would be totally charming, except the book she's reading is The Adventures of Captain Underpants. It's about two fourth-graders who write their own comic strip, play pranks on their fellow students, and hypnotize their principal into believing he's the titular hero.  Not sure this is a good influence on the kiddo ... although it does make for a blessedly peaceful afternoon around here.

Three-way tie

Option 1: That she picked A Light in the Attic as her next book for me to read to her at bedtime.

Option 2: That she can read most of the poems in the book on her own, and she actually understands a good portion of them.

Option 3: That she's up there finishing the last 100 pages of the book right now by flashlight because I got tired of reading after 50 pages or so.

So which is the reason I'm most proud right now? I really can't decide.

Maybe my mind is just in the gutter too much, but ...

Doesn't this sound a little, um, suggestive?

"But before she could get the words out, Mr. Rogers put something in her mouth. It was so good Mrs. Rogers forgot about being angry."

In context**, it makes perfect sense, and I'm sure it wasn't meant to be inappropriate, but darn, I just about choked when Liza read that to me tonight.

**"Mrs. Rogers was angry. She was very angry. She opened her mouth. Mrs. Rogers meant to tell Amelia Bedelia she was fired. But before she could get the words out, Mr. Rogers put something in her mouth. It was so good Mrs. Rogers forgot about being angry. 'Lemon-meringue pie!' she exclaimed."

I have found Liza's mission statement

Draw a crazy picture, 

Write a nutty poem,

Sing a mumble-gumble song,

Whistle through your comb.

Do a loony-goony dance

'Cross the kitchen floor,

Put something silly in the world

That ain't been there before.

"Put Something In" by Shel Silverstein, from A Light in the Attic.

The fact that my daughter can sit down and read poems by herself ... absolutely, stunningly amazing.  The fact that the one poem she specifically requested that I read again the following day was "Hippo's Hope" ... proof that she's inherited my sense of humor.

Check out this animated version of the poem ... it's not quite as detailed as the Shel Silverstein illustration in the book, but it's pretty cool, anyway.

Now, if I could just find that essay I wrote in high school about the societal implications of "They've Put a Brassiere on the Camel," we'd be all set.

Mash note

Translation with corrected spellings:

"Dear Emmy,

I love when you come over.

Love Liza."

This was the most legible of the dozen notes she's made and delivered to the 10-year-old next door, who occasionally lets Liza play on her trampoline and sometimes comes over to play on our swingset.

The idea of Liza having a "best friend" who is six years older than her isn't as weird to me as it might be to some people.  I grew up with my "best friends" living next door, and they were probably four and six years older than me (Hi, Barbie and Sue!).  I think they put up with me because I had a better swingset than they did, plus they moved away before they grew too old (and cool) to be friends with a little kid anymore.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.  At the rate she's going, Liza will be helping Emmy with her homework by next summer, so maybe she'll keep her around as a useful pet ;)

Easy Reader, that's her name*

So, in between all the gore and knitting, my kid managed to complete the last of five Hooked On Phonics sets, which means that she's now reading at a 2nd grade level.



Um, yeah. Hooray?



She finished last week, and we've been taking a break from doing any "lessons" since then. I had started reading Pippi Longstocking to her a few weeks ago, so we finished that up during the time we used to use for her phonics stuff, and now we've moved on to Puff the Magic Dragon. I have to say, she's handling that book better than I expected, what with all the scary giant pirates and dying stars and stuff. Usually that sort of thing sends her screaming for the hills, but now she seems to be fine as long as I tell her ahead of time that everything works out okay in the end.


Meanwhile, she's been reading to herself for pleasure, without me having to encourage her in any way. We've got a basket of books next to the potty, and I know my services are going to be needed soon when she disappears and I hear her reading to herself. And last week she managed to read a new joke from the toy she got in her kids' meal, which she thought was just the coolest thing ever. (It was actually new to me, too, and pretty funny, at least the first 400 times: Knock knock - who's there? - repeat - repeat who? - who who who!).


She's still working through the Hooked on Handwriting stuff, although I haven't really seen that it's doing a lot to help her writing skills. We're filling up the house with the practice activities, though, so don't be surprised if you get an inappropriately-themed postcard from us with barely legible words on the back. Why someone decided to have "Viva Las Vegas!" as one of the cards in the practice pack, I'll never know.

Today she dragged out the Hooked on Phonics Master Reader set (which was stuffed behind a bunch of other stuff in my office) and wanted to look through it. It's a completely different format than the first module, and it's obviously geared toward older kids. Actually, it's obviously geared toward older boys, because the whole module has this sort of gritty robotic look to it, and a lot of the stories are about sports or scary animals. But there's a computer game, and the stories are on cool little cards instead of in a workbook, and there's a progress chart with stickers, so of course Little Miss Way Too Advanced For Her Age wanted to get started right away.

The new module is laid out a lot differently than the previous ones, and all of the actual lessons are in the computer game. There isn't a lot of explanation, at least in the first lesson, which assumes that you know what "syllables" are. That's not something Liza and I had discussed before, so we had to take a break to talk that over, but after that she was pretty quick to pick up the game. And she made it through the first story pretty well, with most of her stumbles more than likely due to the late hour when we attempted it instead of her inability to read them. So it looks like we'll be pressing on with this, at least whenever she asks to do it.

Lest you think I'm a total slavedriver, I will also admit that (at Liza's request) I've been using the library's Handy Manny DVD as a babysitter quite regularly over the past week or two. You'd be surprised how much flooring you can get laid in a bathroom during 90 minutes of "You break it, we fix it!" Plus, now the kid knows the names of most of the things in my toolbox, which was handy when Jason was working upstairs and I was downstairs and we needed someone to run tools between us. It's amazing how much faster things go when you've got someone to find the flathead screwdriver for you :)

* Don't remember Easy Reader? Morgan Freeman does. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_PuAqRQLKA

Again with the bullet points

Sorry to go MIA, folks. Not dead or institutionalized, just leading a life that is mindnumbingly un-blog-worthy. Rather than bore you with the details, I decided to skip it. In the interest of catching up, here's the best of the past few weeks:

• Jason has been buying these miniatures he needs to play Warhammer 40K with his gaming buddies. His army has a couple of people called "librarians," which I think is pretty funny. And he's got some kind of motorcycle thingees that are pretty cool now that he's got them painted and everything. But the other night a friend suggested that he retrofit one of the librarians onto the motorcycle, and I decided that combination should be called the Bookmobile, and I just about peed my pants I was laughing so hard. See? This is why I haven't bothered blogging.


• Also, tonight Jason decided that one of Liza's kids' magazines was called Your Big Backside, which I think would be an awesome fitness magazine for obese preschoolers. Get to it, NWF.


• Liza drags home a couple new pieces of art from preschool every week, and that combined with what she produces at home has gotten us to the point where we were taping stuff to the walls in the dining room. Four rolls of ribbon, a few nails and washers, and some clothespins fixed that problem: From now on, if it doesn't fit in the art gallery and it doesn't mark a milestone, it hits the trash.


• Today Liza finished the third level of Hooked on Phonics workbooks. Sometime in the past few days she started actually recognizing a lot more things as words, rather than letters, and she read the second half of her final book pretty fluidly. Here's an excerpt from it, just so you know what I've gotten myself into: "Then Dad and Tim woke up. They looked at the camp. 'Who set up the tent?' Dad asked. 'Who got the sticks for the campfire?' asked Tim. 'Who got the nuts and berries?' asked Dad. 'Who got all the fish?' asked Tim. 'We did!' said Kim. 'My pals Fox, Skunk, Chipmunk, and Frog helped me!'" She got three mylar balloons from the dollar store for finishing the level, and you'd have thought they were dipped in gold, she was so excited. Of course, if they were dipped in gold they wouldn't float too well, so it's just as well they were plain old balloons.


• Last week after we got back from my parents' house, I started letting her look through her Bob Books while she ate lunch, mainly so that I could read my book at the same time. She was actually reading them, not just flipping through the pages, which was the first time I've seen her reading casually.


• Speaking of my parents' house, Liza was unimpressed with the flower show. She was only lukewarm on the train ride, perhaps because we went the day after the giant snowstorm and it was blowing 40 mph and about 3 degrees at the (outdoor) train platform, and the train was late. She was in favor of the cupcake at the Reading Terminal market, but she lasted for about five minutes in the actual flower show before she started whining about wanting to go home. Here's her attitude during the parts of the show when she wasn't whining: She liked the family lounge, which had movies and games and crafts and animals visiting from the Philadelphia Zoo. There was a bunny - that kept her busy for a few minutes while my parents saw the show. She was also in favor of the Fuzzy Wuzzy plant I let her get, which is currently dying on our less-than-sunny windowsill.


• This weekend she started reading road signs to us ("Do Not Block Drive" is her favorite). Tonight she started reading the back of Jason's cup to us while we were eating dinner. OMFG.


• Liza liked the natural history museum we visited near my parents' house. Can you tell it started off as some rich guy's seashell collection? Liza visits the "big fucking shell" corner. It was cold the day we visited, so we didn't get a chance to walk through the gardens outside, but we did visit at least one of the bronze statues they have on the grounds:
• Speaking of cold, when we got home from my parents' house, this was in our front yard: As usual, winter can officially bite me.
So help me god, if you so much as bruise that crocus, Charlie and Lola are going straight back to the library and they're staying there forever.


• We've gotten a lot of rain in the past few days, and the river is a little, um, full. I think this shot was upstream from the bridge: And this shows roughly the place where I was standing when I made the video ages ago:

Yeah, okay, so that's enough for today. Hopefully something interesting (or at least infuriating) will happen soon so I have something to talk about.

Thank goodness for good lighting

The sun came out this afternoon, and the combination of the afternoon sun and all the light reflected from the 2" of snow we got last night was enough to illuminate my office sufficiently for some videotaping.

Which is a fancy way to say, check out my daughter the well-lit reading genius!

Oh, and the parts when she is staring off into space happened when she got distracted by the Hooked on Phonics game I left idling on my computer while I got her to read for the camera. I know it looks like she's having some sort of episode, but she's just really, really into that game.

The fat cat sat on the mat.

So, after completing the first lesson in the "big girl" Hooked on Phonics set earlier today, my daughter can officially read most three-letter words that end in -at. Except "sat," which for some reason she has to sound out every time she sees it, even if she just read it two words ago.

She read the little cartoon at the end of the lesson in the workbook, although I didn't manage to get it on video because I was too busy trying to be all encouraging and shit. Once we managed to convince her to actually look at the words, rather than just telling us what was happening in the picture, she got the hang of it relatively quickly. I still had to remind her that the words "is sitting in a big chair" hadn't appeared in the earlier lesson, so maybe "sat" would be a better choice, and for some reason whenever she couldn't figure out a word she thought it was funny to insist it said "pig," but after a couple repeats she had it down cold.

A few hours later (after doing nothing educational at all) there was a lull in conversation at dinner, so I wrote "The fat cat sat on the mat" on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She read her 'secret message' right away with no help (sounding out the offending word, of course), despite having never tried to read a mix of sight words and phonics words before then. So she's actually reading, not just guessing from pictures or memorizing placement in lists of words.

I don' t know who is prouder - the kid or us. No, wait - it's us. She's freaking brilliant, this one.

And she's asked me three or four times since dinner when she gets to do the next lesson. Hooked on Phonics, we love you!

Episode 38, in which I ruin a good thing by writing about it

Liza wants to learn to read. Really, really wants to learn to read.

We made Bingo cards out of the 25 most-used sight words, and she's got maybe 15 of them down pat and another few that she can sound out. She regularly points out these sight words in new circumstances (like on the Wilton cake decorating class poster in the bathroom stall at Jo-Ann Fabrics), so I know she actually can read them, not just make an educated guess. She knows all of the letter sounds, although she still mixes up Y/U/W for some reason. She likes playing the Starfall games, making fewer and fewer mistakes every day. She can reliably tell you what letter a word begins with (unless it's a weird exception, like a soft g or something), and she's a really proficient rhymer. She thinks The Electric Company DVDs she got for Christmas are the most awesome thing since Little Einsteins.

My mother-in-law got Liza the pre-K Hooked on Phonics kit for letter sounds (pre-reading) for Christmas, and Liza couldn't wait to get started. We hung up the posters, got the stickers ready, and installed the software. Now, two days later, Liza has finished all but the last five letters. She wants to finish those today so she can move on to the actual reading Hooked on Phonics kit I found at Ollies for $40. I realize she's going to have to go slower on the next one, since it will be more new material instead of just review, but it's still exciting to see her soooo pumped about reading.

Well, she's given up on trying to nap and is pestering me to finish up those last five letters, so I guess I'll stop babbling now. Wish me luck!

PS - anyone whose kids started reading before hitting kindergarten - how did you handle it? Were they really bored in school, or did the school somehow make allowances for kids who could already read? Because I'm afraid she's going to get bored and get into trouble ... not that I would know anything about that, of course.

No, really - she can read

A few words, at least.

Susie - this will take about 15 years to download, but you really ought to see it ... it will warm your ex-kindergarten-teacher's heart. If you can't get it to work, call me and I'll send it to you on CD.

Thank you, Electric Company

Scene: I just finished writing the "Fuzzy Wuzzy" poem on the blackboard in Liza's room.

Liza: "Why did you put a question mark at the end?"
Me: "Why do you think I did?"
Liza: "Oh, because it's asking a question, isn't it?"

Yeah, that's thanks to one segment on an episode of Electric Company that she watched once. Oh, look - here it is now!

Now I won't be the only one singing that blasted song under my breath for the rest of the month. On a happier note, I think I need to find the Victor Borge punctuation routine on YouTube now that she knows the names of them. Oh, look - here it is now!

Words my daughter can read

Words my daughter can read, regardless of context, font, capitalization, etc.:
Liza
Stop

Words my daughter can match to the appropriate numeral in a little matching game I made for her, but hasn't shown me she can identify in other contexts:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six

Boy, does she love that matching game, especially first thing in the morning when she's chock full of patience and really receptive to new things. She got all six numbers down cold this morning, and she kept wanting to add the other four she saw on the table, but I wanted to go slow so I was sure she wasn't getting overloaded.

Hey, when the kid tells me that what she wants to do this summer is learn to swim underwater and learn to read, I sign her up for swim classes and make flashcards. And so far she can paddle around with swimmies, put her face in the water, not freak out when she goes under accidentally, and sorta read eight words.

Have I mentioned recently that she's brilliant? Still can't wipe her own butt, but brilliant nonetheless.

****

Jason and I have a running joke that whenever my mother or I confront a new problem or challenge, the first thing we do is go read a book about it. I guess that explains why I've been scouring the homeschooling web sites for teaching tips, and I ordered a library book about how to teach your kid to read (by the folks who make Between the Lions, which Liza loves on the Chick-Fil-A kids' meal CDs she's got, but is only moderately interested in watching). The book is moderately useful, if only to sort of prepare me for how complicated the whole mess is. I'm glad I'm not responsible for teaching her all of it, just trying to get her started, because jeez, who made all these rules?

I don't remember learning to read, but I swear I didn't learn 90% of these rules, except as "Well of course c-e-i-l-i-n-g has a soft C at the beginning, that's just the way it is." How come nobody ever told me that the C is only soft if it's followed by E, I, or Y? Did I really have to learn that from a cheesy fake country song? "Certainly enough to make me cry," indeed.

The book is actually quite helpful for the analytical side of me, the part who wants to know what the heck is going on inside the kid's head while she's trying to figure all this out. And it gives a lot of benchmarks to measure her against, things she needs to learn to do before she'll be reading fluently. Plus, it's got me thinking about things like the fact that the same 100 words make up 50% of everything we read (somebody else's 100 words list here, in case you're skeptical). That sort of list would have been helpful when I was, I don't know, trying to learn Japanese in 6 weeks before we moved there, maybe?

Anyhow, the reading thing is something we're trying when she's interested, and if she loses interest I'll return the library book (and the phonics CD, and the Electric Company DVDs) and go help her learn about bugs or clay or cooking or dance or whatever she's interested in next. After all, they've got books about those at the library too, right?

Read and laugh knowingly

http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2008/03/sacajawea-theory-v20.html

Children's book recommendations

Liza and I were running errands this morning and my attempt at rewarding her good behavior with a trip to the pet store went horribly, horribly wrong when the pet store was - horrors! - closed for remodeling. In an attempt to staunch the flow of tears and snot, we stopped by the Borders outlet store next door, where I promised her we could at least look at pictures of puppies, since the real ones were unavailable.

Thirty minutes of her banging tunelessly on a Little People xylophone book at least allowed me some time to browse through children's books that don't require a home equity line of credit to purchase. And I found two that I just love, love, love, and Liza does, too.


The first one is The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. Basically, it's about a girl who tells her art teacher she's no good at art, and the teacher inspires her to create a different kind of art, and at the end the girl passes that on to another kid. The whole thing is really simple - a sentence or two per page, with watercolor illustrations throughout. But it's got a great message about how art doesn't have to be a realistic drawing or sculpture, and the illustrations are so nifty I want to frame them and hang them all over my studio. Really, use the online reader tool on Amazon and browse through them ... I just love how this book looks. Anyhow, this would be great for kids who are just getting started with art or for older kids who have been getting frustrated because they can't duplicate the art they see around them.

Same theme, same author, different book: Ish, by Peter H. Reynolds. This time, it's a boy whose brother laughs at his drawings because they don't look exactly like what he's trying to draw, and the boy wants to give up drawing, but his sister shows him that looking "Vase-ish" is fine, and it lets the boy explore a whole different style of art. Again, great for young artists or those who are frustrated perfectionists, because the "ish" paintings are really cool despite not being photographically realistic portrayals of the objects.

One thing that I like about both of these books is that the characters aren't rich white kids - the girl in The Dot is named Vashti, and the boy in Ish is Ramon. There's nothing particularly multicultural beyond the names and the less-than-albino skin color, but it's still nice to see in a kids' book.

I recognized this author's work from the book Someday, which he coauthored with Alison McGhee and which my mother-in-law gave us at Thanksgiving. It's a beautiful book in the same vein as The Giving Tree, in that it makes me bawl like a baby if I read it to the kid during certain days of the month. Mother has hopes for her little girl, who grows up and moves away and remembers her mother when she's an old woman ... blah blah blah sniff bawl. Liza loves it, and I do too, except for the bawling involved, so I was glad to find some new books by the same illustrator so I can enjoy his paintings without dripping on them.

Anyhoo, The Dot and Ish are available at Borders outlet stores for about $4 in hardback.

Congratulations to a friend of the family!

Jason's high school buddy (and road trip partner, and wedding usher, etc.) has a book coming out next month!

http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=18&pid=28962
It's called The Temporal Mechanics of the Fourth Gospel, and it's an ungodly expensive textbook, so I wouldn't suggest any of my readers actually buy the thing ... but it's awesome that he's gotten his dissertation published as a real book. Way to go, Douglas!

Abundance

I've started reading Simple Abundance again. Basically, it's a series of 365 essays on how to live a life that's authentic and true to what really matters to you. I keep the book in my bedside table, and since I first discovered it a long time ago, I tend to pull it out when I'm feeling scattered and dissatisfied with how my life is going. I've found in the past that the author's ideas really help me stay centered and focused on what really matters.

The first principle that the author discusses is gratitude for what we've already got - basically acknowledging that it's easier to be happy with what we have than it is to get everything we think we want. There are a number of low-key exercises she recommends, including a "gratitude journal" where every day you write down at least five things for which you are greatful. I've still got some of my old gratitude journals, and the entries run the gamut from "I got a promotion!" to "I didn't die today - yet."

I haven't been too good about following her exercises this time around, and I haven't started working on my official gratitude journal, although I have been trying to take a minute to think of five things I'm greatful for each day before I go to bed. One of the essays I read last night (catching up for a few days of slacking) suggested that I make a quick list of 100 blessings in my life.

"Yeah, right." I didn't think it would be quick at all, but since I've been slacking so far, I decided to give it a try. I managed to write down 50 things I was greatful for or that I consider to be blessings in my life before I ran out of time and had to go to bed, and that took maybe 15 minutes. I'm sure I could have managed to get the full 100 if I'd had the time and inclination, although the final 25 would have been a bit of a stretch (#79. Air).

The trouble I ran into is that a) I'm inherently pessimistic, and b) I'm a bit superstitious. So not only did a lot of my blessings fall into the category of "bad things that haven't happened yet," but I was sort of reluctant to write down the best stuff because I'm afraid I'll jinx myself. You know, write down that I am really enjoying my daughter at this stage of her life because she's so fun and it's such a great scientific experiment to see how she's developing her personality and her quirks ... and then the following day she turns into a little hellion I'm aching to foist off on my mother-in-law (Hi, Susie! Hope you liked the photos yesterday! Want to come visit for a month?).

I actually didn't write down "I didn't get the stomach bug that felled every other mom I know" because I was afraid to jinx myself ... and then I spent an hour getting way to familiar with the inside of our bedroom trashcan around 12:30am. Part of me thinks, "See? You didn't write it down, and the bad thing still happened, so you didn't jinx yourself." And the other part says "See? I just thought about it and the bad thing happened, so I'm doomed to suffer."

Not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe I'll get around to finishing the list tonight, and post the complete compendium one of these days. I haven't bothered to do any of the "100 things about me" memes here, so I suppose it would be good for filling space when I don't have anything else to talk about. In the meantime, anyone else want to list a few things off the top of your head that you consider blessings in your life?