At Hudson Library I found the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. The first lessons from this book went fairly well, but one of the first constants they work with is S. As it appears Allyssa has a lisp, she didn’t like working with the S sound. So while the first lessons seemed to go well, after a short bit of time, she didn’t want to work on the lessons.

While when we started the book she was greatly interested in the reading lessons, that devolved to when I would suggest them, she would show little to no interest. Not that she didn’t want to read, more that she wasn’t interested in working on the lessons from the book.

When I had been looking for tools to help me teach her to read, I had come across other books on the subject. One of them was Teach A Child To Read with Children’s Books. Since it wasn’t actually at my local library, I needed to request it via interlibrary loan. (Wonderful system!) Since we were using the other reading system when it first arrived, I didn’t take the time to read it immediately. Only when it was coming due (and I wasn’t able to renew because of another request for the book), that I took the time to actually read it.

Now, I certainly wish I would have read it sooner. I had to take the book back today, but I picked a few of the PrePrimer 1 and PrePrimer 2 level books to check out from the library. Partly because I wasn’t exactly sure of her level, and it’s what was at the local library. Though most of the books I’ve looked for on the book list are available through the local library system.

She already knew some words, both from the 16 lessons we had done out of the 100 easy lessons, but more from the books she had memorized. Which was part of why I wasn’t sure of her level. When we came home tonight, I laid out the books I had picked up at the library and let her choose which one we would try to read by just looking at the cover.

She chose Blue Bug Goes to School by Virginia Poulet.  (Which the author considered PrePrimer Level 2.) We looked through the book first, talked about what appeared to be happening through the pictures. I pointed out a few words I was sure she didn’t know. Then I had her read the book to me. Now I will say she didn’t know all the words, and I did tell her those words after giving a little bit of time to see if she could figure them out, all in all she did a wonderful job of reading this book she had never seen before. For one word that she didn’t remember the second time we saw it in the book, I just pointed back to where I had first told her the word, and then she recalled it.

She immediately wanted to read it again after we finished it. Then she felt it necessary to read it to dad. Then she wanted to read it to mom again, after that it was time to read it to her babies. By now she’s read it probably close to a dozen times, and there is only one word in the book she has a problem remembering and that’s flannel.

I’ve always known she’ll be a reader once she learns how, what else would one expect from a child who when 3 would sit and pretend to read books that didn’t have pictures but she’d still sit there, look at the words, and turn the pages appropriately. The 100 lessons book seemed to take away some of her enjoyment of learning to read, but I think this style transfer may be just want she needed.

Now I will have to try and remember what to do from the book even though I don’t have it right now. Hopefully I’ll remember enough to be able to use the system, until I’m able to receive it again from the library soon.

from Laura Lambert – Google+ Post Feed https://plus.google.com/101948978596100334451/posts/EzX7VEf6NHd

Unfortunately the nearest Waldorf schools where in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and other cities across the river from Hudson.  Then I looked at the Montessori schools, there is one in River Falls, but it’s a private school (as are the ones in Minnesota) rather than charter schools.  What’s the difference?  Well the private schools are quite expensive and charter schools are actually public schools and paid for by taxes which mean they don’t require extra tuition costs.

Shane and I talked about the tuition costs for the Montessori school in River Falls, and while it probably isn’t out of line, it is more than we felt we could afford.  It also meant that we’d have to drive her to her school every day, a bit more than we wanted to take on.  Instead we decided that for this year, we are going to find activities for Allyssa and I’ll work on teaching or homeschooling her this year.  We’re also looking to homeschooling groups and such in the area as addition places Allyssa can make friends.

So last night we were looking over the Woodbury Parks and Rec booklet, and decided to sign Allyssa up for their Wish Upon a Ballet and Fascinating Fitness programs.  ”Wish Upon a Ballet is a dance program for children that incorporates popular children’s stores as well as ballet stores to create a dance class that is more than ballet steps.  Using musical instruments, parachutes and scarves we will create a complete fairy tale experience while we skip, leap, jump and spin.  Children will learn an appreciation of dance and music while developing strength and flexibility.”  The class is 45 minutes in length.

The booklet also talks about Fascinating Fitness and says, “This class will be packed with high energy warm ups, games and fitness routines.  We will not only get our bodies moving but learn about healthy eating and exercise.  there is no doubt that being healthy starts when you are young.  Help your children be fascinated about fitness today so that they can be fascinated about fitness for life!”  This class is 30 minutes in length.

Part of the reason we decided to go with both of these is that they are one after the other in the same location which is only a couple of miles from home.  There is a 15 minute break between the two so plenty of time for Allyssa to have some water and a quick healthy snack if she wishes.  But not so long as need us to find other things to do between them.

Another part of our activities has been going to Storytime at Hudson Library every Thursday.  This has worked fairly well.  We drive in with Shane in the morning, spend time at the library as well as other places in Hudson, and then do our grocery shopping before coming home.

Okay, the new camera actually arrived on Tuesday, but I’ve been enjoying it.  I’ve taken a number of pictures, and I really like how well it handles lowlight and flash.  I have taken several pictures of Allyssa, and she is quite the camera ham.  She wants her picture taken daily, and she wants to see every one of them as well.  I haven’t seen any yet that I like as well as the ones I took the day the camera arrived.  I’m sure I’ll find new favorites though as time comes.  I’ll have to find a few in portrait rather than landscape orientation so that I can update some picture frames.

I’ve been very pleased with it’s zoom function, and Shane has even tested it’s macro features on some of his HO scale trains.  It focuses well even in macro, shows plenty of detail, and all in all we’re very happy with this camera.

I’m very pleased at how well how easy it is to download from the camera to my computer which runs lubuntu (which is a LXDE variant of Ubuntu Linux).  I just plug in the USB cord to the computer, then the camera, and select PC on the camera.  I hadn’t uploaded from the old camera to my laptop,  mainly because we only had the one USB cord for the camera, and the laptop does have an SD slot if needed.  Since I prefer to run linux, it’s harder to install the windows software that came the camera, but I’m not really likely to have used it, or installed it even if I was using Windows so that’s no loss.

We purhased a 8GB class 6 SDHD card for the camera, and at the 14 MP setting we can take almost 1600 pictures before needing more memory space so I don’t think we’ll fill it up any time soon.  I’m planning on taking pictures off the camera at least monthly and more frequently if needed.  I am not sure we’ll even have 1600 pictures a month, but who knows?

It did not come with any sorta of camera case (our last one had a very basic stretchy case that came with it), so I found one I liked online (okay at ebay since they had the best price) and it’s on order.  What I like about the camera case I ordered is that it has a metal clip as well  as a double zipper.  The thought is that I should be able to carry it from a belt loop and still easily get to the camera when I wish.

Apparently we’ve been too busy with the day-to-day living of life to take the time to update this blog.  Or too busy with the changes to write about them, and then when things settle down it would slip our minds.  Who knows, all I know is that lots have changed in the last 7 months.

One of the first changes from the last blogs, was that Shane is not working for his former employer.  There was a parting of the ways due mainly to a misunderstanding.  Apparently the boss thought that as Shane’s employer he should be in control of when and IF Shane should have free time.  Our family plans didn’t apparently mean much to his idea of deadlines and launch dates, even when notified well in advance, or when it was the weekend.

With that change it became more difficult to complete the trailer in a timely fashion like we hoped.  One of the things that really needed completing before we could work on the interior was the roof.  Well, CraigsList helped us out there with finding the right sized trusses and a wonderful price  for them to redo the roof.  Unfortunately there was several rather heavy rain storms before we had a chance to start on the roof, and with other hold-ups as well we weren’t able to complete the roof soon enough.  What do I mean about not being able to complete it soon enough, well simply that things took too long and the interior became very heavily mold infested.  Too much so, for us to feel safe to complete the trailer or move in.  Therefore the project was abandoned.

In September we moved out of Karen’s.  Instead we moved in with Shane’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Charity.  So now we are living in Arcadia, WI.  We had thought/hoped that with Ashley Furniture and Golden Plump here in town, there might be job opportunities locally.  Unfortunately we are the wrong ages and have the wrong skill-sets for those employers apparently.

December 13, my cousin, Brandi Lynn Allen, was fatally injured in a car accident.  It’s hard to believe that such a bright young woman of only 19 is no longer with us.  She will be missed by many.

Allyssa made out well with Santa this year.  She received some Thomas the Tank things, TinkerBell items, a couple of dolls, and a few other things as well.  It took her about 30 minutes, I believe to open all her gifts and she enjoyed every minute of it, and then became busy playing with her new gifts.

Unfortunately the 26th we seemed to have a bit of a flu bug around the house.  Allyssa seemed to have it first, during the late night of the 23rd, but Shane and I seemed to have a bit of it on the 26th.

We have been working on potty training, but for a while it was tough going.  So bad that one day she had been sitting on her potty for over an hour  with no success, and less than 5 minutes after getting up off it, she had an “accident”.  Needless to say, I wasn’t so thrilled with all of this.  It felt as if she was being deliberately obstinate.  We had tried telling her that if she went an entire day without any accidents we’d buy her some more big girl panties and/or go to the “indoor park”. Then suddenly last Thursday she just decided that it was time apparently.  She had no accidents on Thursday at all.  Shane and I were both incredibly proud of her.

On Friday, we had a long day planned.  Shane was autocrating the May Day Pie Snit aka Pie Snit III, in Taylor, WI on Saturday.  We had some shopping and two people to pick up that day before heading up to Taylor.  Since it was easier to spend the night on site than go up on Friday to clean it and back early Saturday for the event.  One of the things we did was purchase Allyssa some more big girl panties, while we were taking care of our other errands.  And while we had long periods of time while driving and doing other things where a bathroom wasn’t available, she did extremely well on Friday as well.  No accidents at all!  Another proud day for Shane and I.

With the event on Saturday, Shane and I were busy.  While I was needed indoors, Allyssa kept wanting to go on the play equipment there.  Luckily for her, there was a girl at the event who agreed to play outside with her.  On the flip side, because Shane and I were so busy it was hard for us to reminder her to go to the bathroom.  In fact at one time, when I went out to reminder her to try, she had just had an accident.  Later, she was coming to get me, didn’t quite get to mom in time.  Therefore another accident.  But I really couldn’t blame her, she was in the early stages of training, and did need reminding.  She also tried to tell me, but wasn’t quite quick enough.   But today has been good.

Well, May Day Pie Snit was a really small event.  We had thought we would have more attendance then we did since the Queen was there, but at the last minute a number of practices and moots and turned up in the areas where we would normally draw our attendance from.  Even though it was small event, I believe it was enjoyed by all who attended.

Yesterday we had a birthday party for Allyssa at Holland Park.  Allyssa was asked what she’d like for a theme for her party (okay not quite in those terms but she asked), and she chose Thomas.  Not much of a surprise there. While Shane was planning to make a Thomas the Train cake, he ran out of time.

We planned for about 30 people from the RSVPs we had received.  And then the day of the party, we had about half that actually in attendance.  Apparently things came up and some weren’t able to come.  Such is the way life goes.

Allyssa received many gifts and loved them all, she received art supplies and an easel, play dough, bubbles with tons of wands, a collection of polished rocks,  a doll house from grandma, and several Thomas trains among other things.

Today, we just had a quiet family day (well after Shane finished work that is).

Currently when we’re out and about, Allyssa has two favorite games.  They are both where you each take turns either counting or going through the alphabet.  She now get bored counting somewhere in the mid to late thirties, but typically we will only count up to twenty and then switch sides. We will also switch sides when doing the alphabet and she knows them both very well.  We are working with some flash cards,  the only word she always recognizes right now is “ice cream” but she will go though the letters and the pictures of all the other flash cards easily.

Allyssa has unfortunately started trying to be a picky eater.  Perhaps that’s the wrong way to put it, it would be more accurate to say that she often decides that she doesn’t want to eat when it’s meal time.  She’ll say she’s not hungry then, but just after we leave the table she’ll want some sort of treat be it M&Ms or cookies, or whatever.

Eating isn’t the only thing that Allyssa can be stubborn about.  She’s also that way about potty-training.  Yes, we are currently working on potty training, but progress seems to be very slow.  We have even purchased big girl panties for her but even that doesn’t seem to be incentive enough to try to remember to use the potty rather than go when- and wherever.  When we are home she is on the potty for 15-30 minutes every hour, but she still seems to be able to go when she’s not on the potty.  Sometimes I think she misses, because she is still sitting in the high chair because she hasn’t finished eating yet.  But as much as I want her potty trained, she has to eat more than 2 or 3 bites of food for a meal.  (Yes supper tonight was a bad night for her and eating.  The sad part of that is what we had for supper was tacos and refried beans which normally she really likes.  But not tonight apparently.)

Well those are my thoughts for the moment, I’ll try to post more again later.  Promise not to hold your breath though.

Allyssa is getting bigger and is really smart too! She knows the entire alphabet and can count to ten, though some days she needs a little coaxing to get through them all. She is also at that stage where she wants to be “naked”, well, except for a diaper, and refuses to wear clothes. She also refuses to sit on the potty so potty training is progressing very slowly, or not at all right now.

Her favorite movie right now is Cars. Well actually, it is Mater and the Ghostlight which is a bonus on the Cars DVD. I think I have seen that over 100 times already. It is kind of annoying too, because every time Mater breaks his headlight she has to scream out “he broke his light!” Oh well, she’s still the most wonderful part of my life right now.

The job market in the area is crap, and although there have been a couple of options, none of them have panned out. So, Laura and I have decided to use my knowledge to build a business. We are working now on a Business Plan and actually have about a half dozen customers already, so it just might work out. The trick will be to actually keep working towards that, and not playing games on Facebook (hint hint Laura).

Shoot, gotta get back to work now. In case you don’t hear from us in the next couple of months, just remember that it is NORMAL to for us to not update the blog, so things must be normal.

So, what was she doing? Filling up the screen with the letters a and z, and of course screwing up the windows so Laura had to move them back where she liked. Yes, this is Laura’s computer, because my brand new Dell has a bad hard drive. You can read more about that and my fun with Dell Tech support on my GrandSlambert blog.

So, while we are on the subject of Allyssa, perhaps an update is in order. As you know she is 2 years and 2 months old now. She is still on the petite side but that it is OK, she is cute. She is also very smart and can recognize most numbers and quite a few letters. Her speech is still a little hard to understand, but she can say a lot of words now. Of course, I love it when she says “I love you”, even if only mommy and daddy understand what she is saying.

Yes, she is two, and believe me she is really going through the terrible twos something fierce. She is very demanding and wants to watch Thomas the Tank Engine all day long. When she does not get to, she throws a screaming fit that you would not believe. We are still trying to figure out how to deal with that, but we know that it is a phase, and we will get through it.

Usually offering to take her to the pool stops the tantrum, but we cannot always do that. She really enjoys going to the pool and has become quite the water baby. Though the pool we have here is not the best, it is large enough that we can enjoy it, and if we go during the day when most people are at work we have it all to ourselves. Unfortunately, during the day it is in direct sun, so we try to go later in the afternoon when the pool is in the shade.

I think we might be spoiled living where we are. Wood burning fireplace, private fenced in back yard, pool and walking distance to just about everything we need. I would have been a fool to leave, and I am so glad we are staying. I just wish we had more room here but it works for now. OK, back to school for me. I just started my second block of classes and have a lot of work to do.

Since we had an early start to the day and no plans, we ended up deciding to check out Union Station.  Being the train buffs we are we had decided to see the KC Rail Experience.  We are not sure if we missed something of the show or not, but there didn’t seem to be much to the display.  It was informative, but Allyssa doesn’t like standing in one area long enough to listen to the narration, and certainly doesn’t want to stand there while you read a display.  Which is probably why it seemed a bit small to me.

There had been a slight mix up with our tickets and we were able to get into Science City as well.  There was certainly a lot there for children to do, learn and see. It was more for children older than Allyssa but we still found lots to do, and she had a great time.

With the ticket mix up, we were also able to see a show in the planetarium.  I liked what I saw of the show, but by then I was so tired from the early rising and walking all over Science City that I ended up dozing off and missing part of the show.

We enjoyed the day so much, we are talking about purchasing a membership to KC Union Station.  If we go more than 2 times as a family the membership will pay for itself.  Another reason to consider it, is that they have a Half Pint Program which is aimed towards children 3-6.  While Allyssa would be a bit young for that at the moment, she is a very smart girl and won’t always be too young.  Besides the Half Pint program is 1/2 price for members.