Ready to Move Out

Today we made the trek to town. That would be about six blocks from our house to be exact, so not far at all. In fact Benji can walk all the way. We made a quick stop at the Macrobiotica for some sea salt and calcium and magnesium. Then it was off to the Ropa Americana for some great deals on used clothes. We are great fans of used clothing. The little girls are the best little shoppers you have ever seen. They can spot the cute clothes miles away and always end up getting some great deals.

Once we finished there we headed down a couple doors to the bakery to get the kids a quick snack. I was standing there getting ready to ask baby what she wanted to order for her snack. She marched right up to the counter and asked the guy in Spanish if he had any ham and cheese empanadas. He said no only cheese. So she told him she wanted two of them, and two grape juices also. He was just cracking up by this time and looked at me with a shocked look.

For some reason people are always shocked when she starts speaking Spanish to them. They always ask if she speaks English or Chinese. The Chinese will have to come later, right now is Spanish time.

After they got the goodies she went over to the caja and paid the cashier for the snacks. He took her money and handed her the change. When she walked over to us her sister asked her if she got the right change. She said yes and went over to the park to eat their snacks.

This would have to be one of the best things about living here in Costa Rica and raising kids. It is just so easy to take them everywhere, without even having a car. I told baby that it was good to know they could get along on their own. If they had some money they would be able to get themselves around town and even buy their own food and even pick up some snacks at the health food store if need be. It is great!

Celebrate the Successes

Yesterday baby and daddy went out to lunch to celebrate. They had read the complete Book of Mormon. Not only did they read it, they read it in Spanish. It has helped hubby's accent a ton and has been a great way to put baby to sleep every night!

She was so excited to go out that she got all dressed up and even told dad to change his pants. They went out for chinese food and had a great day.

When they got home she was ready to start reading in English so that we could all celebrate together next time!

Unschooling Adventures

I believe that I have the best of both worlds here in Costa Rica. Last week we decided we would take a day and spend it at the beach this week. Low and behold got a call from the teacher saying there would be no school today or tomorrow. How is that for service? I am still waiting for baby to give the words, "I don't want to go to school anymore."

I read with interest the story about the woman in NY who let her 9 yr.ride the subway by himself. I could not really see what all the hubaloo was about. When we moved to Costa Rica we walked all over the dang country. My daughter was 13 and would walk about a mile or two on her own to school. My son was 16 and took a bus ride cross country to meet up with some friends who were spending time at the beach for spring break.

Sometimes I think I am just too trusting. But then I look and realize that I am really just not afraid. My kids have for the most part faced some pretty scary situations and come out pretty tough for it. They have learned Spanish and could wander all over Central and South America if they so chose to. A couple have been to Hondurus and one lives there now with her family.

The realities are they are as safe here as anywhere if they keep their heads on and their eyes open. Like I have told the story before of my 21 yr old who got his cell phone taken at gunpoint. He had too much to drink and was not in the right place at the right time. There are rules to teach you kids if you are going to set them lose on the streets.

We took a family with us to Nicaragua one time to show them how to do a border crossing. It was the only time we have ever had any problems and they were all because this family was so dang gringo! Now I am gringo, blue eyed, blond dreaded gringo all the way. But they had a ton of luggage, number one nono, and they were dressed in their traveling best, number two nono, and they had really expensive backpacks number three nono.

To say we stuck out like walking targets is an understatement. The guy swore he got pickpocketed, he did get ripped off by the guys changing money, and they got stopped by the border cops. This was just on the way in! We were just shaking our heads in awe. I had told them before we went, travel light, wear less expensive clothing, and take dollars not colones. They did not listen to one word I said and they paid the price.

Not that I know it all or anything. Let's just say I have done that crossing a whole lot of times! Now my 16 yr. old it talking about a bus trip to Hondurus. 15 hours on the bus, three border crossings and a pretty crazy neighborhood there. Will I let her go? Heck yeah she will have a blast! I am hoping she can get her friend to go with her, but if not I will put her on the bus, her sister will meet her at the other end. And in between? Good thing she speaks good Spanish. My son did the trip without any Spanish and he did great.

He did get pickpocketed at one of the border crossings. Again bad choice. He wandered off from the bus to have a smoke and a bum asked him for a cigarette. He handed him one and the few limpuras he had left from Hondurus. A couple of minutes later he was standing there and a whole group of people brushed past him. He immediately went for his pocket only to discover his border crossing money was gone.

Turning to the crowd he yelled some profanity and told them to give him his money back.The bum who he had just helped out came over, walked up to this chick put his hand out and she handed him my sons money! Now that was street smarts there. Making friends never hurts.

Closer to Unschooling Baby

I have been letting Baby call the shots on her schooling. I am trying to trust her to make the right choice about what she really needs at this point in her life. She has been great so far. She goes to school about three or four days a week. I do have her decide the night before so that on the three early school days she is not just staying home because she would rather sleep.

Yesterday when we were walking home from school she mentioned that she did not have very many friends at school. I asked her how many she has. She counted three on her fingers and said the other kids don't really play with her.

She has had to contend with racism in a big way, as well as the language barrier. Her Spanish is pretty good, but the older the kids get the more they want someone with better Spanish they can converse with.

There is also a new girl in her class that she is really afraid of. She has not had any run ins with her, but I think she is afraid the little girl is going to come after her next. This little girl sounds like a piece of work. Screams and eats in the classroom and takes other people's stuff.

Today baby got the infamous stomach ache that she had last year. I suggested that maybe we should not go to school today, and miracle of miracles she was healed. She also announced that she thought she should stay home tomorrow and sleep late. This afternoon her teacher called to tell us there is no school tomorrow.

Here if the teacher has an appointment or something they cancel class for the day. So far since we started school in Feb. we have yet to have a full week of classes, fine with us. Since they only go for five hours a day it is really amazing they learn anything.

We did figure out they teach them to read by sight. The reading book we bought teaches them two words at a time. They memorize the words and move on. Maybe that works better with Spanish I don't know. I do know baby certainly prefers it as that is how she does her English reading lessons also. For her it is much less work to memorize than it is to sound out words.

Looks like a pool day for us tomorrow for sure! And then off to check out the gymnastics gym and see if that is something she wants to try. We have checked out dance, too boring, music, too boring and now gymnastics. She does love skating so we will go do that next week. This is too fun.

Teeny spent the day at the pool with our student. They have hit it off well and been enjoying hanging out until our student heads to Nicaragua to work for awhile. Seeing that she was also a unschooler I think that helps them get along better. In fact the majority of our students have been home or unschoolers. Cool beans!

A Day Late....

Today baby started reading lessons at her school. I am frustrated because I really wanted to have her reading well in English before she began her Spanish reading. I guess it will just slow things down a bit, but at least she will have it down. She is getting very apprehensive about her teacher having to leave to have her baby. We will see how that goes.

Teeny actually worked for money today. We have been cracking down on her to work for her money instead of just asking and expecting it. She actually scrubbed all the tile floors in the house, which would be all the floors. She has also completed her time being demo dog for our massage student. She worked this afternoon doing reports on all the conference talks. Of course that was a bribe. Fill in all the reports of the talks from conference and get a new cell phone battery.

She has really enjoyed having our student here. They get along well and she gets to speak in English, I think sometimes she misses that.

Last night she received a real wake-up call, so to speak. Her and her fellow "band" members were sitting on the curb up the street. A black car with no plates drove by slowly and scoped them out. The car turned around when one of the other kids answered his cell phone, dumb move. All the others yelled at him and they all took off running when the car turned around to come back.

The kids all hid at the end of our street waiting for the car to leave. They did not leave, just parked and waited. In the meantime teeny has all the cell phones crammed into her boots, like they would not look there. The kids waited awhile and finally decided to make a run for our house. Right as Hannah reached in to unlock the gate the car came whipping by, they took off when they saw her come in the gate.

Her friends sprinted for the park and scrambled over the fence to hide out and wait until the guys got tired of waiting and left. After talking to the neighbor he said the police were looking for a black car but that it had not been out before midnight before and this was nine.

I have always said we would stay in Costa Rica as long as we felt it was safe to do so. When my 22 yr old got robbed at gun point for his cell phone in San Jose we could rationalize. It was after midnight, he was alone and talking on his cell phone downtown San Jose after drinking too much! This one I just can't quite ignore or blame on the kids.

Got some thinking to do for sure. In Central America they shoot kids for cell phones. A neighbor kid who was just right around the corner from us got shot in the chest and killed for his cell phone. He was 19 years old! Today my daughter wrote me from Hondurus that a 13 year old girl had been stabbed to death on the bus for her cell phone. As the economy gets worse the crime rate is spiraling. Like I said we have some thinking to do for sure.

Order of Letters

After you have taught "M" I would begin on S. That is another fun one and you can use sssssnakes to help teach them how to make it. I forgot to mention when you are trying to help remember the M you can teach mountains. They have a good m begining and an "M" looks like a mountain. Likewise a S looks like a snake, which is what it starts with.

The next letter would be "B". That is another fun one and you can incorporate bubbles into that one. It kind of looks like a couple of bubbles yeah? After "B" we will begin working in some sight words the kids will need to know for reading simple books.

At this point they should be able to read mmmmm about something that looks good to eat. They should be able to say the "sss" sound when they see "s" in a book. The best thing for you to do is read to them. When you are reading let them make the begining sounds they know up to this point. If you are lucky they are starting to put things together and see how this letter thing works.

The problem we are having right now is with learning to read in English and Spanish at the same time. They are a little later to teach reading here in CR, but baby is learning her vowels at her school and keeps getting them confused with English vowels. I just have to keep reminding her, yes that is in Spanish, but we are learning to read in English right now. She is getting it, just a little slower than she would if everyone around here was speaking English.

Teaching Reading

Rod and Staff are the workbooks we are using presently to teach baby to read. I have to say after using about six different methods, there is no magic curriculum or method to teaching a child to read. I hate to say that, but it really is true.

What it does take to teach your children to read is a true love of reading yourself, as well as a true love of your child. Yes that is it, total requirements to teach reading to your child.

Most people that I have talked to about homeschooling seem to share in common the fear of teaching their children to read. There really is no magic to it. It is very time intensive and does take much patience and love, but other than that it is just pure fun! I tell people that the reason I chose to homeschool is so that I could teach my children to read.

I have been a lover of reading since I was a child. We grew up without a t.v. and because of that I was a voracious reader. I had read the whole Narnia series about five times by the time I was in fifth grade. I was in the gifted reading class at school and could read circles around my peers.

The interesting part of this? It did not start out this way. When I was in first grade my father died. During this time I missed lots of second grade. For this reason when we returned from my Father's funeral I was given special tutoring by Mrs. Row. She was my teacher and a very kind old white haired lady. You know it only took about two weeks before she had me reading as well as the rest of the class? Just a little one on one attention and I took off and never looked back.

That is my point. All it takes is you sitting there helping them sound out the words, reminding them what sound they are looking at, and at least a thousand times repeating certain rules that they cannot remember.

Like I said we have used many different methods to teach our children to read. The first couple of kids we used a book I checked out at the library. I copied it off (that was the day before curriculum) and off we went to learn to read. When my first born started reading, just using this little library book of sounds I was so thrilled. He took off also and never looked back. One of those kids who hide the flashlight under the bed to read after bed time.

Our fourth kid stopped me cold. He did not "respond" to our little reader. He just did not get it. The other kids were all reading by the age of five. He was six and still not reading. I was getting worried and finally just decided to wait a few months. In the meantime we began piano lessons. Guess what? Walla he had it! Yup it was the piano lessons that got the brain firing the right way and got him reading.

The next reader I had gotten rid of our copied book and was not sure what to use. About that time I found a cool book at church about teaching English as a second language using the scriptures. It was only $15.00 so I decided what the heck lets try it. I gotta tell you that at the age of four that kid was reading like a second or third grader. He is still a great reader as well as a great writer by the way.

With the sixth reader I had a challenge that I did not even know I had. Unbeknownst to us she could not see out of her right eye. She struggled to learn and finally got the reading down. She just never enjoyed it and we really had to fight to get her to read. Once we found out about the sight problem it made much more sense and now we try to get her big print and just encourage her.

Baby is using the workbooks above. She is also learning to read in Spanish at the same time, so it will probably be a little slower for her. She can pretty much read easy things already and is doing good with it. It is a blast to work with her, and I would never let anyone else teach my kids to read. I want to not only teach them to read, but also to teach them to "love" to read!

Science

O.K. so I finally figured out where to categorize laying on the massage table for half the day being "demo-dog". It would definetly be science. Considering the fact she has already been through the 12 week massage program and remembers some of the muscles she learned, I can call it a muscle review. The only problem would be that today she fell asleep.

Baby went to afternoon school today. They were scheduled to have their Mathmatica exams. The teachers are very strict about exam week and her teacher Nina Elizabeth is having a fit that she will miss the last two days of exams. The funny part is the exam she will be missing is English. I feel pretty sure that she has that subject down pretty good.

You never know though. Teenager went to a private school here in CR when we first moved here. She got a bad grade in English because the teacher was saying things wrong and she corrected her. NO, NO! My other daughter was working at a online business and she got five points off her evaluation because of her accent LOL! Once she explained that she was Gringa they apologized and fixed it.

I have decided once babies teacher takes off to have her baby we will be done. Baby has excellent Spanish now and can play with other kids fine. She has also developed other interests to keep her busy at home. We have cut her down to only one hour of t.v. a day, and it is amazing to see how her imagination has just blossomed. I am very pleased to see her expanding her art skills and spending hours making pictures for people and friends. She also spends hours playing with her puppy.

Yeah I think she will be fine at home with her old boring parents. We will be spending a few days at the beach this week and she loves that. Both girls really enjoy getting out of town, in a car even, and hanging out at the beach for a couple of days. We are all ready to get back to the mountains after a couple of days and cool off, but it is a nice break.