Signs of Life : The Brownie Chronicles

We kicked off our 2013-2014 school year by sending off the boys to TSD the last week of August. Tian is now in pre-k and Travis has started Kindergarten!  They both have excellent teachers, so we couldn't be more pleased. I have a bit of a learning curve to get through this year. I've never had a child in government-run grade school.  Now that Travis is in Kindergarten, he has homework he brings home every night. The idea of having him do assigned homework after he's been in school for seven hours goes totally against my personal teaching philosophy, so the second week of school, when the homework began, I struggled with my own attitude regarding his homework. In the midst of my exasperating about it to Ken and silently to myself, I realized I wasn't being a good example to my kids.  How can I expect them to work diligently and with a good attitude, even when they don't like what I'm asking of them, if I don't model that myself?  So, I look at the h...

This blog post is written directly to my friends, family, and anyone who has commented on my blog or YouTube account this year. I'm not ignoring you!   *smiling and cringing in apology*   Well, I haven't been ignoring you, but I have been putting off replying to many of you.  Whether I've gotten emails, facebook messages, or texts, I've just had a tough time replying in a timely manner.  This has been a challenging summer to say the least, but I would say my busy-ness started months before that. I have several friends from my boys' classes with whom I've been talking about playdates for months, but they just aren't happening.  When I finally do get together with someone, it's because they were persistent in contacting me.  For you I'm grateful!  It's ironic, because in the past, I was told on several occasions that I was the friend always reaching out.  Years ago, I even remember having friends with kids about the same age as my ...

In the land of The Internets and the more all of our internet usage is linked together, I'm more and more amazed at how businesses work their ads in place in front of our faces. That said, I just ordered two Shutterfly photo books for the boys.  When I ordered, the album somehow linked to my blog.  I'm sure it was user error and I overlooked some checked box saying it would post, but I was surprised to see the album listed as its own blog post.  A post I promptly removed. That said, this was my first experience using Shutterfly and I loved it!  One book was free with our Cozi family calendar membership (Which I highly recommend. They may still be running the promotion for a free book, but I'm not sure.)  The second book was free thanks to a promotion though The View .  It's still good through September 20th, so click and save the code, then get busy making your book! You have a month to put it together! I chose a basic "look" with the pages already ...

Back in January, I sent this email out to a select few of my homeschool friends regarding my oldest son: I have a question and decided to ask you few ladies. My son has struggled for years with penmanship. He writes very neatly and very well  in his  handwriting  book . If he writes on his own, on a blank sheet of paper, he just can't do it.  If he writes anything, it's a mess. He can't express his thoughts on paper because he struggles so much to remember how to physically form each letter.  I've tried keeping a penmanship alphabet in front of him, but he will look up for almost every letter.    I've been putting off dealing with this for the past two years. I have said, "He'll snap out of it." "One day it'll all click for him."  But he's close to 10 years old now and he's feeling "stupid" (his own words) because he "can't write." Today, I sat him down to try to find out the problem and he sa...

Z5 Desktop. So Easy, So Simple!

In Part 2 of this series, I was excited to share some of what I learned about technology and using ASL eBooks.  Well, if you like the good, old fashioned paper book, have no fear!  Drs. Jean Andrews and Damara Paris from Lamar University , shared their team's research findings from the Alabama Emergent Literacy Study.  They focused on the " Adapted Little Books ." Below is only a small portion of their presentation.  There is so much information that goes beyond my knowledge, so I will direct this blog to parents of deaf emergent readers. As a homeschool mom, I'm very familiar with "little books."  We personally used Sonlight's own Fun Tales  with my three hearing kids. ( example )  You may be familiar with Bob Books .  The Alabama study used these 20 Little Books .  These "little books" are usually 6-7 pages, use high frequency words, have a close picture-word match,  and use short phrases to tell a whole story.  It ...

Using Technology for Literacy of ASL & English Bilingual Deaf Children That's another handful of words!  Basically, if you're teaching your deaf (or hearing) ASL/English bilingual child to read, there are some amazing tools out there to enrich that experience. At the conference , several different people presented on the topic of technology and ASL ebooks. VL2 Storybook Apps Check out their " About " page, too. Click here to get the book in the App Sto "VL2" stands for " Visual Language, Visual Learning " a Science of Learning center funded by the National Science Foundation and hosted by Gallaudet University.  The work they are doing is SUPER exciting for parents like me! Right now, there is only the Baobab book, but two more books are in the works.  Each book, priced at a bargain $6.99, is packed with a rich literary experience for your bilingual child.  As the website says, "Every child loves and deserves a great story....