Going From Reading Eggs to Reading Eggspress

Builder Boy has been racing ahead in Reading Eggs with the intent of finishing the maps and starting the Reading Eggspress level. Because everything in the Reading Eggs lessons have been review for him, I've been letting him go ahead with two lessons a day. Today he finished the last two lessons on the very last map. He was so proud of himself! He went right into Reading Eggspress with all the eager anticipation of an explorer and braved the assessment test, even though he did not like getting answers wrong. Thankfully we tried the spelling assessment test last week on the Reading Eggs level. This was his first time with an assessment test that he didn't know all the answers to. He cried and got very upset. (Probably my fault for not introducing him to something like this before now.) I calmed him down and explained that it was okay that he didn't know the answer because it was something he hadn't learned yet, and getting it wrong taught the computer what he didn't know yet so it could teach him. Knowing his response to the last assessment test helped me better prepare Builder Boy for the Reading Eggspress comprehension assessment test, and this time he didn't cry when he got the answers wrong.

It placed him at the beginning, which was just fine with me. Eager to get started, Builder Boy chose a book titled "Trains." Right away it started asking him questions about what he thought the book would be about, giving him several different options. I am not sure if he was reading all the options, or if he didn't understand the question, but right away we had a problem. This was a BIG difference from Reading Eggs, and seems like a really big leap! There is no easing into it, no in between steps or teaching how. This was discouraging for Builder Boy, and right now, for this week, we're going to go back to Reading Eggs and work on the spelling lessons that we didn't figure out until last week and he will finish the storyland paths.

I will also be reading up on Jen Bardsly's "From 'Learning to Read' to 'Reading to Learn'" suggestions at TeachingMyBabyToRead.com and will blog about implementing them and how they work out for us.

I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with Early Bird and Reading Eggs now. He's been working hard to catch up with Builder Boy on the maps, and will finish the last lesson by the end of the week. Though they have the same reading vocabulary level, I don't think Early Bird is mature enough for the "Learning to Read to Reading to Learn" developmental leap. I'm really glad I got those codes so that we could figure this all out before we have to start paying for it....

When A Flower Blooms

When A Flower Blooms

By Winter Jorgenson

My hands were full of dishes and soap when I turned to see her crawling towards me grinning from ear to ear.  I reached for the camera, precariously held it while I looked through the view finder and, in horror, watched as it slipped from my hand, fell and bounced on the floor.  I didn’t pause.  I didn’t put the dishes down or wipe my slick hands because my beautiful baby was still crawling towards me.   I picked the camera up, snapped the picture and dropped it a second time.  This time it broke.  In the aftermath, I grieved not for the camera but for all the moments that would be lost from memory because I could not possibly record them all.  I wanted to celebrate each moment over and over again.

In those early days of motherhood, I openly shared and celebrated my child and all her milestones.  Unfortunately, snarky comments quieted my sharing.  An acquaintance asked “Did she really say that?” when I shared about a precocious witty comment my little girl made.  Another time a parent snapped at me, “Have you had her tested yet?  She could have Aspergers.”  With the exception of a small group of family and friends, I do not discuss my everyday experiences with many people anymore.  The omission seems dishonest and I believe my children, all children, deserve better from their parents and community.

I believe all children deserve be celebrated.

We celebrate to give thanks, to show support, to welcome someone home or into the family, to show someone that they are valued and loved, to build community, to uphold a tradition, to acknowledge effort or an accomplishment.  Our celebrations can range from extravagant events, to simple words, to quietly inhaling the moment.  When we celebrate a child, we tell him that we are thankful for him, that he is welcomed in the community, that he is valued.  Likewise, when we only celebrate some children and refuse to celebrate others, we are saying that “only some children are welcomed here, only some children are valued, only some children deserve community support.”

It is easy to preach “celebrate every child” but it is difficult to practice, even within a loving family.  When my eldest started reading, I took her to the local coffee shop and we celebrated with a mommy/daughter date.  I waited to tell people outside of our small circle of friends until I was certain other children were reading.  I did not mention that my two year old son had started reading before my four year old.  I did not celebrate his milestone.  Instead, I hid it from everyone including his sister because I feared his intuitive grasp of how to read would undermine her accomplishment.  In doing so, I missed an opportunity to support him for the child he is and to teach him not to hide his abilities.  I also missed an opportunity to teach my daughter to be gracious about others’ accomplishments and that her worth is not dependent upon comparisons or being first.

I missed something else as well.  I remember the reading coffee date with my daughter.  She remembers it.  We have pictures of the event that we can look at fondly for years and years.  In contrast, my memory of my son’s first reading is blurry and loaded with mixed emotions.  If I had chosen to celebrate, then we would have a fond memory for him as well.  Growing up is hard.  Parenting is hard.  It is easy to remember the timeouts and the tantrums because those raw moments demand our full attention and push our limits.  It is more difficult to remember quieter times, small moments of growth and subtle changes.  If we stop to celebrate them, we create maps of positive memories to look back on, maps that will define our time together when we are all older.

I have an iPhone now that I have dropped many times trying to photograph a moment with my children.  Thankfully, the phone seems unbreakable.  Out the window, I can see the kids smelling flowers through slanted sunlight.  It’s a sight worth remembering.  From spring until fall, different plants will flower and the kids will press their noses into them all not caring if a flower is an early or late bloomer.  They do this because that is what you do when a flower blooms.  You take a moment and celebrate.

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013: Day 7

Today is the last day of the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013!

Check out the contributions at Homeschooling Hatters about “Just Let Him Be a Kid,” and the last post is a guest post here at Sceleratus Classical Academy titled “When a Flower Blooms.”

I hope you enjoyed the blog tour this year! If you're interested in contributing next year, keep an eye out for an announcement next May in the Accelerated Learner's Board at the Well Trained Mind Forum, or contact Jennifer Bardsley at Teaching My Baby to Read.

Special thanks to Susan Wise Bauer, author of The Well Trained Mind and sponsor of the Well Trained Mind Forum.

 

Special thanks also to Jennifer Bardsley at Teaching My Baby to Read for coming up with the idea of and arranging the blog tour for two years in a row now!

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013: Day 6

Today is the sixth day of the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013!

Check out the contributions at Northwood Classical Academy about “The Making of a Mathlete.”

There's still one day left of the blog tour!

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013: Day 5

Today is the fifth day of the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013!

Check out the contributions at Strader Spiel  about “Homeschooling a Gifted Child with Special Needs,” and at The Washington Collation of Gifted Education  about “I’m an Advocate and So Are You.”

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013: Day 4

Today is the fourth day of the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013!

Check out the contribution at Homeschooling: or Who’s Ever Home about “Nurturing Musical Talent in the Gifted Child.”

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013: Day 3

Today is the third day of the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013!

Check out the contribution at Teaching My Baby to Read about “Harry Potter, Muggles, Mudbloods, and Giftedness in Family Trees.”

This blog tour will be going on for five more days so check it out!

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013: Day 2

Today is the second day of the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013!

Check out the contributions at Only Passionate Curiosity about “Maturity vs. Ability; It’s a Big Deal,” and at Childhood Inspired about “Nurturing Other Aspects of Giftedness Besides Academics”.

This blog tour will be going on for a week so check it out!

Red is Bad!

My first pregnancy ended in HELLPS preeclampsia. I didn't have any of the outward, obvious symptoms of preeclampsia. I was overdue by two weeks, in the hospital with contractions but not progressing for 12 hours. They were going to send me home when the bloodwork came back: your liver is failing, you and the baby could both die if we don't get him out now; emergency c-section less than 10 minutes later.

My second pregnancy I collapsed after dinner at my in-laws house (who are retired EMTs) with high blood pressure. This time with a history of preeclampsia I went in to the hospital. Overnight, my blood pressure remained high (I don't remember the top number, but my bottom number never went below 100 and that was lying down for hours.) In the morning they transferred me to another hospital that specialized in premature babies. My oxygen saturation levels started dropping rapidly, there were concerns of fluid in my lungs and further complications if we waited, so another emergency c-section a short time later and I had a premature baby who only weighted 3lb 1 oz.

This time when we found out I was pregnant we immediately purchased a computerized/automatic blood pressure cuff. (Maybe $40 at CVS.) I was unhappy with the way my OB with my second pregnancy had not monitored me seriously (I was in her office the day before I collapsed with high blood pressure) and had dismissed my concerns (I tried to tell her I thought I was swelling at that appointment!) So I was determined that this time around I was going to get a doctor who dealt with high risk pregnancies and I was going to keep myself well monitored with the blood pressure cuff.

The blood pressure cuff I got comes with a green to yellow to red indicator to let you know how your blood pressure rates. Green is good, red is bad. They have two levels of green, one of yellow, and three of red. So when the night before last I couldn't sleep because of horrible spiking pain, vomiting, urge to "push," and blood pressure in the second level of red, I got really worried. When it didn't go away, and I kept vomiting and being in horrible pain and my blood pressure stayed in that red zone, I went in to Labor and Delivery after talking with the on call doctor. We didn't get there until after this had been going on for 8 hours so by the time I was hooked up to the monitors, the contractions/pain spikes were done, and my blood pressure was, I don't know what it was, but the nurse and doctor weren't concerned by it. Turns out I was really dehydrated, which brought on the pain and problems I was having. They hydrated me with an IV and sent me home.

Before we left, I showed my doctor the readings I'd had at home (I took my blood pressure about 5 times throughout the night) and he said that the top number wasn't high enough to be considered preeclampsia. I was too out of it to think to ask what was high enough to get worried about. After all, my blood pressure cuff said I was in the red zone! According to WebMD, the top number of 160 or a bottom number of 110 is the real RED ZONE. My highest reading for the night was "only" 132/102, so I wasn't there. That would have been nice to know before this all happened, but now that I know I'm going to ignore the colors on my cuff unless it's at the top red zone.

But I would like to share something sweet that did come out of all of this. I was holding it together just fine emotionally until we got into the L&D room and I was supposed to put on the gown. Then I lost it and became a crying, blubbering mess. My husband tried to comfort me, but I just needed to let it out. But that really upset the boys, especially Builder Boy, who looked like he was about to cry, too (we're new to the area and don't know anyone who could babysit, which is why the boys were at the hospital with us.) Once I made it in the gown and on the bed he took my hand and all on his own prayed for me and after that I didn't have any contractions and my pain level never went back to above a 4 (it had been spiking at a 7 before then.) It was such a beautiful comfort to see my child turn to God when he knew I was in need of help that he (Builder Boy) could not give me. A little while later Early Bird followed his example and did the same thing. 


I am so grateful for all the family, friends, and church members who got the message out and were praying for us. We felt those prayers, and every one of them was answered in the way we wanted them to be. Here's hoping for no more drama or worries until August 20th, the date of my scheduled c-section. Only 2 months and 6 days away!

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

All parents at some time, at least once, have quietly compared their child to another. Whether it's a baby "milestone" chart or another kid in the park or our best friend's child who's the same age as ours, it happens. In some cases it can even be a good thing. Milestone charts can give us a good idea of what we should be working on with our kids. Kids at the park can give us an idea of if our child is learning the proper societal norms and behaviors. Our best friend's kid can sometimes give us a clue if something is "wrong" with ours. But comparisons can also lead to a lot of problems for parents. And I think it's even worse for parents of gifted children.

I'm not talking about other people comparing their children to recognized gifted kids. I think we all are aware of the disaster that is. I'm talking about how impossible it is for parents of gifted children to compare them to anyone else. After all, depending on your definition of gifted, that's really only 5% of the population-or less. Given the wide differences in abilities between Gifted, Highly Gifted, Phenomenally Gifted, etc. You'd have to reduce it down even further. And what about the Twice Exceptional kids or the ones with a learning disability or those on the Autism or Asperger's spectrum? What about the kids who are gifted in one subject more than another? Or interested in something completely unthought of? What age are you going to compare your gifted kid to? Gifted kids his own age, average kids of an older age? When it comes to atypical, un-average kids, there really isn't anyone enough like your child to compare to. Which can be scary because that means there's no scale or measure to determine if you're doing a good enough job parenting (and especially homeschooling) your child. We have to figure that out all on our own, and individually for each child if you have more than one gifted child.

When you look at the it that way, it may seem obvious. But if you're the parent of a young, early learner, it's not so obvious at first. And I'm speaking from personal experience. I admit, I did a lot of comparing my oldest with other kids. Especially my best friend's daughter, who was four months older than my son. Baby milestones, when did they first crawl, walk, talk, talk clearly; I was completely guilty of it. And it didn't help that I was comparing a baby boy to a baby girl, even knowing that baby boys and girls develop much differently. But I was an insecure parent (aren't we all a little bit at one time or another?) and I didn't have any other experience to base whether or not I was doing a good enough job parenting my child. The fact that my little boy was not nearly as verbal as her little girl did not help.

When Early Bird came around I was then comparing his milestones to his brother's, adjusted for gestational age for the first two years since he was born premature. But when he started reading six weeks before he turned 3, I gave up on comparing him to what his older brother's records were. When two months later he was reading at the same level as his 5 year old brother, I started trying to compare Early Bird with where his brother was then. That didn't work out so well either. Because there is a lot more to development than reading, and treating a 3 year old like a 5 year old, even if he is advanced in several areas, is not the best move. I ended up frustrated at times because I was forgetting that 3 year olds act like 3 year olds sometimes; and sometimes like 2 year olds. Eventually I gave up/broke the habit of trying to figure out where this child "should be" developmentally and just tried to meet him where he was. I'm not sure how well I've done with that because he's 4 years old now and I'm still struggling to figure out where he "should be." Am I missing gaps in his education? Am I babying him too much emotionally? Am I challenging him enough? I have no idea, no standard, no guide. He's happy; I know that much at least.

This lesson took more time for my husband to learn though. Even with Early Bird doing things way before other kids his age, he still wanted to make sure we weren't forgetting anything. And he was looking for a guide for that, something to measure Early Bird's progress against. My "ah ha!" moment came when I told my husband "there isn't anyone to compare him to!"

Since our discovery last year that Early Bird is an early learner, I've had the opportunity (thanks to the Accelerated Learner Board at Well Trained Mind) to come across other parents who are making the same discoveries about their children that I was. When they ask what my #1 piece of advice is, (after Calm Down and Breathe) it is that comparisons are useless and will make your life miserable.

I am currently pregnant with my third child. I'm going to have a chance to really put what I've said into practice. There will be temptations; I'll have two other babyhoods to compare hers to, and my sister just had a baby girl a month ago, so we'll have two baby girls just 3 months apart. Whether she turns out to be gifted, average, or challenged, I hope I have learned well enough what Early Bird has taught me: to just enjoy my child for who they are, to work with them at their speed, and to not worry about what everyone else's kids are doing.

___________________________________________________________________________

This is my contribution for the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013. I'll post links to the next blog posts on the tour on their days, or you can click here for the original announcement and links to the participating blogs. I had a wonderful time reading the contributions last year, and I'm looking forward to this year's.

Had a trip to Labor and Delivery this morning. Thankfully it was a false alarm, if a very painful and scary false alarm. I'll write more about it when I'm feeling better, but I would appreciate prayers. And I want to say how thankful I am, both for my wonderful husband and for my children's examples of faith today.

My friend who got us started with Reading Eggs over at We're All Mad Here wrote a Reading Eggs review, too! Since she uses it as primary instruction and the whole-words memorization works really well for her son, I thought it would be interesting for people to see another side of the program. Check it out!

The baby is NOT in my stomach....

So, my kids are only 6 and 4 years old. As we don't live on a farm, they haven't had the "birds and bees" talk yet. There's been some expansion of their education of the female body since I've become pregnant, but I've kept it rather vague. I've been very clear that the baby is not in my stomach, but in my womb, a "special place that only mommies have." Builder Boy hasn't asked how the baby got in my "special place;" we've read to them God Gave Us You and I'm thinking he thinks that God put the baby there; and right now, I'm okay with that. (Yes, I am running away from the inevitable conversation we're going to have to have....)

Early Bird, on the other hand, has his own conclusions. A month or so ago he was talking to me about "Squishy" when I was resting and we were talking about her growing and getting bigger. He told me he thought she got into me through my mouth and down my esophogus and into my stomach (he knows about the digestive system thanks to Magic School Bus.) I told him no, that's not how she got inside me and he said "then where's the beginning?"

I admit it: I panicked. I probably looked like a deer caught in the headlights. I was NOT prepared to explain to my 4 year old the "beginning." I ummed, and hawed, and gave a general "down there" with a wave. Not satisfied with that he examined my exposed tummy and asked if she got in through my belly button. I realized he was NOT going to let this drop, so I told him she got into me down in my underwear area. I forget his exact, very funny words, but the gist was he thought that was a weird answer and I don't think he really believed me, because since then he's said repeatedly that when she was big enough I am going to burp her out of my mouth.

It probably doesn't help that when I was going through my crazy cravings I was saying things like "the baby doesn't like ______" or "the baby really wants ______."

I searched online for some sort of picture that showed the stomach and the uterus in the same picture, but all the pictures I found were either of the digestive system or the reproductive system, not both. I asked around and someone wonderful was able to direct me to a short clip that illustrates the uterus with the baby expanding and pushing aside the other internal organs including the stomach! (THANK YOU Museum of Science and Industry!) It even shows how food goes from the mother's mouth through her system and into the placenta-umbilical cord-baby. I showed it to the boys tonight and I think Early Bird finally believes me.

Since Early Bird was focused on how the baby was going to come out (which I am much more comfortable talking about than how she got in) I explained briefly how most babies came out, but I also told them about how there were complications with their births (I have mentioned that to them before) and that the doctor had to cut them out. I showed them my incision scar and after thinking about it for a minute, Builder Boy declared that they came out "the shortcut way!"

Oh, and here's a picture of Squishy from the ultrasound two months ago. :)

Reading Eggs Review: Starting Up and a Walk Though Lesson 88

10 days ago I signed the boys up for a free trial of ReadingEggs.com. I had heard of it mentioned before on homeschooling blogs, forums, and sites, and heard other parents mention it. I knew you had to pay for it, and since we had already paid $35 for a year's subscription to MoreStarfall.com, I wasn't looking for something else to buy. Early Bird was perfectly content with MoreStarfall, even though he wasn't learning anything new reading wise (it only goes through a 1st grade level, but it stops teaching after the basics) and I wasn't really sure how much he was getting out of the math games he played.

It's the past six months of this pregnancy a lot of schoolwork has gotten dropped; more than I'd like to admit. That has slowed the kids' reading progress down, though they keep picking things up. Then two weeks ago a friend posted a screenshot of one of her son's Reading Eggs lessons, and I was impressed because not only did it have much higher level words than I had ever seen on Starfall, but it had her kid matching the words to picture, working on understanding what the word meant and not just the ability to be able to read it. So I messaged her for a link and she had Reading Eggs send me an e-mail with a 14 day free trial (you can get the free trial on your own, but by doing it through her she got to "earn" a few more free weeks herself.) She also sent me some codes she had found around the internet that got me to 70 days free before I'm going to have to decided to pay or not. (I'll post those codes at the bottom of the post.)

I don't like starting the kids on something that I don't know if I'm going to want them to continue. What if they get super excited about it, but I'm really unhappy with it, and then it has to go away? I know disappointments are a part of life, but that's not a situation I put my kids in if I can at all help it. So I'm going to write a review (actually, I'm going to write several since there are a lot of parts to this website) that is the kind of review I would have liked to see before signing up.

I started the process with Early Bird. It was a simple sign up and did not require a credit card number to get the free trial. It offered to let Early Bird start at the beginning (which I'm assuming is learning letters and sounds) or if I wanted to I could let him take a placement test. Early Bird has never done anything like that before, but I let him try. The multiple choice test that says the question progressively got harder as he went along. At any time once you got three questions wrong the test would stop and it would place you accordingly. Early Bird made it through all 40 questions, getting only one wrong and needing me to re-phrase the question (we've never used the term "word family" before) three times. Out of 120 lessons that placed him at lesson 71. (Builder Boy took the test later, missed two, and it put him on the same lesson, so I'm assuming that's the ceiling level for the test.) There is a picture map for every ten lessons. Lesson 71 was the first lesson on Map 8. At the end of the path on each map there is a 15 question quiz that goes over what was covered in that map. You must get (I think) 11 correct to move on to the next map. Because they tested ahead on the path, all the other lessons and maps that came before 71 were unlocked, but your child has to finish a lesson before continuing on.

Each lesson is made up of several smaller parts that are interactive instructions or practice type games. Each part has to be completed with a certain level of accuracy (I really like that condition) before the next part of the lesson can be unlocked, but you can go back and play/work on anything that you have unlocked. The below is Early Bird working through Lesson 88 (the last lesson he did today.)

Part 1

Part 1 of Lesson 88 introduced the "th" blend. First it had him just click on "th" as it said the sound. Then it had him select the "th" out of three blend options. Then it had him take turns clicking on Shelley Shark and then Charlie Chimp to push the two parts of the word together to make a word. It did that with several 'th-' words. When Builder Boy did this lesson a few days ago (he's going a bit faster than Early Bird, for reasons I'll mention in another Reading Eggs review) he was annoyed about how many times he had to click on both of them to make them come together. But for a new reader, I can see how that's an important step.

Part 2

Part 2 of Lesson 88 is a simple matching the word to the picture game. Once they have done it correctly the words are taken back and mix them up and the kids do it two more times so they are putting the words up because they know it, not just because they guessed right. Kids are not expected to be able to read these words (I think?) When the mouse is over the word it does say it out loud for the kid.

If my kids were not already able to read these words, I would have a problem with this. I am very strict about systematic phonic instruction and have a fear of just memorizing words as "sight words. Now knowing that they introduce words this way long before the kids know the "rules" for why these words are pronounced the way they are, I would not use Reading Eggs as my main means of instruction, and I am glad I did not put my kids on Reading Eggs before they were already reading these words on their own. But I know that not all parents are as ridged about this as I am. (Jen over at Teaching My Baby to Read wrote a great blog post about it if you'd like to read more about why people think the mixed approach that Reading Eggs is using works well.)

Part 3

Part 3 of Lesson 88 had Early Bird read a word and then decide which letter blend lane the word belongs in. Early Bird had a hard time with this game the first time because he clicked on the sign above the lane instead of the lane with the pins, so sometimes it went wrong; and if you get too many wrong, you have to re-do it. So, being only 4 years old, he insists he needs help on this one, even though all I do is remind him to click on the pins.

This game is an example of why I decided that even though the test didn't get the full extent of the boys' reading abilities, I'm glad it placed them where it did. When they first stated playing the Reading Egg lesson games, the instructions were a short description at the beginning, and that's it. They assume that you've gone through all the maps to get to this point and that this is not the first time you're doing them, so you should know what to do. The first day they boys played Reading Eggs I sat with them and helped them figure out what they were suppose to do. There are a lot of different practice formats and there was at least one that took me a long time to figure out what exactly they were looking for. But ten days in the kids have got it all figured out, mostly.

Part 4

Part 4 of Lesson 88 did not impress me. Early Bird was given a word that I knew he could read, but Reading Eggs had no reason to think he could. They told him what it was, then had him pick it out of a group with two other words that, again, I knew he could read, but they had no reason to think he could. 16 different times with different, all complex, big words around "his" word. I'm not going to write anything more about this because I don't want to come off like a ranting psycho-mom, but there is no way this is the way I would chose to teach reading to a child.

Part 5

Part 5 of Lesson 88 once again had kids working with words that they had not been taught the "rules" for. In this practice game they were given a word one at a time and were suppose to match it to the available words. It did not expect kids to be able to read them; when you hovered over a word it said it for you. That was the extent of the "teaching" in this part of the lesson.

Part 6

Part 6 of Lesson 88 has an activity that I can't quiet make up my mind about. It starts with a book that they have read/had read to them at the end of a recent lesson before this. The lower maps/lessons have books with less options of words to choose from. As the kids have only heard/read this book once before, they seem to expect them to remember a lot, or else be able to infer a lot. This is one of the lessons/games that I get called over to help with the most. I had really hoped that the boys could use Reading Eggs completely on their own; maybe after another ten days they won't "need" me anymore.

Part 7

Part 7 of Lesson 88 I really like. It's a gentle way to introduce dictation, which is something that the boys are going to be encountering in later levels of our planned writing curriculum, but isn't something they have done before. The words (sometimes they're owls on a fence, I've also see them as bricks in a wall) start up and in the correct order. The game slowly reads the words, highlighting each word as it's being read. It then asks the kid to read the words as it slowly highlights them. Then they scramble the words and take them down and ask the child to put the words back in the correct order. Here is where the kids really needed to pay attention because it expects you to remember the correct order. Like many of the other games/lesson in Reading Eggs, and unlike the games in Starfall, there is no repeat/say again button for the kids to press. So if they weren't paying attention, they're going to have a more difficult time. I think this has been good for the boys, and over the past ten days they have gotten better at this game. They are given several sentences, one after another, and some of the sentences are longer than the one pictured.

Part 8

Part 8 of Lesson 88 tests kids' words per minute speed (actually, it's words per two minutes.) Here they only use words that have had the phonetic rules explained and practiced before. They also use a limited number of words, repeating words and changing around the picture placements as you go along. Nether of my boys had any timed reading or speed pressure put on them before, but they do very well. Sometimes Early Bird panics if he can't find the picture right away and insists he needs help, but he does fine. I like that once again they are connecting the words that they are reading to a picture of it, improving comprehension.  

On a previous lesson I had noticed that they had the word "peg" and the picture they matched it to was of a wooden clothes pin. I was confused by that, but I explained that that was the picture they were looking for, and after a few reminders the kids correctly select that picture for the word "peg" from then on. On this lesson they had the word "chips" but the picture they wanted was a picture of what we in America know as "french fries." Thankfully I am a Doctor Who fan, so I had an idea of where that came from. I looked it up and apparently Reading Eggs was originally created in Australia, which explains the chips/french fries and their British accent option. This is only the second time in twenty lessons I have encountered a British/Australian/American discrepancy that had to be explained to the boys, though I don't watch every lesson.

Part 9

Part 9 of Lesson 88 was the last part of the lesson. Lessons in Map 8 (where we started) tended to have shorter lesson parts, but more of them. Lessons from Map 9 and 10 seem to have fewer lesson parts, but they take longer. All lessons end with a book. You can choose to turn the audio off, or have it "read" it to you.

Egg Hatching

Along the path for each lesson is an unhatched egg. Once the child has completed the whole lesson there is a short animation of a creature hatching from the egg . When you go back to the map the creature is there instead of the egg. If you hover over it it will move a little bit, but as far as I can tell, they don't do anything else.


So that's a walk through a whole lesson at Level 3. From Reading Eggs' website:

"The Stepping Stones Reading lessons are the core of the Reading Eggs learn-to-read program. Each lesson builds on the previous one to build skills in the five key areas needed to become a good reader: phonemic awareness and phonics, sight words, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The lessons are presented in three broad levels with 40 lessons in each level.
Level 1 Starting Out for absolute beginners, lesson 1-40.
Level 2 Beginning to Read for emerging readers, lessons 41-80.
Level 3 Building confidence for early readers, lessons 81-120."

I have not seen any of the lessons for the Level 1, so I do not know how well it would work for a young beginner. While searching for more information for this review (after I has almost completed this post) I found the "Try Sample Lesson" option on ReadingEggs.com. It offers two lessons from Level 1 and one from Level 2.

Overall, I personally would not use this program as the only source of instruction; and I would not sign up a beginner reader who I did not want being exposed to complex words with no instruction context. For example, in a previous lesson I watched them introduce -ide words, but no explanation of the Silent E Rule. So kids would memorize the "ide" sound, but not apply that an "e" at the end of the word makes the "i" say it's name and that's why. But I can also see how this would work for other parents and kids who don't have the same learning to read philosophy as I do.

We are ten days into our free trial and I am still not sure if I am going to pay for it once our time is up. The kids love it, there's no getting around that. But they want $50 for a 6 month subscription, just for one kid! And another $25 for a second kid. That's $75 for just 6 months! There are a lot of other features that Reading Eggs offer that comes with that price that I will review in other posts (I've worked on this post long enough, I want to get this up already.) Here are the codes I used that got me the extra 7 weeks free on top of the original 2 week trial. (You can only use two codes a year.) 5ABCSHOP & ABC88EGG. (ETA: these codes are now expired.)

ETA: My friend who got us started with Reading Eggs over at We're All Mad Here wrote a Reading Eggs review, too! Since she uses it as primary instruction and the whole-words memorization works really well for her son, I thought it would be interesting for people to see another side of this.

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I was not asked to review Reading Eggs and was not compensated to do so. I put the time and effort into this review because I wish I could have read something like this before I started it with my kids. All opinions are my own. 

Pregnancy Product Review: Belly Band

At my 5 month OB appointment I mentioned to my doctor that I had been dealing with groin pain, mostly when I walked distances longer than half the length of my house. He said that was within the range of normal for pregnancy and that there really wasn't anything he or I could do about it. The ultrasound tech (a woman) noticed I was having some pain and recommended a belly band. After the appointment we went to Walmart, but apparently our local Walmart doesn't carry any maternity wear or products. Since we're still new in town I had no idea where else to look, and I wasn't feeling well enough to walk around searching, so I stopped thinking about it.

But the pain kept getting worse. If I had to walk up the stairs more than once a day I ended up limping/hobbling. Doing anything more than just sitting reclined in my arm chair became a painful struggle. And leaving the house and going to church ended with me in tears from the pain trying to make it back to the van. Which really stank because here I was finally not throwing up every other day, no longer completely immobilized by nausea, and now I couldn't walk.

I was helpless, in pain, and at my 6 month appointment my doctor was in such a hurry because of an emergency c-section on another patient that I wasn't able to talk to him about it. I ended up needing a wheelchair to get back to our van from the doctor's office because I just couldn't take another step. On our way home we tried looking for a belly band at Target, since they had one online. But the local store didn't have them. A person there recommended Babies R Us.

A few days later my visiting mother in law drove me the 25 minutes to Babies R Us and we finally found some belly bands. There weren't many different options to choose from; I ended up getting the Babies R Us brand Maternity Support.
I should tell you that a bathroom stall with nothing to place the instructions on is not the best place to try putting this on for the first time. There are 3 different pieces and 4 step directions. But I got it on eventually and we headed out.

The first thing I noticed was in the car ride back I was much less uncomfortable than I was on the car ride there. I continued wearing it that evening and even though I had walked through a Babies R Us (and have you ever been in a small Babies R Us?) I was feeling some pain but I was still able to walk at the end of the day. The next day I wore it I was able to walk around even more; again, with a small amount of pain, but nothing compared to what it had been. I've been wearing it all day long for a week now and I've had at least two days of complete freedom from pain and increased mobility in all the days I've worn it. Yay!

Cons to this product:

• sometimes it has to be adjusted several times, depending on your position and activity. What helps for walking around is often too tight for long periods of sitting. Luckily it is easy to adjust. Unluckily, the Velcro can be loud when adjusting, especially if you're sitting in a movie theater. (But hey, I made it to the theater and through an whole movie with my husband! Yay!)
• because it squeezes you some (especially if you put it on too tight) it can lead to even more pushing up on your internal organs, which in turn can push up on your lungs and diaphragm and you might noticed that and worry you're having trouble breathing, raise your blood pressure a bit, and then freak out and worry about pre-eclampsia. (Which is totally fixed by taking it off, drinking fluids when you realize you're dehydrated, and lying down for half an hour.) Not that that happened to me or anything....
• it's an extra layer under your clothes holding heat and sweat against your body; and I'm going to be wearing this in in the summer time.
• it has to be hand washed. They made a pregnancy item, needed most in the last trimester, that needs to be hand washed. Really?!

But other than that, I am really glad I got this product. I'd still be a painful mess without it. I've recovered enough this week that I'm going to try to get back to teaching Space School again. 
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I did not get paid for this review, all opinions are my own. For an Amazon link for a similar product try the Soft Form Maternity Support Belt .

Binky Buddy

This is the Binky Buddy.

(My kids don't use binkies/pacifiers/soothers anymore, this is a FYI DIY blog post for my sister.) Sadly I can not remember who it was who told me about this idea four years ago, so I cannot credit them as they deserve. But this thing really saved my nights.

I don't remember what age Early Bird was when I made it, but I do know he was at least nine months old when I posted about it on Facebook. I was having to get up in the middle of the night a LOT because he kept losing his binky. Someone, can't remember who, recommended that I sew a pacifier to a small stuffed animal (I used a Beanie Baby because of the size and weight.) That way when the binky came out of the mouth is was much easier to find and put back in (by the baby) and it couldn't be flung to some random, hard to reach corner of the floor under the crib.

All I did was sew it on the mouth of the koala. I used thicker embroidery thread (because I'm insecure about my sewing abilities sometimes) and went round and around it a bunch to times to make sure it was secure. That's it. It is important to have a loop on the pacifier to make this work (though if someone successfully attached one without a loop I'd love to hear about it in the comments.)

Hope this helps someone out there like it did me. I got a lot more sleep during the night once Early Bird was popping it back in on his own.

Exploring Space: Builder Boy's Discovery, the Wall, and the Logbook

Tuesday, the day after our late night sky gazing, I was really tired. A loud something or other woke me up at 5:30 in the morning and I had trouble getting back to sleep. I wasn't feeling so good pregnancy-wise, either, so when the late afternoon came and we still hadn't started Space School, I decided I needed the day off. That didn't stop Builder Boy, however, from learning.

Early in the afternoon he started making "books;" drawing pictures of space objects and labeling them with some spelling help from me.  Then he made a book about stars and drew different diagrams of the sun and the Earth, showing the orbit, what sunrise and sunset looks like from Earth, etc. His last picture was of the sun's job in the water cycle. He talked to me about it and made the point that without the sun there would be no evaporation, no redistribution of water through clouds, and eventually all the water would be accumulate in the oceans and that would be that. I was really proud of him for thinking of that, which applied to what we were talking about on Day 4.


Today I continued to feel run down, so we just reviewed what we already knew and took down all the papers we had put up on The Learning Wall. We had filled up The Wall and we are only half way though Exploring Space. The Evan Moor Scienceworks for Kids books are set up to turn the workbook pages into a logbook, so that's what we did today. The "_________'s Space Logbook" pages I pasted on the front and back of a three prong folder ("duotangs," to my Canadian friends.) Most of the pages we did actually turn into mini books, so those went in the folder pockets. I want the space books Builder Boy made on his own with these as well, so those went in the back pocket. We will fill our Learning Wall with the rest of the pages before putting them in our book. There's just something more satisfying seeing it fill up The Wall than just adding pages to the logbook, a few at a time. We're leaving the solar system picture, the verse, song, and Builder Boy's extra drawing on The Wall.

I feel a little said about something I found out today. A few weeks back Builder Boy discovered a chart in the back of the, unfortunately outdated, Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System book. In the chart it had the current (at the time of printing) number of moons per planet, and Builder Boy all on his own memorized the number for each planet. Well, I looked it up today, and there have been many more moons discovered since that book was printed. And there are varying reports on how many each have, as some still need to be verified. Right now Builder Boy thinks that Saturn has more moons than Jupiter, with Jupiter having 16 and Saturn having 17. But my Googling says that they both have over 60, and Jupiter has a few more than Saturn. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a source that will give enough specifics to make a new chart for him. This feels like "Pluto isn't a planet anymore" all over again.

I've got an afternoon doctor's appointment tomorrow and out of town visitors in the evening, so I hope I can get my pregnant butt in gear and move on soon to our next concept.

Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013 Announcement

Sceleratus Classical Academy is very excited to be participating in the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour 2013 from June 14th-21st. 

This international blog tour is organized by parents who met on The Well Trained Mind Message boards.

We come from different parts of the world, different school choices, and different social and economic backgrounds, but we all have one thing in common. We know that parenting a gifted child can sometimes be as challenging as it is rewarding.

If you have ever woken up at 3 AM in the morning wondering “What am I going to do with this child?” then this blog tour is for you!

From June 14th-21st the Parenting the Gifted Blog Tour will discuss some of the most pertinent issues facing gifted education today:

On June 14th Sceleratus Classical Academy will kick off our tour with “Comparison is the Thief of Joy.”
On June 15th Only Passionate Curiosity will share “Maturity vs. Ability; It’s a Big Deal”.  Childhood Inspired will write about “Nurturing Other Aspects of Giftedness Besides Academics”.
On June 16th Teaching My Baby to Read will feature “Harry Potter, Muggles, Mudbloods, and Giftedness in Family Trees”.
On June 17th Homeschooling: or Who’s Ever Home will write about “Nurturing Musical Talent in the Gifted Child”.
On June 18th Strader Spiel  will discuss “Homeschooling a Gifted Child with Special Needs” and The Washington Collation of Gifted Education will share “I’m an Advocate and So Are You”.
On June 19th Northwood Classical Academy will write about “The Making of a Mathlete”.
On June 20th Homeschooling Hatters will share “Just Let Him Be a Kid”, and Sceleratus Classical Academy will end our tour with a guest post titled “When a Flower Blooms”.

There is still room for more contributions, so please email teachingmybabytoread at gmail dot com if you are interested in joining the tour!

Exploring Space: Day 5 (Stargazing Activity)

Well, we have learned something we did not expect to learn. Spring time is ether a really great time or a really horrible time to stargaze with kids. It's a HORRIBLE time because enough stars don't "come out" until long after bedtime. But if you're doing this in the summer time, staying up late may not be a big problem. Thanks to springtime weather, our skies are relatively clear, which is much less likely in the winter time.

Thankfully there was not too much light pollution in our back yard, so we were able to see stars without going anywhere. It took a little while for our eyes to adjust, and for it to get a little bit darker, but we DID see the Big Dipper. And we were able to use it to find what we think was the North Star, though I was expecting the North Star to be brighter than that?

Principal Daddy downloaded Google Sky Map for his Android smart phone (get the app free here) and that was helpful and fun to use. (It really wasn't dark enough to distinguish any other constellations, and it was almost 11:00 pm!) Builder Boy was very excited that it identified where the planets were in relation to him, and Early Bird had a lot of fun pointing out North, East, South, and West. 

Also, I would like to point out that the Alaskan State Flag has the Big Dipper and the North Star on it.

Good night!

Exploring Space: Day 5

Groups of stars seen together are called constellations.

Today's lesson went a bit differently from the book's plan. I do not have any books specifically on constellations or the history of naming constellations. Evan Moor's Exploring Space had worksheets/printables that required that background information, especially about the Big Dipper. So I thought a bit, Googled a bit, and came up with what we did today.

I started with reviewing Psalm 148:3 and the song we learned on Day 4. Builder Boy really loved learning about the layers of the Earth, so I showed him a picture of the layers of a star that I found in a Children's Encyclopedia. I'm not expecting him to memorize the layers like he did the layers of the Earth, but it was "cool" to him, and it also showed sun spots and flares/a prominence.

Then I re-read the two page section in Seeing Stars about constellations. We talked a bit about who named them and why. We used the Exploring Space pages on six constellations and matched the picture to the star configuration, after first just showing them the stars and having them guess why they looked like their name. Builder Boy was very good at picking out the patterns.

Then we moved on to some pages I found online. First I gave some connect the dots constellations to the boys for them to do. I gave Early Bird some basic shape dot-to-dots that I found at the Flutterbud Club (never heard of it before, I ran across it in the Google image search.) Builder Boy got the Connect the Constellations from SuperColoring.com. Then I gave them each a copy of Make Your Own Constellation found at the blog Early Childhood Science Activities. It has a field of stars and lets kids connect them however they want and encourages them to come up with names and even stories for their constellations. Early Bird connected every single star and named it "Giddy, the Giant Dog." Builder Boy made "The Cup" and "The Chair." The picture link on the site is broken, so I am including the image I saved from Google images, but the quality is poor and unreadable when printed at full page size. We finished off with a worksheet I found at Preschool Printables that has kids try to copy some star configurations from an example. They also have cool Constellation Discovery Map and Certificate that I didn't notice until after we were done for the day, and probably makes a better replacement for the Make Your Own Constellation page that we used, if you have a color printer.

Being in the play room with the kids books reminded me of a story in The Children's Book of Virtues, The Legend of the Dipper. I had to keep telling Builder Boy that this was a pretend story, as he kept getting hung up on the dipper changing materials throughout the story. But at least it was an example of the old stories people made up about constellations.

Once we were done with that we went back to the book and made their Star Box with an old tissue box. I made the piece of paper for the constellations a bit too big, and the holes were kind of wonky, so it wasn't exactly a planetarium show. But the kids didn't seem to notice that it wasn't perfect. Builder Boy wanted to make one of the constellations, and he chose Orion, which I thought would be do hard for him, but he actually did a really good and accurate job! He used a white crayon on black construction paper and I popped the holes for him. My camera wouldn't pick up the lights on the wall, so I took a picture of the card on the star projector.


Tonight we'll do the last activity and go outside and see if we can find the Big Dipper. Thankfully the book provides examples of how it can look at different seasons, since apparently it turns around and over throughout the year (I learned something, too!)

Yesterday while unpacking a random box we found our wall stickers that the boys love so much. Yesterday Builder Boy put up the Outer Space Peel & Stick Wall Decals above his bunk bed. Probably not tonight, but tomorrow we will put up the Celestial Glow in the Dark Peel & Stick Wall Decals that we got for his birthday. (I posted about them with pictures previously here and here.) Now that we've learned about constellations we'll probably be more inventive with putting them up. And as before, we'll use the constellation chart to put some authentic ones up.

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Here are some cool things to do with constellations that I found on Pinterest, but didn't end up doing.

Source: toshowthemjesus.com via Mrs. on Pinterest

Source: deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com via Mrs. on Pinterest

Source: piseco.homeschooljournal.net via Mrs. on Pinterest

Exploring Space: Day 4

I started this day with some of the preschool activities from the Astronaut Preschool Printable Pack found at HomeschoolCreations.com. There are a lot of neat things available for free, and it's wonderful that the information is out there and I don't have to reinvent the wheel. The printable pages are in color, and we only have a black and white printer, so I only printed the things that I thought would work. Early Bird loved the rocket ships to put in size order. He said "blast off" for each one, with a tiny, high pitched voice for the smaller ones and a low, gravely voice for the biggest ones. There was also a picture and shadow match game that I initially thought would be easier not being in color, but because there was a lot of silver or light gray was actually harder. But with some help, he did okay. I did these activities just with Early Bird.

The printable pack also came with the words for the Psalm 148:3 "Praise Him, sun and moon, praise Him all you shining stars." We put that up on the wall and we will work on memorizing it. There is also a song to sing to the tune of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" that the kids love and sang over and over.

Then we started on the next concept of Evan Moor's Exploring Space:

Our sun is a star.

This is something we've been talking about since the beginning, so it wasn't a new concept, but I'm committed to going through the whole book to make sure we don't miss anything new, and to cement information we've talked about. I had fun asking the kids the questions from the book and hearing their answers to:

• If our sun is a star, why can we see it during the day?
• Is our sun the largest star in the galaxy?
• Could people live on the sun?
• Why shouldn't we look at the sun?

Then we talked about why we need the sun, and wrote down three reasons on the provided worksheet. As a thought experiment I asked the boys what they thought would happen to the Earth if there was no sun exerting gravity on it. Builder Boy decided that the Earth and planets would stop moving because there would be nothing to orbit.

Next we read and colored the "Our Sun" mini book, which among other things had kids look at a picture and circle things that need light from the sun (plants, people, animals.) Early Bird's second guess was the house in the picture, so we had a good discussion about living vs. non-living things and how non-living things don't need light from the sun.

Then we went to the bathroom with a flashlight, small paper globe (I couldn't find our inflatable globe) and a plastic tomato to demonstrate eclipses. I also used this opportunity to show that not all the sun's light and heat are taken up by the earth. The tomato wasn't exactly the right scale for our size Earth, but it showed what it needed to.

Then Principal Daddy held the kids in his lap and watched two YouTube clips he found on eclipses,
What is a Lunar Eclipse? and a Solar Eclipse Educational Video. The "What is a Lunar Eclipse?" video was fairly kid friendly, but the "Solar Eclipse Educational Video" had no sound so Principal Daddy read what it said on the screen and narrated/interpreted where necessary. He did a really wonderful job at that.

As before, we finished up with playing TO THE MOON. I was able to add some of the question cards we'd left out before, since we're LEARNING!