Getting into a routine

Livi on the beam 

We have settled into a bit of a routine over the past month. Our afternoon activities are set, and we have something going on every afternoon except Friday. It's busy, but seems to be working for them. Both Oscar (2x/wk with the team) and Livi (1x/wk) are enjoying their gymnastics, and on Oscar's second day of class, Livi and I have a chance to spend some time just the two of us. She's doing amazingly well with the idea of Oscar being home schooled, and we just have to make sure we have "girl time." It can be as simple as painting our nails or spending some time reading a book just to her, but girl time has become an essential part of our weekends. She does say she wants me to homeschool her sometime, but keeps it vague so she seems to understand that for this year this is the way it is. Our social butterfly loves her school and friends (and teachers) so is quite happy heading off to school. :)

Livi had a day off for a teacher professional day mid-September, and we discovered the one pool still open in New Orleans. As you can see, it was in high demand and we were lucky to find a space in the water. :)

dangling in the playground outside the pool

Oscar and I have been having a lot of fun with our homeschool adventures. Once day a week, he has a 3 hour class that is a combo of cooking class, PE, and spanish with a local homeschool group. It's a great mix of kids and he seems to really enjoy it. He also started taking swimming lessons where he's learning the swimming strokes. He loves being in the water and only wishes the class was longer! 30 min/class is short, but is apparently the norm around here. It's a bit of a racket, but he loves it.

post swim class smile

I've started a separate blog tracking our homeschooling adventures, but here's a taste of what we're up to. Apparently if his face is obscured, it's OK for me to take a picture…

popsicle stick bow and arrows

kitty mosaic

discovering Roman arches

As part of our Ancient Rome unit, we had to spend some time making volcanos in honor of Mt. Vesuvius. After one, I decided to try some ice volcanoes I saw online and get Livi involved in the fun. The idea was cool (ha ha), but they ended up erupting not so fantastically. The kids had fun playing with the ice though, and while Oscar lost interest after the ice melted, Livi continued to play with the colored water from the melting volcanos for quite a while. She told me she was making medicine to cure ebola! You go girl!!

While we have a lot of fun, there are some trials as well. Mainly, Oscar is still struggling with his reading. He's doing much better than he was a month ago, but he still has trouble decoding unfamiliar words. He gets frustrated easily, even if I encourage him that this is part of the process and everyone has to learn how to figure out new words. He still defaults to guessing words he doesn't know, then becoming exasperated when he can't guess it. I can't tell if his issue is that he is simply a year behind (there is no formal English instruction in the Waldorf curriculum in 2nd grade), I'm not teaching him properly, or he has dyslexia (he does have some patterns for the potential). To cover all of our bases, we had him evaluated this past week and we're waiting for the results. The initial feedback from the evaluator was that he didn't have strong signs of dyslexia, but we're anxiously awaiting the results (hopefully this week) to see if there's anything there that may be effecting his progress. In the meantime, I'm trying to give him things to read to build his confidence, and working on first grade skills, while keeping my eyes on the third grade skills.… It's quite a challenge and I may be ready to bring in an expert! To be continued….