School is just around the corner! Schooltime is in the air and my three are dying to get started! Seriously. Doug LOVES school and started moaning he wanted to go back three days after summer school ended. (He goes to public school.) He is such a sociable fellow, that school is pretty important to him! Darcy, on the other hand, was SO GLAD to be finished with school this summer (well...sort of finished(!)...we still have the last eighteen math lessons to go...she DETESTS math as much as her father does!). Anyway, Darcy was more than happy for her mom to drop the ball and not finish up math. Never mind that that is exactly where we will be picking up this year! But, even Darcy is now begging to get started back. Kindergarten through third grades, we tried various mixes of curriculum for home-school...but in fourth grade, we found the curriculum that Darcy absolutely loves...Sonlight Curriculum. Sonlight is expensive--because of all the books you need to buy--but it is so worth it. That curriculum is made up of hard-core excellent literature. I first tried Sonlight because it was really worrying me that Darcy (then seven years old) was devouring junk left and right at the library. I had long since given up trying to pre-read all her books...this child speed reads (and RETAINS). It was nothing for her to go through twenty chapter books in two days. Unfortunately, more and more, what was turning up in her library bag was pre-teen junk books. You know what I mean, Mary-Kate and Ashley this or that type of stuff. Series churned out ninety to nothing...fluff, designed for easy consumption, aimed at adolescents. I tried steering her towards GOOD substantive books, but she turned her little nose up at them. So, I switched to Sonlight Curriculum. The Fed-Ex truck delivered several large boxes to our doorstep full of really great books. Looking down at all those books, her eyes began to glisten greedily even though her mouth was still saying she didn't think she would like THOSE kind of books. It didn't take her long at all to change her tune! Even the books that were chosen that were above the grade level (that the parent was suppose to read aloud) got devoured in nothing flat. She started out letting me read them aloud to her, but then would get frustrated when my voice would tire after four or five chapters straight. I would put the book up for the next day, only to have her sneak it away and finish the whole thing up that evening! Finally she quit letting me even make the pretense of reading aloud--she would sneak the book out and have it read months before it appeared on the schedule to be read!

Once Darcy had spent a semester exposed to really great books, her reading habits changed tremendously. She still reads the bubble gum series kind of stuff once in a while, but, now she really digs in and LOOKS for the great books that are hiding there on the library shelves! Whenever she reads a book that she likes in her Sonlight Curriculum, she will immediately do a search through the library listings to see what ELSE that author has written and she reads through them, too. (Within two weeks of discovering "The Hobbit", she had read all three of the "Lord of the Rings" books.) My biggest problem these days is making her WAIT. Our books for this year arrived Saturday, but I wouldn't let her open the boxes until yesterday. Last night, we sat down and inventoried the new books to make sure they had all been sent and then put them on the bookshelf. By this morning, she had already read all of "Murder for Her Majesty" (even though I had told her last night not to go beyond the second chapter) and half of "The King's Fifth". I am BOUND AND DETERMINED that this year we are going to read the books on the correct time-table instead of her getting so far ahead with all her reading. The reading is the part she loves most, so it makes sense to distribute it through the whole school year. Besides, the books are ordered to correspond with the period and place in history being focused upon...it just seems better to wait and read the books alongside the history lessons instead of way in advance. Anyway, I have resorted (as of today) to making the bookshelf that has her Sonlight stuff on it "off limits". She can't read any of it until I give her permission (which will be when we START homeschool for this year). Needless to say, she is now dying to start homeschool.

Since I won't let her devour her own books, she has been tearing through all of Rayna's books. Rayna (age four) wanted to start kindergarten this year. She wants to go to public school with Doug, but, as that is not an option at four, she decided it would be fine to do homeschool kindergarten. (Then, next year, we will see if she wants to repeat kindergarten and go to public school (we live in a wonderful district) or if she wants to go on to first grade and continue homeschooling.) I was surprised at some of the Sonlight books for kindergarten...they are more advanced than I expected (though I should have known this would be the case!). Darcy has had a glorious time reading through her sister's books for the year. She even read several of the chapter books aloud yesterday to her little sister and her little brother. Rayna sat all the way through "Dolphin Adventure" and most of "Dolphin Treasure", but then, the lure of "Wild, Wild West" series DVD playing upstairs pulled her away. Not Doug! NOTHING could pull HIM away! I was amazed. After all, HE is my little DVD monster. That child spends every waking moment hounding me to let him watch this DVD or that DVD. He would spend all his time zombied in front of the TV if I would allow it. He is a VISUAL child...not much of an auditory child...and he loves 'westerns' (if you can call Wild, Wild West a western!)...so, I was amazed that he remained riveted to Darcy's side, hanging on her every word as she read aloud through books that don't have very many pictures (and no color). (Mind you, his ATTENTION span is normally a nano-second long for anything other than a DVD.) ....even Doug is coming under the spell of Sonlight!

Today we went to the elementary school to enroll Doug in second grade. Darcy will be doing seventh grade this year and Rayna will do kindergarten. All three of them are eager to get started. Poor Doug...he thought he was going to get to GO to school today. He didn't understand that we were just going up to the school to enroll him. When we got there, he wanted to leave me and go to his class! I told him, "Honey, none of the teachers are here yet, because school hasn't started yet! You have to wait a few more weeks." Of course, two seconds later, who should walk up to him except one of his former teachers! So, "yes, Mommy was wrong, SOME of the teachers ARE here today, but you still can't GO to school today!"


This year, I am going to have Darcy continue working with Rosetta Stone to learn conversational Mandarin Chinese, but, I am adding written Chinese to the mix. Darcy has had plenty of exposure to Chinese characters...having attended (on the weekends) for three years at the Chinese School of Greater KC. But, since third grade (when she stopped attending) we haven't made any systematic effort at learning to read and write in Chinese. That changes this year! I found a nice book that teaches the most used 4,500 characters. There are about 2,000 characters that need to be mastered in order to be relatively literate in the language. We (she and I together) are going to memorize ten a week from now on. By the time Darcy graduates from high school, we will both be literate in the language. Darcy, at first, was really put out with me for deciding this would be part of our curriculum for the next six years. She would much rather stick with the 'easier' Spanish that she has also been studying using Rosetta Stone. But, tonight, I was pointing out to her some uses for being fluent/literate in Chinese that made sense to her... (forget the line about how it will really give her an edge in the job market...that just bores her) I suggested (quite seriously) that if we were fluent/literate in Chinese that maybe she and I could hire out to accompany a single parent on her adoption journey to China. We could be a HUGE asset...able to translate when needed (if we were in a Cantonese speaking region, at least we could communicate by writing--as Chinese is the same WRITTEN out no matter which of the hundreds of different Chinese dialects you are communicating in). Not only that, but we are experienced travelers to China and have done the adoption thing ourselves. (Darcy came with us when she was seven to adopt Rayna...she was a model traveler even at that young age and an ENORMOUS help to us.) We KNOW how STRESSFUL that experience is to new parents (even though it is JOYFUL)...we could really be a help...an extra set of hands...yet, sensitive to the need for the baby to bond with the parent, not a traveling companion. Add to that, that Darcy and I both LOVE to take photographs (and are pretty darn good at it). In all our adoption trip photos, it is either me with the baby or Grant with the baby...never Grant and I both with the baby. If Darcy and I were there, there would be LOTS of photos of both parents together as they receive their new child. ALSO, Darcy and I have experienced what it is like to acclimate an OLDER child into the family that doesn't speak any English. THAT is a WHOLE different picture than starting out with a baby. I just know we could be a blessing to an adopting parent/parents. And we would work really cheap...say $100, our airline tickets and hotel accomodations for that week and a half or two weeks. (I would do it just for expenses...but, Darcy thinks she needs to make something!) That is at least five or six years away...if ever(!)...but, at least it helps Darcy see a REASON for learning to read and write in Chinese! Who knows???!!!!... (Anyway, Grant and I ARE going to take the three kids to China and Taiwan one of these days to retrace each of their roots...it will be nice if Darcy and I are already comfortable in the language before then! So, studying now won't be wasted...even if Darcy and I never hire out as adoption traveling companions!)  ¶ 8/08/2006 09:52:00 PM