Jolene is reading now! This past week she finished three of the Bob books. Today she was excited about it and said "now I can read myself books!"
It will be a while before that happens but it is exciting to see her on the way to reading. I have to say the Bob books are not the most exciting but the progression in difficulty is good for Jolene. i am also doing the Phonics Museum (by Veritas Press) with her. We started at the beginning but she already knows all the material we are doing. I am trying to do two or three lessons with her a day so that we can get to the sections that she doesn't know yet.
I like this curriculum. I like how they incorporate art and some kind of craft into every lesson. For instance the day we went over the "b" sound we made butter.
I actually cheated a bit because all of our arms were getting tired of shaking. So I poured the cream into the mixer for a few seconds to speed up the process :-) The girls thought this was pretty cool.
We are talking about the "p" sound right now. Tomorrow we will paint a picture of an Iris using the pointillism technique (not my idea, the books).
So like I said I like this and will try to use it with the other two. Jolene I have to say was just ready and didn't need much prompting. I am sure it will be a whole different ball game with Adele.
Pneumonia is what my parents came home with after visiting us :-/ I think we all had the flu at some point as well. I think I might have had pneumonia too. At one of my soccer games I couldn't really breathe and was coughing horribly.
Mom said she doesn't want to come back in the winter...I guess I don't blame her. Have to say though the summer can be unpleasant. Especially when those 40+ days come around.
So Brandon and I have been having some major struggles with Adele recently concerning food. She will come to the table take a look at the food and in that second decide if she likes it or not. If she likes it then she happily chows down. If she doesn't like it then world war three ensues. We have decided that she must have at least five bites. I am not a restaurant cook and am not going to make special meals for every person in the house. If she doesn't have five bites then she is in trouble. If she eats it all she might get dessert (if we area having any).
Last week she went to bed hungry three times(in a row), plus a breakfast, and a lunch because the food was not to her liking. We made her have the five bites but that alone took 30 minutes due to several trips to the bedroom. She will often spit the food out as well if she doesn't like it (this tests my self-control).
What can I say except she is very stubborn. At times seems like we are not making any headway, in fact it seems like we are going backwards.
Today was a new day. She ate her porridge...and only complained once. This is a major accomplishment for her. So I made pizza for dinner, Adele's favourite.
I am praying that God will break down this stubbornness and give her self-control over it. At times this character quality can be good (it helped me get through bio-chemistry) but only if you know how to control it.
