Kamy – February

Kamy’s earned a few new privileges lately and has really been enjoying the extra freedom.  Both kids are allowed to come out about thirty minutes before I get up in the morning.  Kamy can read the time on her clock, and they’ve been really good about waiting for the correct time before coming out.  Daddy is also letting Kamy play a few games on his old 3DS game pad (in 2D).  She’s still getting the hang of it, and she likes to play with Daddy if we are traveling and have some down time.  Screen time in general is still highly limited, but she likes playing.

Someone is currently on a fierce independence streak.  Kamy has really been pushing to make more decisions and is speaking against choices that are given.  I’m afraid we’ve lost the false dichotomy that our parenting has relied on thus far!  “I do not like your attitude” and “You have three choices” have both been returned to me this month, from a certain spunky almost-five year old.  Kamy hasn’t really figured out how to successfully issue an ultimatum though — something about not being in charge.  =)  She can be quite stubborn at times, including refusing to follow directions.  We’ve struggled a bit with disciplining her because we don’t really have that much that we can “take away” as consequences — fun thing, limited Wii time, or playing outside.

Kamy, age 4, on helping out.  <Caden is crying after…well, being a boy and hurting himself. He’s getting medical attention from momma in the bathroom.>

“Kamy, you don’t need to be a part of this. Go back to your room.”

Intellectually, Kamy’s hit a few new milestones.  She can now complete 200 piece puzzles by herself, as long as she has done it a time or two before.  I’m so impressed with her patience and interest being high enough to put something with that many pieces together.  She and Caden play Monopoly Junior together constantly and Kamy is a pro at giving and following directions, distributing money, and keeping Caden on track.

Kamy’s also really focused on subtraction.  We work on verbal word problems daily and she goes out of her way to talk through the answer.  Math seems to come fairly easily to her, so I am very cognizant about taking little opportunities here and there to weave questions into our daily schedule.  We’ll talk about how many muffins are left after we each eat our share, how much money someone needs back to make change, and how much time before something is going to happen.  She knows there are seven days in a week, 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes in an hour.  She figured out that half an hour is 30 minutes (and thus that 30 is half of 60).

Lastly, we have worked on a lot of phonics concepts this month.  She’s been pretty good at identifying the first sound in a word, but we are working on the end sound now.  Sometimes that can be a bit tricky, but she’s getting the hang of it.  By giving her general directions, we’ve been encouraging her to use phonics to make educated guesses.  For example, Daddy was telling her how to make certain choices on the Wii menu.  Instead of saying “choose the 2nd option,” he’d say, “choose ‘grand prix'” and she would infer which option she needed to make.  She’s done great with it!  That’s honestly one of my favorite things about choosing a homeschooling mindset — taking every day opportunities to learn, just not specifically in a work book or classroom environment.  Kamy doesn’t know that it’s unusual to be able to subtract 9-6 without manipulatives or on paper, she’s just learned how to do it.  I’m so proud of my Kamy-girl!