Well we made the right decision

I have been reading about the social and emotional health of "gifted" kids and one of the things that I took note of was that elementary school kids were bothered by the fact that no one ever explained the term to them. They knew they were different and were in different classes, but never really understood why.

One day I asked Wolf if he knew why he was in Independent Study in first grade and not in a regular Kindergarten classroom. He replied that he did not. I asked him if he wanted to know and he said yes.

I explained that if he was in a classroom with children his age he would be learning the alphabet, how to count to twenty, how to sound out and read basic words like cat, and that he wouldn't be learning Spanish or Logic or root words. I told he we had put a lot of thought into which option to choose and had decided that putting him in an environment where he could work at his level and be challenged would be the best idea. I asked him if he would rather be in a regular classroom and his response was, "NO! It would be way too boring."

I take that as proof we made the right choice...

What do you do when...

... Your two year and ten month old son gets bored waiting for you to load up the website he wants and simply opens the bookmarks menu, scrolls up and down looking for the site he wants, finds it and opens it?

It really is a little unsettling...

Bear was recently put through a battery of developmental tests by a professional in our home. We'll be getting the results back in a while.

The thing that really floored me was that the tester had to come back for another visit to finish the cognitive testing section because, to quote, "he surpassed all of the tests she had with her." I was there for the whole testing process and there wasn't one test she gave that he couldn't have done if he had wanted to cooperate (instead of grinning and intentionally giving the wrong answer...). She told me that the tests she was giving him near the end were normally used with 4 and 5 year olds. He is two years and ten months... I mean we knew he was smart, but this? Really?

Wolf got his Little Dragons Yellow Belt!

He has been wanting this since he first started martial arts in October. The testing was so much fun to watch. I don't think any of the Little Dragons are older than maybe seven? Watching all of them following instructions and doing their form was so cute. Wolf even got to break a board and got it on the second try, a huge improvement from his first attempt at breaking a board where the instructors had him do everything they could think of for him to manage to break it. The lessons are helping Wolf so much with his concentration and respect. Compared to the other white belts testing he was definitely the most focused and that was really nice to see.

For those who are wondering the Little Dragons program is martial arts for little kids. All belt levels work on the same form and the same skills, it's all just an issue of learning focus and the basic moves. They are expected to come to class twice a week and not expected to practice at home or to memorize the form or self-defense combos. They level in the same way that the older kids do, but their belts have a white stripe in the middle. What happens when they are ready to move up to the big kids classes is that whatever belt they are at their next test gets them a white belt with a yellow stripe (instead of starting with a white belt) then they level up with full colored belts from then on starting with yellow. Basically they are a yellow belt twice, once in the Dragons and once when they get to the older kids classes.

Winner NaNoWriMo 2009

I made the deadline with a little over 50,000 words. Not only that, but I actually finished the story. I'm quite pleased with myself. I would have felt pretty silly if Wolf had finished his and I didn't finish mine!

The simple things that make me happy

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went with family to some land that they own. It is basically on the left hand side of no where, which is nothing but a very positive comment actually. The drive there was gorgeous, through narrow canyons, past abandoned mine sites and right next to cows. Literally right next to, no fences, just cows hanging out at the side of the narrow winding road.

We stopped at the last restroom before we got there. It was a little general store/restaurant in an old school house. It was getting very cold out and the place was not very well heated.... well at least the bathroom wasn't.

We got back into the cars and drove the last stretch to our destination. Our little prius was the tail end of a train of four SUV's going at break neck speed on tiny very curvy roads. Did I mention someone made the mistake of giving me access to a walkie talkie? As we were driving it started to rain and then then rain started to slush and then it started to snow!!! For those of you who don't know I LOVE the snow, rarely get to see it and Bear had never seen it. The first thing I do is start hoping and wishing that enough falls for it to stick so that I can make snowballs.

(As a side note, I am the person who said it would never rain in July of course causing it to and who went camping in the winter and begged the universe for snow after which it snowed enough to cave the tent in on Dragon twice before he retreated to the van.)

Needless to say it REALLY started snowing. It was beautiful. Oak trees, fallen trees, golden grass, rolling hills, all of it slowly getting coated by silent whiteness. The flakes were like chunks of cotton candy. You could actually look at them and see all the intricate ice crystals, but they looked so soft.

Wolf was out and hesitantly playing in it and eventually Bear woke up and was convinced to come out and join all of us. It did snow enough to make snowballs, admittedly sort of sad ones, but snowballs none the less as long as you avoided the cow pies. The boys got into that for a little while.

One of the cousins picked some mistletoe and another came back with the lower jaw of a cow which was a big hit. In fact it prompted Bear to tell one of the relatives that hadn't gone all about finding a dead seal and a dead bird on one of our field trips when asked what he saw on this trip!

NaNoWriMo 2009

Brendan has officially won NaNoWriMo 2009. He met his 1000 word goal and then some. He's even illustrated his book. I am at around 46,000 words and will definitely hit 50,000 before the end of November.

I tried to post his winner image, but I'm having technical difficulties.

Things that make you go Hmmmm....

Here is an exerpt from a site I just found:

How often do most kids tantrum? And how long do tantrums generally last? The parents in this study reported that, on average, tantrums lasted for:

* two minutes in one-year-olds
* four minutes in two- to three-year-olds
* five minutes in four-year-olds

and occurred:

* eight times a week for one-year-olds
* nine times a week for two-year-olds
* six times a week for three-year-olds
* five times a week for four-year-olds.

from http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/temper_tantrums.html

Now considering that Bear has at least 4 of these short tantrums in addition to one to two mega-tantrums per DAY, something seems a bit out of whack. He's always been like this and we've been hoping he would grow out of it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I even did a tantrum log of just the mega-tantrums for a week and once I shared that with his pediatrician she referred him on to a group that tests for developmental problems.

We didn't do this earlier because both his pediatrician and I are very non-interventionist in our method of dealing with health care. She told me that his tantrums were severe, but still on the normal scale. It took the tantrum log for us to realize that he might have blown the top off the scale.

I don't want to stick a label on the forehead of a not even three year old kid, but if it will make life any easier for him or us at this point we really have to.

I'm SO excited!

I just got back from my conference and there was a package waiting for me. Inside of it was the book, "More Weddings, Funerals and Rites of Passage" from the Universla Life Church. What is so exciting is that three of my ceremonies are published in it!

Not only do I have published poetry from when I was younger and one article on shamanism in an international magazine, now I am officially published in a book!

Why I'm so frazzled most of the time

Bear is two years and eight months old now. He knows how to use the computer by himself and has been teaching himself sign language from a neat site called starfall.com. He also just counted up to 13 this morning and helped me read a book the other day not to mention playing Battleship and Bingo (which I think I've mentioned previously).

Wolf is five years and two months. He just finished the 2-3 grade logic book, will be finishing the first grade phonics book in about a month, already finished the first grade science workbook and is over half way through the second grade math book. He also loves chess and Sudoku. Oh and he is almost half-way through his 1000 words for nanowrimo.

Cub Scout Den Leader

I have decided to become Wolf's Den Leader. Since he's in 1st grade he was able to join Cub Scouts this year in the lowest grade group, Tiger. We now have four Tiger's and two little brothers in our den. I question my sanity with this choice. It's not as though I didn't already have ten million other things needing my time and energy. It's not a commitment of one year, but a commitment to be leader until he graduates up to Boy Scouts at the end of 5th grade.

On top of all that it really is amazing how the attention span of young boys drops exponentially depending on the number of them in a room. Only a couple of things in the den have been broken so far...

Halloween

Halloween is one of our major holidays. Basically we are in costume and out of the house for most of the day. This year Bear went as a T-Rex Kitty-cat (he insisted). Wolf was Annikin Skywalker. I was a school girl and Dragon went as the Black Knight from Monty Python. It is a costume I made for him several years ago and it always gets rave reviews. As usual all of the costumes were home made or at least home gathered.

We first went to visit a good friend of ours at around 2:30, then off to lunch at Costco with some of our friends. After that we all caravaned down to the Wharf and went trick-or-treating there with some more friends. We ended up with group consisting of a T-Rex Kitty-cat, Annikin, a school girl, a fairy, the Phantom of the Opera, a Renaissance lady, Freakazoid, Awesome Girl and a witch.

It was sort of a shame that they didn't have the costume contest and free pictures this year, but it was still fun.

Next we headed back to Dragon's store, went to the Harvest Festival put on by a local church in the parking lot. The boys got to go down a huge slide, bounce in a bounce house, and play a bunch of carnival games for candy prizes, all for free! They had a great time. We took a quick break to eat something and then Dragon closed the store and we went trick-or-treating in a popular local neighborhood. Much candy was had by all, but Bear wasn't up to the haunted house one family always sets up.

Finally we loaded everyone up into the car and headed down to Pacific Avenue for the HUGE block party that goes on every year for Halloween. The energy is incredible, the costumes are great and it's just plain fun. Wolf was getting a bit tired of it all by that time, but both boys were troopers and we ended up getting home at around 11 pm.

It's Official

I officially have my hands full.

Today I played Battleship and Bingo with Bear. He read the letters and numbers on the bingo chips (B-1-0, not B-10, but still...). He picked the letters and numbers for Battleship. Then he was looking at a pile of crayons, some of which were a particular brand of chunky style ones called "So Big," pointed and said "So Big!"

Pretty much everyone's response has involved blinking and "Oh boy."

Oh no, I have two of them!

During Wolf's martial arts class, Bear likes to play with an alphabet train puzzle they have there. Yesterday he put the whole thing together, almost totally by himself, and named all of the letters correctly except 2! He is two years and seven months right now. I might have to accept that Bear picks things up as quickly as Wolf does if he keeps this up.

A Day in the Life

This morning Wolf, Bear and I drove about an hour up the coast to meet up with with our Independent Study group for a field trip day. The usual crew was there, two 11 year old boys, their families, the teacher and us. There are more kids in the program but we're the core group that always shows up for the hikes and geo-caching. I don't mind though because the boys get along great and are a really good match even considering the age difference.

Today's trip was a visit to a couple of different beaches, finding four geo-caches and ending up at a pumpkin patch. The first beach had some pretty steep rocks so I put Bear's leash on. It might look silly, but he has a tendency to run off and intentionally ignore people trying to stop him. We walked down, looked at some of the rocks, learn a bit about them and then took a walk down the beach. Now, I seem to have developed an uncanny ability to spot dead animals and today was no exception. Part way down the beach I found a very dead seal. I'm certain that has an extreme EWWWW factor to many people, but as usual my first reaction was to yell to the kids, “Hey! Check out what I found! It's a dead seal!” All of the boys came trampling over ready for an inspection. It was missing all of one eye and most of another and some of its entrails were spilling out, but dried and there was no smell. We decided a bird probably took the missing eye and wandered off to the next adventure.

The boys stampeded off, except Bear who was literally attached to me at the hip. They ended up climbing on on some sandstone near the water and Bear wanted to join them so we walked over. We were deciding if we should let him join them when I noticed that the tide had decided to come in vigorously right then. I yoinked Bear off the ground and was promptly standing in shin deep ocean water. Hooray for wet sneakers... Bear was dry though and that was a good thing since he would have A. hated being wet, B. hated being cold, and C. hated being changed to fix the prior two problems. Luckily Wolf's teacher had some shoes she could lend me and they almost fit.

Oh and on the way back to the car we found a seagull head, mostly skull really. Told you I was good at spotting these things! Last week it had been a tiny dead mouse.

We found all the geo-caches we were looking for and we eventually ended up at the pumpkin patch. It had a corn maze. I have never been in one so I was all for trying it. It ended up being me, Bear, Wolf, the teacher, one of the boys from earlier and another one that had met up with us there. We got wonderfully and hopelessly lost very quickly and they boys spent most of their time running ahead and then waiting for the adults to catch up. Wolf had been told to stay with the boy from earlier and that boyhad been told to keep an eye on him. Bear spent most of his time with the teacher and I since the ground was very uneven and he kept falling over.

Finally we turned a corner and found the boys, well the two older ones at least. I asked them where Wolf was and they looked around, at each other, and pretty much shrugged. The teacher and the boys started shouting for him and we soon heard him yelling and sent the boys to retrieve him. He was a bit shaken, but not much worse for wear. His teacher was impressed at how un-paniced I seemed. The thing is that, honestly, it was a corn maze. It's not like he could have gotten far in the amount of time since we had seen him last and even if he found his way out we had parents waiting outside. Besides Wolf and I have been over what to do if (when) he got misplaced in situations like that.

After that we still had lunch, schoolwork, martial arts, more schoolwork and a good amount of brotherly bickering and wrestling before dinner.

So I'm sitting here typing this sometime after midnight with a sprained wrist that I got from grabbing Bear away from the water just so that I don't forget anything. Thanks to unventilated classrooms in painting classes in college my memory is unreliable at best and today I really do not want to forget.

National Novel Writing Month

Wolf and I are signed up to participate in National Novel Writing Month ( www.nanowrimo.org ). Basically adult participants try to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Wolf, since he is in the Young Writer's Program and only in 1st grade, will be writing a 1000 word novel. I think that will be an amazingly fun school project.

We already have our ideas ready to go. I am planning a sci-fi spaceship/station based Utopian/Dystopian novel and Brendan will be working on a fantasy novel based on a video game he loves to watch called Zelda.

We'll keep everyone updated on our progress and sanity.

This Poem Is on My Fridge

I Took His Hand and Followed
Mrs. Roy L. Peifer


My dishes went unwashed today,
I didn't make the bed,
I took his hand and followed
Where his eager footsteps led.

Oh yes, we went adventuring,
My little son and I...
Exploring all the great outdoors
Beneath the summer sky

We waded in a crystal stream,
We wandered through a wood...
My kitchen wasn't swept today
But life was gay and good.

We found a cool, sun-dappled glade
And now my small son knows
How Mother Bunny hides her nest,
Where jack-in-the-pulpit grows.

We watched a robin feed her young,
We climbed a sunlit hill...
Saw cloud-sheep scamper through the sky,
We plucked a daffodil.

That my house was neglected,
That I didn't brush the stairs,
In twenty years, no one on earth
Will know, or even care.

But that I've helped my little boy
To noble manhood grow,
In twenty years, the whole wide world
May look and see and know.

A Year of Advocacy Hell

I figured I would add this for those of you who haven't heard the trials and tribulations we went through to get Wolf into the school he is in now.

In July 2008 I read an article about gifted kids and said "This sounds like Wolf." I went online and did some research (ok, a WHOLE lot of research).  It turns out that most kids aren't doing math when they are three, I honestly had no idea that was out of the ordinary.  In my research I found out about early Kindergarten entrance and contacted my district to find out if it was an option in our area. Mind you, at that point I wasn't gung ho about placing him in K early, I JUST wanted to know if it was possible. Mid August 2008 I finally found one person in the school district who actually knew the answer and wasn't rude which was a nice change. I was then put in contact with the charter system and told that Wolf could start with one of their schools (homeschool based system) that fall. Shortly afterwards I was told he couldn't because the school was full (which the principal later told me was a lie). I was told by the district to homeschool Kindergarten in 08-09 so we did and I just let him go at his own pace.

I quickly realized that grade skip, in other words starting 1st grade when he was five, would do him a lot of good.  It would be a closer academic fit, he was ready for it socially and then he wouldn't have to skip later when there was more social stigma and stress involved.  I talked with the principal of the charter schools again to see about getting him placed in 1st in fall 2009. There was much hassle and much disbelief in his abilities.  The principal finally suggested that I give him grade assessment tests at home. I think they wanted to prove to me that I was seeing things that weren't there, was pushing him, ruining his childhood, etc... I asked what to do if he aced them, they said come back and get the next level. By the time I asked for grade 3 math they were getting really tired of us.

I talked with one charter and both Wolf and I were treated rudely. Wolf was talked down to and we were pretty much disregarded.  One teacher even said, "Oh don't worry some of the parents bring their preschoolers so he'll have kids to play with."  We finally had an appointment with the teacher of the charter he would probably end up in and I spent a half an hour being lectured about how I was not allowing him to be a child. I didn't get to ask most of my questions about the program. That was the last straw.

I called the Independent Study program in the public school system of the neighboring district. I had talked to them before when we had thought about moving there. I told the head teacher all about Wolf and what he could do. She loved the idea of having him as a student. Then I told her the thing that turned everyone else off, he would be 5 in August 2009. She had no idea what the problem with that was. He was my kid and I knew him better than she did. She was willing to take everything I said sight unseen. She also specifically requested that he be her student and was willing to fight to get a transfer to go through if that was what it would take.

We applied for a interdistrict transfer and they were going to make us go through a bunch of red tape since we hadn't even enrolled in our home district yet.  However the person in charge was the first person I had talked to originally and I told her exactly what had happened and she pushed it through on her end. We had to wait till the day school started here to get the official confirmation that it went through though, but it did and now Wolf is blasting through his 1st grade work and his 2nd grade math.  He's even getting to study Logic and Spanish o keep him challenged.  He is loving it and the fit is perfect.  It took a year of being taught very roughly that school districts and most school staff are less interested in a child's education than keeping the status quo and fitting all the pegs in their round holes whether or not the pegs themselves are round or square, but we found the perfect fit in the end.

An Introduction

So many interesting things happen in our lives that we would like to share with our close friends and family that I have decided to start a family blog to do just that.  Since this is online I will avoid any obviously recognizable personal information, but you should figure out who is who pretty easily.

I am Wyldkat, mom, independent studies teacher, artist, daycare provider, author, minister, general contractor, craftsperson, interior designer, cub scout den leader and general all around jack of all trades. 

Dragon owns his own business, a game store, in a nearby town.  He is very dedicated to it and even with all of the economic problems it has stayed afloat even if it has been close.  He is also a great dad who takes mornings and evenings with the boys to allow me to retain some of my sanity.

Wolf recently turned 5 and started 1st grade.  That one tends to throw people a bit, but a grade skip was the best accommodation we could come up with for him since he was assessed at the beginning of 3rd in math, mid to late 2nd for reading and mid first for most everything else.  That was when he was 4.  He is currently in an Independent Study Program in a neighboring school district.  To find the a place where he would be accepted for who he is took a year of hard work and an interdistrict transfer, but he is happy and thriving now.

Our baby Bear is 2 1/2 and the most intense child I have ever worked with.  For a very long time he had horrible tantrums that would last for an hour or more.  They got better after we tried chiropractic with him, but he is still very much a child of extremes.  He is either the happiest, cutest child on earth or the most miserable.  He is also very sensitive to changes.  In addition to that he has almost his brother's vocabulary and can already count and understand number values up to at least 5.    It makes like interesting to say the least.

We also share our lives with an old diabetic cat,  three little dogs (if you combine them they almost make a whole dog!), a rat, lots of fish and a turtle.  There are also the deer, raccoons, and gophers, but we try to keep them out of the house.

Well, that is us in a nutshell.