Hiking at Hodges

We get out for a family hike every now and then, and one of our favorite places to go is Lake Hodges. I only managed to take one crappy photo of the lake, so you are actually just going to see photos of us on the trails and the suspension bridge, but hey. That's how it goes sometimes.

We keep Sadie pinned in the stroller for the first half of the hike. You'll see that she runs the entire return trip.

And Benjamin gets a chance to mountain bike. Some day he'll be riding these trails with The Papa.

This girl. Always so excited about life. She's large and in charge everywhere she goes. We have a hunch she'll be class president one day.

Moving. Always moving. Except for brief moments when Buckley overpowers her.

Check the next one out: both Sadie's feet are off the ground. That's the case in most of the photos I manage to take of her.

Benjamin takes on a downhill.

Sadie's close behind him.

A quick break near the end of the trail:

 
And a view of the Hidden Valley:

Learning to read

Benjamin is learning to read. This brings up a lot of feelings and responses in me. I guess I'll start with a story:

In the photos posted here, I have created a "print rich" environment - tagged various items around the house with the corresponding word. I know he's not going to read "sculpture" in one of his kindergarten books, but it is fun to engage with him in spelling complex new words, sounding out simple ones, and discovering the ridiculous number of inconsistencies in the English language.

On a whim one day while Benjamin was at school, I put up all the words. When he came home, he immediately noticed and asked, "Mama, what is that word for?"

"That says 'garage.' Why do you think that is on this door?"

"Because that's the door to the garage!" He then ran up the stairs and spied "wall."

"Mama, what's that one?"

"Wall."

After the second example he thoroughly understood that some new adventure was afoot. His head spun around until he discovered "painting" and "chair."

"Are there more, Mama?"

"Yep!  They're all over the house. Go find them."

He took off on a run. A squeal of delight or a belly laugh accompanied each discovery. I was dealing with laundry when I heard him sounding out "art" on his own.

"A-a-a-a-a-a-a rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr t-t-t-t-t. Aaaarrr-ttttt. Aaarrt. Art. ART!  MAMA! I JUST READ ART!!!"

I had a moment, I must admit. There's just something so exciting about witnessing the joy of learning. It's been nearly two weeks, and the words are still up. I plan to leave them up until we grow tired of them, or they are learned.

Now here's the WHY behind my little adventure. One of the requirements at Benjamin's school is that they learn 12 sight words in three weeks. Sight words are the most frequently used words in the English language - words that make up some 90% of written language - this, that, we, I, see, and, the, on, of, etc.  They are so frequent that we have figured out that if kids can straight up memorize them, they will read more fluently and not be tripped up so often.

And it's true. I can't tell you how often Benjamin would keep trying to sound out "the" no matter how often it showed up on a page. Knowing these words makes a world of difference.

However...

It is not developmentally appropriate to expect that all kids will be reading well by the end of kindergarten. According to physical and mental markers, some kids will learn to read in first or second grade - that would not necessarily indicate that they are "slow." Of course, in our educational system they will be behind, and that's sad.

For us, the pace of sight words is a bit of a challenge. While he has learned 20 of the 24 so far, a couple of the ones he still misses are in the first set so as far as the teacher is concerned, he's behind. And we just got another set of 12 this week.  I feel the pressure - I hope he doesn't. I am certainly not pressuring him.

This is the reason for the words in our house. He needed to spend some time getting excited over things that have meaning for him - seeing an object that he uses every day and learning its corresponding word. And it worked. He may not know all his sight words yet, but he is excited about words.

In other, related, news: This is the boy who listens to me read C.S. Lewis. Yes - I have been excitedly awaiting the day when I could begin sharing works of literature with him, and he's finally old enough. We recently read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and are now one chapter into The Horse and his Boy.

The thing is - he's a big ideas kid. And I'm a big ideas mama. The nuts and bolts are valuable insofar as they are used for a purpose - to communicate, to create, to unlock a mystery, to understand the make-up of something. I think that if his mind is embracing ideas and imagining possibilities, he will eventually see the reason for learning the tools and will be ready to learn them. In fact, he is learning them - just not at the pace being set for him at his school.

Parent-teacher conferences are next week, so it will be interesting to hear the teacher's perspective. In the meantime, we spin ourselves around in wonder at the ideas that can be discovered through words.

Flashback to 4th of July

Trying to catch up here, folks. For the 4th of July, we hung out at my folks' house where the kids got to meet their (then) new baby cousin, Caleb.

Gigi (short for great-grandma) made an appearance, as did Auntie Rosie.

Grandpa rocked the grill - a favorite pastime we all appreciate.

Almost as much as we appreciate Grandpa's wine cellar as demonstrated by Uncle Mike.

Benjamin declared at the time of this photo that we needed a baby.

And then we went to watch fireworks with all our little buddies from church. We've accumulated quite a playgroup, and these kiddos are becoming fast friends.

Papa Time

Benj sure loves his Papa. He really enjoys one of the same things that first attracted me to him - his fondness for sitting together, looking off into the distance, and telling stories from his past. So Papa and son now have a little ritual: after a couple hours of working on cars or in the garage or yard, they grab a beverage and head up to the balcony to watch the sun set and to swap stories.

At the Maple Street Fountain

One of our favorite hey-it's-hot-and-we're-tired-of-being-at-home things to do is visit the Maple Street Plaza in downtown Escondido. If we even drive past the place, the kids want to hop out of the car to put their feet in the fountain. So over the summer this was one of our hot spots.

The plaza recently came about as an attractive corridor to encourage foot traffic between City Hall and the downtown strip, Grand Avenue. It also serves as a place for bands or food stands during festivals. It cost a pretty penny and has been the subject of controversy, but I love it. One of my favorite things about well-designed urban spaces is the proliferation of artsy, interactive, pretty places for the community to gather. The idea has not caught on so much around here, but we show up!

Her Castle

When she first settled into this patch of ice plant on the hillside, Sadie called it "The Quietest Place in the World."

She has since become fascinated with castles. Yesterday she declared this place her castle, her house, and she invited me to come up and join her there.

She does a lot of sitting and thinking. A bit of looking out over the valley. Sometimes she picks flowers or sings. She often chatters.

Boots are required for climbing up and down the hill.

But sometimes when she walks across the bottom, shoes are less necessary.

She's my little wood nymph or forest fairy or something.

Nature girl.

Not your average day

One of the first art projects Benjamin brought home from school was a comparison of day and night. Here is how he described his pictures:

DAY
That is the sun and the tree is an apple tree. There's a fort in the tree next to the house.

NIGHT
The scribbles up top represent fireworks. The white scribbles on the right are zombies. There are also black widows and lots of zombies in the house - you can see the explosions from them.

I have few words for this night time scene, except that he has never seen a zombie show at our house. Zombies are the Pre-K/K set's fascination, from what I can tell. Must be the talk of the playground.

In other news, he has art class every Friday and they always do really interesting stuff. I am so grateful that he is in a school that values art and music. They only get those classes once a week, but still...I think the quality of the education is quite high.