Life with Sophie

I’m having one of those days were everything is just not quite right.  The noise level in the house is one decibel too high, the light in the room is one watt too much.  Everything is just one tiny bit out of line and I absolutely can’t stand it.  Even my tea… slightly not sweet enough and slightly too cold. 

I really hate when I get in this sort of mood.  I have a couple big things that I’m wanting to work on and I just can’t seem to get them “scheduled” into my day.  Everytime I start, something else demands attention.

On the plus side, Sophie is reading well enough to pick up some of her early reader books to read on her own.  Only thing is, she only reads outloud so there’s a continual stream of words coming from her and it’s adding to my overstimulation.  She’s currently asking herself questions about what she just read. 

Sophie- can you find the letter B?

Sophie- why yes!  It’s right there!

Sophie- Now Sophie needs to find the key.

Sophie- It’s right there!!

Sophie- I spy a hair thing, do you see it?

Sophie- There’s the hair thing over there!!

Sophie- Good, now let’s turn the page….

Really, I’m happy that she’s reading, but this I spy book is driving me mental as every line her voice gets more shrill and hyped up.  About every three lines I have to call her down to reset her volume/shrillness levels!

School has been going fabulously for Sophie.  She goes through these receptive phases where she just drinks in new knowledge and it’s like we have to do as much as we can those days and then spend her non-receptive days reviewing the previously learned materials.  We’ve continued using the Time4Learning programs with great success and will continue doing our bizarre dance between computer learning and unschooling.  It’s weird, but it works.  Today has been mostly an art day.  Sophie and all the boys have been painting.  This was the first time we’ve had all 3 painting together… probably not the greatest thing for Sophie as Beckett kept trying to steal her paints, but it was an interesting exercise.  Beckett really just smooshes the brush around, while Xander really wants to paint a picture of something.  Sophie is still in a weird stage painting-wise as she’s not doing much interpretive painting or representational (correct word?  maybe not) painting… she’s just moving color and playing with shapes.

We’ve also decided to reapproach handwriting.  Sophie does not like to write by hand at all.  She gets frustrated and just shuts down any cooperation effort whatsoever.  So, we decided to get creative.  The Lamy ABC hasn’t come in yet and since we’re all in a big pen and ink phase, M collected some feathers from the turkeys and cut some quills for us.

There is a whole art-form to writing with a quill, which some would say is too much effort for a typical child, let alone Sophie.  It requires a light hand and you do have to re-dip fairly often (we’re using molted feathers, not the prefered blood feathers that hold so much ink… our quills only hold enough ink for a couple signatures).  To write well with a quill requires learning the nuances of that particular one and knowing whether or not you can pull off an upstroke without splattering ink!  It also requires the writer to slow down to some degree instead of jotting across the page in a mad dash.  One of our quills will tolerate that sort of writing, the others won’t.

Sophie pretty much thinks that she’s died and gone to Hogwarts!  It’s almost like she goes into a Zen state as she carefully dips and taps off her quill and carefully practices writing her name.  She does get hyped up when she watches other people write, but I think that’s because she’s anticipating her turn.  We spent a good half hour playing with inks and the different quills and she literally cried when we put them away.  Putting them away probably adds to their mystique as I keep them in a locked boxed so that little hands don’t upend my semi-permanent ink on the wood floor!