It's fall, and I love fall. I love when the leaves change color; I love the breezy, dry fall days; and I love Halloween. This year, I wanted to make the fall season feel special for my children, even though they are not going to school. I decided to pull together Halloween costumes for the kids, even though trick-or-treating may not happen this year. I offered my son a few options: Elephant & Piggie; a train; something generic like a tiger; or a train signal. He was exuberant about the prospect of being a train signal, so we have been working on this costume together the last few days. He helped me cut, paste, paint, and color in parts of his costume with a marker. I had to let go of my perfectionist tendencies, but I am really quite happy about the joint effort thus far. (PS. My son proudly told my husband, "Dada, I colored this in. You see that C, I, and N? That's me. I did that." It's funny that he thinks it needs to be clarified. I also decided that we would make a series of Halloween crafts throughout the month, and use them to decorate our living room. (We have a little bit of reusable Halloween decorations that I can dig up, but I feel like it would be fun for him to make the bulk of our decorations this year, since he normally would do the same at school.) I found a site with lots of easy ideas here, and made a run down to Joann's Fabric to get supplies during my kids' naps this week. I helped my son make a spider with googly eyes earlier this week, and tonight we did a family crafts night after dinner, and made three different skeletons to hang up. Can you guess which one is my son's? We have also begun learning to read Chinese characters! I bought a single book from Sagebooks 500, which is like the Bob Books of Chinese, designed for native speakers who wish to learn the written language. I bought one booklet (Set 1, Book 1), used, from a local parent, for like $5 or $10. I wanted to just try it and see whether my son would be interested at all, because he has shown a lot of interest in speaking and practicing Chinese lately. We are only three days in, but thus far he has been really excited to do the lessons everyday! The system seems like it will work well for him, so much so that my husband who is really budget-minded has supported the idea of buying the entire system to be shipped to us internationally. (The entire system costs about $550, and teaches 500 of the most common Chinese characters. Similar to Bob Books, the kids are empowered to read illustrated short sentences and leveled books independently, after learning a new character in each lesson. It receives raving reviews from parents, but I still have not yet decided if I would order the whole system new or if I should hold out to buy it used.) I decided that I would start to make and use matching cards with L to help him reinforce his visual memory of the characters, and today was the first day that we used the matching cards I made, and he was totally into it! I would show him a picture, ask him what it shows, and he would say it to me first in English then in Chinese, and then go find the character that represents that object. Overall, I still really enjoy spending time with the kids at home everyday, and cherish this once-in-a-lifetime chance I have to be my kids' teacher. I have also signed up for a free online class on teaching early childhood math, that I think is going to be really helpful for me in terms of working on math at home with my kids and bridging the gaps between my identity as a mom and a high-school math teacher. I have just started the course, but I am encouraged to see that the early concepts in the course map almost exactly to what I have seen from my son, and what I have done with him at home based on my math-teacher instincts and research. More on early-childhood math later, but the premise of that online class is that most kids are ready to explore mathematics starting at age 2. That is absolutely what I believe already!
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About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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July 2021
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