Happy Halloween!
Laura Ingalls Wilder sees a Spooky Ghost
Happy Halloween!
Ollie Update
Would you believe that Ollie is learning how to read?
The other day, on a whim, Sara started asking Ollie what letters he heard in words. “What do you think BOAT starts with? Ba ba ba boat.” If she asked him letter by letter, he could guess all of the letters. This may seem like a trivial thing, but I think it had never really occurred to him that he could figure out how to spell things. He knows how to write letters, and he often asks us how to spell things so he can write them down, but it was the doing it himself part that had not occurred to him.
So a couple of days went by, and they played this game a few times. All was right in the kingdom. We also hung up the Halloween decorations.
One day, Ollie pointed to one of the decorations and said, “Why doesn’t ‘Boo’ have a ‘b’ in it?” “That doesn’t say ‘Boo’,” replied Sara. “What do you think it says? Sound it out.” I don’t know what she expected him to say, but what he said was, “Sss Sss Sss puh puh ooooo kuh kuh spooky!”
I don’t know who was more surprised, Sara or Oliver. It’s like a lightbulb went off in his head, like he thought “I know this! I know how to do it!” Again, he had all the skills, but he had never tried to put them together before. He didn’t believe he was reading, that that’s all reading is, but once we convinced him he was pretty excited that he could read, “just like Evie”.
He’s also been writing a bit on his own now. At school he “wrote down the number of people who got wet outside”. As you can CLEARLY READ, the answer is 5:
1st day of school!
It’s finally that time of year again: back to school time!
Is it me, or did he age about 5 years this summer?
With all of the summer camps and various scheduling house of cards we had going over the summer, I am so relieved to be getting back onto a regular schedule again. On one hand, it feels like we did nothing this summer; on the other hand it seems like we were constantly busy.
Oliver is in a “looping” class, which means he has the same teachers and class again this year. They pretty much picked right up where they left off, almost like the summer didn’t happen. Ollie was VERY happy to be back at school again. I think he didn’t realize how much he missed it until he didn’t have it anymore.
And can you believe, Evie is finally a first grader?
Evie is essentially the opposite case of Oliver: new teacher and almost completely new children (with the exception of her two very best friends). I think she was as excited to start school as she is about Christmas morning. She could hardly sleep for days.
I haven’t had much of a chance to get to know her teacher or the other parents but, as usual, Evie thrives in these situations. She’s already making some new friends and she loves learning new routines. I’m sure she’s going to have another great year.
No Kids: Addendum
The kids were pretty emotional tonight when they got back. After we got Ollie into bed, he started sobbing as hard as I’ve ever heard him sob. “I don’t need help with anything!” he called out from his bedroom. I think the poor boy was just emotionally overwhelmed.
He’s such a sweetheart!
3 Performances
The kids have recently treated us to 3 fairly major performances:
- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer – Evie recently completed a second year of “acting camp”. This year the play was, inexplicably, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Nothing says summer camp like Santa Claus! Last year, Evie auditioned with “Little Girls” and got Ursula the Sea Witch. This year, she performed “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and got Hermey, the elf who wants to be a dentist.
She killed it, in typical Evie fashion. As with last year, she nailed all of her lines with feeling, and mouthed everyone else’s lines. She also got more “points” for the week than anybody else at summer camp. I’ll tell you one thing: after carpooling three kids to this camp all week, I’m happy for the break from listening to “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “We are Santa’s Elves”. - Vacation Bible School – In the meantime, Ollie was off at vacation bible school, which culminated in a performance of various songs in church on Sunday. Ollie is not traditionally the “performer” in the family (see above), and I was very curious about how he’d do at such a thing without his sister around (though we did basically know every kid that was there). He did a pretty good job. He didn’t sing, per say, but he was obviously trying very hard with the motions and everything. I’m not sure he even noticed he was up in front of a crowd.
- Evie’s Birthday Performance – But the very best performance of all was Evie’s birthday performance. Evie wanted to have some kind of performance to put on during her family birthday party, so she wrote and directed something for her and Oliver. There were original songs, vaudevillian routines, and lots and lots of jumping on the bed. The kids took it very seriously, and practiced for weeks. Evie even put colored tape “marks” on the bed for them to hit during the show. The whole thing went off without a hitch, and I was so proud of them for doing such a good job all on their own. My favorite part is when Ollie sings, “Happy birthday to you!” and Evie says, “Who me?” and Ollie replies, “Yes you!” The birth of a comedy duo.
Shane Halbach 