Da Keiki Blog

When we decided to take Leilani out of Glen Oaks, we also decided to teach her how to read. I had overestimated her reading ability badly already (given her obvious interest and my knowledge of the Montessori method…) and we figured it was not going to get much better in the new school – which she still loves btw.

So we got the book “How To Teach Your Baby to Read” by Glenn and Janet Doman, it is part of the gentle revolution series, and a method partially based on Montessori, but much more refined, and used successfully on thousands of institutionalized handicapped children. We are not that good at reading ourself, I skipped straight to the “How-To” chapter, read 30 pages and set to work. Andy is not that good either. He read the first 5 chapters, urged me to read them too, because they were just so interesting, and went on to other books (without ever making it to the practical chapter…)

But the method seemed awesome, almost too easy. I interviewed Leilani to get some words of interest and started writing. Huge red lettering, 3 inch high words – they should be that big while neuronal pathways are formed. I first wanted to print them, but figured that the way my Epson printer needs all colors replaced when one runs out that would be an expensive task… I am good and fast at calligraphy.

I started by writing about 30 words, 1/3 English, 1/3 German 1/3 names. They were divided into sets of 5 and shown frequently, one set at a time, for very short time (less than a second per word) – as the book said, knowing the alphabet and being 3 is a little of a handicap with this method, because they focus too much on analyzing, instead of learning the word pattern (Leilani quote: “Give me that word, I want to study it”) – The theory is that adults don’t read letter by letter but word by word, and reading is painful if we focus on letters not words word (try reading hydroxypropylmethylcelloulose, not even my spellchecker likes it.) The book also said the one of the keys is to be joyous and enthusiastic, and that makes all the difference. No testing, and also to go with the flow, and if one feels something needs to be different to go with the feeling rather than with the exact method. I like that.

Leilani loved it from the beginning – we used “The Words” as mini rewards (Hurry up, then we can still do your words before we leave”) and it worked like a charm. But a few days into the game Leilani started changing everything. 2 sets were negotiated before we even started, and then it usually was another last one. OK, we went with the flow. After a few days it was time to exchange words – one per set and day (and remember, no testing.) I asked Leilani which she knew best and she read them to me. From then on she could, as she puts it, win her words. She is highly competitive with it, and gets about 1/2 seconds before I read the word to read it herself and then she gets it, and puts it into her box of words (a former shoe box)

She loves showing of with the words already won, which are quite a few, but interestingly they are almost all German and names, she knows just enough letters I think that the English seems weird… German is pronounced almost exactly as written, and the few exceptions are easy to master, and English pronunciation is still confusing to me after all these years. For a highly logical and argumentative person (her ability to analyze, argue and to reason leaves parents frequently speechless) this is even worse than for someone who can just accept things as they are.

Leilani also added writing lessons – whenever I write new words, she sits with me, and I write the words with pen or highlighter on a piece of paper first and she traces it with a marker, and I write with my fat red marker on cardboard (the book even advised poster board.)

Yesterday when it was bedtime we had finished the reading and I had realized that I was out of German words – I wanted to write just a few for today, but it turned into a major writing lesson – Leilani wrote over 30 words, and did not want to stop until we really enforced the issue.

Leilani did not graduate from Glen Oaks, but some of her friends did. The kids were supposed to sit still for 1/2 hour, and Leilani did not. She was the only kid who got up to protest (loudly and persistently) to her teacher that it was boring, and she also got up a second time to protested that she did not get a diploma, even though it was her last day of school… Her friend Isabella held her hand for most of the ceremony to keep her from getting up.

We came early, and she ran around with Paul

The looooong and boring ceremony

Isabella and Kathrine were Leilani’s favorite girlfriends… although she kept calling Annalise Katherine too…

Her teachers in her own class were Miss Julie (in this picture) and Miss Niveen

They had snack afterwards

Let Me Free….

Miss Patricia was her Yoga teacher and Miss Indira was another teacher there.

I think she’ll miss the 2 trees that she climbed on a lot…

We fit in better at her new school… Leilani loves it by now. And we have a learn-to-read at home system now, just in case (although I think they’ll do just fine at her new school). Leilani loves the reading system too. It is part of “The Gentle Revolution” series, and based on Montessori again, but a modernized version. She did not make a lot of progress reading this year, actually almost all her lower case reading went away, I recently watched a video from a year ago, and there she was reading lower case words, and now she is all uppercase – I was kind of disappointed when I tried with her (but the new system has no tests…)

Leilani has been really good this week. I think the big playground and the added activities make all the difference for her. She is really excited to go to her new school. I’ll write more when I’m sure the honeymoon phase is over. I was there for my first day of teaching today, it was mostly enjoyable and fun, and sometimes a little boring out on the playground (I did not get to play with Leilani, but in the area where I was there was a little boy who kept climbing and crying for help… I should have gotten the main teacher to help me I suppose, but instead I kept hovering around him, and he just did the same stuff for 1/2 hour… ), and I felt sorry for some of the school pets.

When we went home from the beach we stopped at the fair. We got $20 worth of rides, and Leilani enjoyed it a lot

Sonja got to go on a ride too…

Bye dragon, bye fair…

Andy writes a post out of order…

Last Sunday, after Leilani’s party, we had almost a full case of children’s juice boxes left over. We took them out of the ice cooler to dry and Leilani was helping me put them away. As we were doing so, Leilani said she could be a juice vendor, I suppose because it looked like we had as many as on a store shelf (a regular store, not Costco where they actually came from).

But with the cooler still full of ice, I immediately thought of an ice cream vendor, like the ones we see every time we go to a park now (thank goodness Leilani knows they sell bad ice cream). I asked Leilani if she wanted to go sell the juice at the park, just like the ice cream vendors, and she immediately asked if she could ring the bell.

So we put the juice back in the cooler, and put the cooler in our scavenged wagon. Everyone contributed to the idea, Leilani got some balloons also left over from the party, Sonja wrote a sign and had the idea to make it a fundraiser for Leilani’s new school, and I found a bell. And then we were off.

Leilani actually walked all the way to the park, only riding on the way home. I practiced with her how to offer the three flavors of juice and tell people the price. When we got to the park, there wasn’t the huge crowds we had seen on Saturday, but it was sunny and lots of kids were at the playground. We walked slowly through, with Leilani ringing the bell. People looked, saw the signs, but nobody came running to buy from us. Fortunately, there were some baseball games further in the park, so we just kept going. By then, I figured Leilani needed to advertise some more and I told her to shout “Juice, juice, healthy juice.” I was willing to organize everything and pull the wagon, but she had to do the selling. But there still weren’t that many people around and nobody bought anything.

After maybe 20 minutes, Leilani got tired of not selling and wanted to play. We parked the cooler in the shade and ran around for a while, playing chase in a quiet part of the park. I had to get Leilani to focus on the juice business again, but we eventually went back through the park. This time there were more people and one of the mothers watching a baseball game bought a juice. It turns out, the lady also writes a blog about living in San Bruno and took Leilani’s picture with the juice wagon as well–look for the San Bruno Life blog link in the list to the right.

But it was too little, too late. Leilani was getting tired, and we still didn’t sell anything on the main playground, I guess everyone expects ice cream and everyone has juice already. Leilani wanted to stop and play, but I thought it was awkward to just leave the cooler there and run around. So we walked home and soon Leilani was riding on top and drinking a juice. I took the picture of her above back at home, holding the first dollar she earned (almost) by herself. I had a juice too, while I was putting the juice away again, so at least we got rid of 3 of them.

I’m not quite sure what Leilani thinks about selling. She had lots of fun, but I could tell she was disappointed we didn’t sell more–but how to make her understand the problem of demand and marketing on her first try? It’s an important skill to learn, for both her and the parents, because starting with her new school, we have about 15 years of fundraising ahead of us.