I’m a gift bag saver and re-user.  Today Sudoku was packaging a few gifts and came across this tag from last year.  It’s a keeper.  Into Rosebud’s file it goes.

A down economy and winter are looming, but there is still so much to be thankful for.  The whole family is joining in on this post.

Good health. Reliable vehicles. A fireplace. Good neighbors. Playmates on the street. Reading time. Little Britches. Ballet lessons. Toddlers. Carman’s early morning routine. Good food to eat. Extended Family nearby. A roof that appears will hold up for another winter. Drawer organizers.  A great room big enough to play in.  A good summer camp experience. A new tent. Family camping.  “Woggles and snuggles.” “Throw me on the couch.”

Thanks to Flickr’s Old Shoe Woman for the pecan photo.  We eat pecans all year long.  But they remind me of Thanksgiving.

Playing as a family is a great way to make memories, but playing with children of different ages at the same time poses its challenges.  It’s usually too rough for the little ones or dreadfully boring for the older ones.  We’ve come up with a way to involve all the kids (except 1 year old Rosebud) in a fun-for-all game of family soccer.

We generally break the 4 oldest - mom, dad, Carman (age 11) & Sudoku (age 9) - into 2 teams.  Those teams play a regular game of soccer with sawhorses set up for goals.

Insert Doodle.  He is his own team.  His goal is to simply touch the ball with his foot.  When he does, all play stops and he gets a free kick at the goal (it doesn’t matter which one.)  The team that is on defense when Doodle manages to get his foot on the ball takes posession after his free kick.

Doodle has become more active in our games since we started playing this way.  He’s often the winner of our 3 team games.

Thanks to flickr’s Ctd 2005 for this fun photo.

We are on a family adventure of birthing a product line of organizers.  The harrisonfarm posts have been silent on those workings until now.  But to see what has been going on with us for the past couple of months, take a peek at our adjustable flatware organizers.  What makes these organizers unique is that they are adjustable.  That is, the individual compartments can be sized by you today and changed tomorrow if you get a new, slimmer can opener or that shrimp de-veiner you’ve been wanting (or whatever!).

The website is rather bare-boned at this point.  There are a lot of design changes we want to make as well as some info pages, menu bar, and more pictures to put up, but you can at least get an idea of what we’ve had our hands into lately.

Though Marathon is by far doing the bulk of the lifting, the two older kids and I have helped with developmental ideas along the way, so it really has been a familial effort.  I’ve been very involved in building the website too.  I know it’s not really “pretty” yet, but it will get there.  All the little bits and pieces I’ve picked up over the last few years are actually getting used.  And I still need to learn CSS and photoshop and…

I’ll share more about some of the web-building tools in another post at a later time.  In the meantime, if you know of people who like organizing tools, or know someone who who needs to mazimize their kitchen space, or who is planning a kitchen remodel, please share our new site with them.  I don’t want Marathon to hear, “Where were you when I needed you!” again.

A couple of months ago, I started the “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” book with Doodle.  I used the same book with Carman & Sudoku when they were young.  This being the third time, I’m very familiar with the book and am more relaxed and having more fun with it than I did the first couple of times.  Doodle is catching on quickly, and it is fun to see his slow but steady progress.

Despite the book’s title, the lessons are not all easy.  I try to limit each session to 15 minutes and only go beyond that if Doodle wants to.  With Carman & Sudoku, I believe it took a little over a year to complete the book.

This book teaches phonics and uses a different syntax (rather than spelling rules) to help kids learn about silent letters and long and short vowel sounds.  (The spelling rules are introduced later.)  The syntax can be a turn off to some people at first (eat is spelled with a tiny “a” to show that it is silent), but I know many parents who have used this book to teach their children to read after first trying expensive, high tech reading programs with no success.  As one mother of 5 said, “Some kids can learn with Hooked on Phonics, others with computer programs, a few by just following along while their parents read.  But practically anyone can learn with the ‘Teach Your Child to Read’ book.”

The book slowly introduces sounds, having the child form simple words and even read “stories” - while knowing only a few sounds - right from the start.  The first story and picture show up after just 12 lessons.  (”See me eat.”)

I really like the way the book puts the sounds to work (in the form of a story) right away.  The “story” Doodle read today for lesson 39 was, “a little fish sat on a fat fish.  the little fish said, ‘wow.’  the little fish did not feel sad.  the little fish said, ‘that fat fish is mom.’ “  He was introduced to quotation marks today, but capital letters have not yet been incorporated, and 1/3 of the alphabet is yet to be covered as well.

Each story has an accompanying drawing that the child gets to see after reading the story two times.  I ask questions (some scripted, some not), and we talk about the silly drawings.

The most trying part of teaching with this book - with all of my kids - has been helping them focus on the task at hand.  “Hey! this letter is the same as that one over there!”  “C - as in, kih, kih, clown!  kih, kih, come!  kih, kih, cat.! Hey!  I saw the neighbor’s cat in the backyard earlier!  Remember the cats we saw at the farm last week!?”…  I just try to not get impatient and draw him back to our task at hand.

Carman has his own tricks with dealing with Doodle’s rabbit trails.  I had a busy morning last week and asked Carman to do Doodle’s reading lesson with him.  He later told me that it went extrmemly smoothly and quickly because he had warned Doodle that if he started talking (instead of reading), Carman would have him start again at the beginning.  !!  That took care of that.

So far, my 3 kids have gone through the book at different speeds.  Carman would remember the letter sounds well but sometimes couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  Sudoku quickly learned to identify common words, but struggled with sounding out words, even though the book is grounded in phonics.  So far, Doodle seems to be a mix of the two, which is making the process easier than I remembered it being for the other two.  It has been interesting to see how, even with using the same teaching method, their learning styles have been different.

The author, Siegfried Engelmann, feels that most 4 year olds would be ready for this book.  If a child has been read to and has seen his parents read, I think that is probably true.  I’ve been helping out in Doodle’s Sunday School class for 4 year olds, and I think 75% of the kids are probably ready for this book.

Oh.  One tip if you consider using this book with a 4 or 5 year old.  The book has writing exercises at the end of each lesson.  (We don’t always to those.)  In my experience, writing on paper with a pencil is frustrating for children that age.  I’ve had better luck with the kids writing on a dry erase board with big markers.  There are no confining lines, and they can make big letters.  That being said, I must admit that my 2 older children, while being excellent readers, don’t have very neat pennmanship…

We were having chili for lunch.  Doodle took a sniff and said, “This isn’t chili.  It’s hot!”

signing “hat”

Rosebud recently started watching some Baby Signing Time videos we borrowed from my brother’s family.  [I will be returning them at Thanksgiving!  Thank you for letting us borrow them for so long!]  Rosebud LOVES them.  She seldom initiates signs, but if I suggest something with a sign, she’ll usually respond with one.  This has been helpful with her, because, unlike our other children, at 18 months old, she is still not speaking (except for “ma-ma” and “da-da.”)

I recently read about how Baby Signing Time was born.  Rachel Coleman, the singer & song-writer who appears in the videos, has a profoundly deaf daughter.  Rachel & her sister produced Baby Signing Time, in part, to help make sign language more ubiquitous.

As a mother, Coleman wants her child to be able to make friends on the playground.  If people at least knew how to sign, “Hi.  Friend.  Play.” it would make her daughter’s day.  I’ve only told a small part of their story of tragedy & triumph.  It’s worth reading.

I also found some helpful books at the library on sign language for babies & kids.  One of my favorites is Kelly Ault’s Let’s Sign: Every Baby’s Guide to Communicating with Grownups. It’s a small story book with illustrations by Leo Landry (whose work reminds me of Helen Oxenbury’s).  It is very cute and covers 63 signs about mealtime, playtime & bedtime.

My other current favorite kids’ signing book is Sign Language for Kids: A Fun & Easy Guide to American Sign Language by Lora Heller.  It covers about 400 words with photographs of children making the signs.  The children featured are probably 9-12 years old.  The book is large and colorful.

May Rachel’s daughter have lots of signing playmates.

Once a semester, Sudoku’s dance class has a visitor’s day.  We got to watch her class a couple of weeks ago.  Let me to you, childhood ballet classes are not what they used to be!  They are learning some complicated steps - at least, more complicated than I remember learning.  I remember releve and plie, but not fondu and sou sou.  I’m thankful for all she’s getting to see and learn.  And she works so hard.  See her concentration?

A contemporary class (which Sudoku especially enjoys) follows the ballet lesson.  We’re fortunate that the community center is so convenient to us.  Mimi & Tom-Tom, we’re so glad you could join us for visitor’s day!

(In the photo, Sudoku is on the far left.)

We appear to have succeeded in helping Doodle stop his long-time habit of sucking 2 of his fingers.  He had developed a pronounced overbite from four years of sucking, and we knew that the habit needed to be kicked before any permanent teeth began to erupt.

Instead of trying to coax him to stop sucking (as I had tried with Sudoku when she was little), we tried something a bit more devious.

One night, after Doodle had fallen asleep in the great room during story time, I pulled out the “Thum” I had purchased for Sudoku years ago.  I pulled the fingers from his mouth, dried them, and applied Thum all over them - not just on the nails.  When I picked him up to carry him to bed, he started sucking again, but grimaced and stopped after about 10 seconds.  He tossed in bed and fussed softly for a half hour or so that night but eventually drifted off.

I continued this ritual for about 2 weeks.  I’d wait until he fell asleep, then apply the awful tasting stuff.  I would also put on one application in the middle of the night, because it will wear off over time.  That way, he would get that unpleasant surprise again, should he revert to sucking.

After just a few days we noticed a dramatic decrease in his sucking, both at night and during the day.  A few times he commented, “My fingers taste so BAD!”  The only time we were still seeing consistent sucking was when he would go to sleep at night (before I would apply the THUM.)

Here’s where we got more devious.

While Doodle was sleeping, I got a red permanent marker and made some dots on his 2 offending fingers.  I “noticed” them in the morning and pointed them out to him.  “You must have a rash!”  That night, before he went to bed, I told him I needed to put medicine on his rash.  I applied the THUM, and he easily went to sleep without sucking.

When I wanted to apply it the next few nights, Doodle resisted, telling me he wouldn’t be able to suck his fingers with the medicine on them.  I told him that not sucking would be good for him (no germs!) and asked him if he knew that Sudoku had sucked a finger when she was little too.  Sudoku then told him the story about how a case of poison ivy on her beloved finger had persuaded her to give up the sucking ritual.  I guess that story was comforting to Doodle.  The next night he didn’t resist the “medicine.”

That was the last application, and to my knowledge, Doodle hasn’t put his fingers in his mouth since.  Hooray!  We’ll see if this method works on our thumb-sucking Rosebud in a few years.

Our drive to Asheville, NC was just beautiful with the leaves at their peak.  We went to celebrate the marriage of a dear college friend.  The wedding was held in a Greek Orthodox Church, so we heard Greek, ate Greek, and danced Greek!  It was wonderful.

It is beautiful to see an old tradition like that alive and well.  Besides seeing my beautiful friend, the bride, and some other college friends, my favorite part was seeing the groom and his father do a traditional Greek dance together.  Did you know that Greek weddings take place on Sundays, no vows are exchanged, and wedding rings are worn on the right hand?

Sudoku is trying to get the dance steps down before jumping into the circle

Carman met a buddy at the reception

Other highlights of our trip:  seeing my kids dance; seeing the amazing Grove Park Inn, built in 1912; seeing downtown Asheville long enough to know that I want to return; being pleasantly surprised by the big, hot breakfast buffet that came with our overnight at Day Inn :).

Grove Park Inn

Grove Park Inn's terraced courtyard