VARK

HT: Meg @ Get In, Hang On

According to their website: “VARK is a questionnaire that provides users with a profile of their learning preferences. These preferences are about the ways that they want to take-in and give-out information.”  They have an Online Test, a paper Adult test and a paper Young Adult test.

Visual – seeing stuff done

Aural – listening to someone explain stuff

Read/Write – the “traditional” school model: books, notes, tests

Kinesthetic – learning by doing/touching/experiencing

 

The VARK Questionnaire Results

Your scores were:

• Visual: 4
• Aural: 3
• Read/Write: 8
• Kinesthetic: 5

You have a mild Read/Write learning preference.

None of this is surprising!  I knew I was best as reading and worst at auditory already.

 

Then I had Tyler take it.  Here’s his results:

The VARK Questionnaire Results

Your scores were:

• Visual: 6
• Aural: 1
• Read/Write: 1
• Kinesthetic: 8

 

Hmm… No wonder we butt heads sometimes about school.  It’s so hard sometimes to overcome those “traditional” tendencies.

 

Then Trent got in on the action.  Here’s his results:

The VARK Questionnaire Results

Your scores were:

• Visual: 12
• Aural: 3
• Read/Write: 9
• Kinesthetic: 11

You have a multimodal (VRK) learning preference.

This surprised me a little bit.  I thought he would lean more towards Kinesthetic, but overall it makes sense.

4-H

4-H club – check.  We decided to go with the club we visited last night.  Seriously, we were running out of options since there were quite a few people who decided to not return my calls.  Last night was just a registration meeting so the kids could sign up.  It was at a local elementary cafeteria.  OK, I want to know why they put the heaviest doors possible at schools.  I haven’t been to a school in ages and had forgotten about it when I tried to open the door.  Anyways, the leader was very nice and seemed really organized (even though her daughter had just been in the hospital for a week.)  She made sure that every kid coming in knew that Tyler was new and introduced them.  I’m pretty sure Tyler was overwhelmed by it all.  School cafeterias have the whole noise thing (meaning it gets loud really quickly) which is hard on Tyler.  And then there were lots of new people.  I’m not worried about him settling in though.  He’ll be fine once he gets used to the meetings.

4-H projects – check.  He decided on doing models and rockets.  Add that to fishing club and I think he’s going to have lots of fun.  He doesn’t know it yet, but I got a few models around Christmas time when I found them on sale.  He can either use them as practice ones or for his project.  They are snap together ones and I don’t know if they are allowed or not, so we’ll see.  Trent & Tyler were talking on the way home last night about not only needing a rocket for the fair, but they are going to need at least 1 practice rocket.  I was just pleased to hear that there is going to be Daddy-Tyler bonding time going on, which was part of why 4-H was on my list of things to do.

Blahs

Today is one of those days that I have the blahs.  I’m tired of winter and being cold, etc, etc, etc.  Needless to say, not much has been going on here.  I wore myself out yesterday between shoveling, school, trip to library, dishes, laundry and grocery shopping.  I thought I would sleep great, but I was up most of the night.  I finally got up around 4 (after laying there for hours) and finished up the W2s I had to do.  I got them in the mail today so I am totally done with W2s for this year.

Tyler got more Warrior books from the library yesterday and is turning part of his space downstairs into an area where he is going to recreate things from the books.  But he says he might change it to Ben-10 instead.  He’s still not sure.

I was bored today (obviously since I was up for hours) so I took some online IQ tests.  I don’t know if I’ve ever taken one before.  My results were all around 146 (146, 145, and 147).  I just fall into the genius category.  Don’t know how accurate they are, but it was interesting.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a nap in this afternoon since we have a 4-H meeting this evening.

The Dark Side

While I wait for the snow to stop falling and I have to go shovel what looks to be almost 6 inches (what happened to the 1-3 overnight and 1 today?), I thought I would share a new development with you.

My Mom has gone back over to The Dark Side.  The background is that she is currently working as a para-professional at the local school district.  She is teaching the Kindergartners fine motor skills so that they are ready for 1st grade.  Don’t know what happens in the huge jump from K to 1st that the regular teacher can’t teach, but the good news is that she does have a job, which a lot of people in this area do not have.  Now I know that she had latent Dark Side tendencies because I remember them from growing up, but I thought I had her on a new path seeing as how I’m providing such a wonderful example of how there are other ways for education to happen.  But this new job has caused her to go back over to The Dark Side.

We had my parents over for dinner on Saturday night and in the course of conversations, she told us that my niece does not hold her pencil “correctly”.  You’ve all heard about the tripod grip – pencil resting on middle finger with the thumb and first finger holding it in place, etc.  Horror of all horrors!  Tyler showed her how he holds his pencil and it is not the “correct” way either.  Whatever!  The boy can write and people can read it so what does it matter how he holds his pencil?  You would think it wouldn’t be a big deal since I have never held my pencil the correct way and she managed to survive that.  In fact, I have had complete strangers, and on more than one occasion, approach me and ask me if I was an artist, specifically a painter, because the way I hold my pencil/pen reminds them of how painters hold their paintbrushes.  Some days I wish, but it must be a carry over from a past life since I’m not so artistically inclined in this one.  Then she told us that my niece doesn’t make some of her letters the “correct” way.  Do you know she starts he lower case “l” at the bottom instead of the top?  Again, people can read it so what is the matter?  Besides, doesn’t that make more sense for when you transition to cursive since most letters are started at the bottom in cursive?  There were other examples, but to put it bluntly, her speech is filled with lots of references to how things have to be done, how it is done correctly, and how terrible it is when those two things aren’t followed – The Dark Side.  I hope she doesn’t become overly critical of Tyler since I know he will not appreciate it at all.

In other news, we have a little break from TKD due to Nationals and then next week is testing.  We didn’t go to TKD last night because Tyler was taking a nap.  It was weird, especially since Tyler has never been a napper.  I remember having to lay in bed and hold him there until he fell asleep when he was younger.  Anyways, he came to me around 4:30 and told me he was taking a nap.  I figured it wouldn’t last long so I didn’t worry that we were supposed to leave in an hour to go to TKD.  Well, the time to leave came and I was faced with waking him up or letting him sleep.  I decided that since he was still sleeping that he obviously needed it and let him continue.  He woke up around 6 and told us that his headache was gone.  So it was worth letting him sleep.

More time

I’ve been worrying about school lately (seriously, don’t I always.)  Tyler is getting his work done really quickly and getting it done correctly.  Yes, he needs to work on writing more than the bare minimum, but I’m sure that will come with time.  Anyways, I’m worried that since school is only taking him about 45 minutes a day, that something is off.  Now I know that I have him above grade level already and some would say not to worry as long as he is still learning, but I worry that he isn’t being challenged enough.  You know, that fine line between being too easy and too hard is where I want him to be.

I hesitate to change things right now because we just changed to having him know everything for the week and letting him pick what he wants to do each day.  So I think that I’m going to wait a while and maybe even until next school year because then I can justify the increase in workload due to the increase in grade level.  Though this can change at any time because flexibility is one of the great things about homeschooling.

Right now I’m researching Philosophy as a subject to add to next school year.  I’ve gotten some great discussion questions and exercises out of the book “Little Big Minds” by Marietta McCarty.  I love that the book is broken into the topics of: friendship, responsibility, happiness, justice, time, courage, death, prejudice, God, humanity, nature, compassion, freedom and love.  It has great resources and since I don’t think there is enough for a full year of school, I can always add things as we go along.  There is a lot of discussions, reading and writing involved with these activities.  All of which are good for Tyler to do.  Add to that the critical thinking and other attributes that he will hopefully learn, it is a win-win situation.

In TKD news, Tyler got his last stripe so he is ready for testing next week.  And he got to hand out links last night.  He has wanted to hand out links, but there is another student who is also in Leadership in his class and she has gotten to hand out links.  He was so excited about it.  I didn’t even have to prompt him to tell Trent about it when we got home last night.

We’ve still got the cold running around our home.  Trent stayed home from work yesterday and I got some cold medicine for the boys to take since Tyler is still coughing.  They have been sick a lot this winter and I haven’t been as much, which is totally opposite of normal.  I had already upped their vitamins and we’ve been keeping lots of fresh fruit in the house.  Tyler has been eating like there is no tomorrow and goes through 3-4 apples and a couple bananas a day for snacks.  But it seemed time to get some medicine, so I got Umcka from Nature’s Way.  It is still a homeopathic – you know me.  It seems to be working.  Trent isn’t 100%, but he did feel better this morning (and went to work) and Tyler didn’t toss and turn and cough all night.  I say progress has been made.

44 US Presidents Video

This is pretty neat.

Math is easy

Yep, that’s what I heard yesterday after Tyler got done with his math.  He is now doing division of 1-digit numbers into 2 or 3-digit numbers with remainders.  And he got them all correct yesterday on all his worksheets.  So he has now deemed math as easy.  I’m glad he thinks so since both Trent & I did when we were growing up.  Makes teaching one subject easy for me.

He’s been learning about writing letters in Language Arts.  You know, all those things we don’t do on emails – writing a return address at the top, dating it, greetings, body of the letter, closings, etc.  He wants to know why he has to learn it since no one writes letters like this anymore, but I told him that it is good to learn things about history so that he can see how things have progressed to how they are done now.  He still gave me a “Whatever” face, and finished up what he was working on as quickly as he could.  He did good, but forgot the commas after the greeting and closing.

In spelling he’s figured out that he doesn’t always have to look up the word in the dictionary to know what it’s meaning is anymore.  He told me it is because he figures it out based on the sentences that he would use it in.  The boy is getting pretty smart.  Of course, I like to trick him sometimes with words that have different meanings based on how they are used.  He had the word “read” last week.  He wanted to use it as “I read that book.”  And I pointed out that it could also be used as “Are you going to read that book?”  He wants to know why it is spelled the same if it said differently.  Chalk it up to one of those numerous “exceptions to the rule”.

ABCs of Me

I saw this and thought it looked like fun.  

A
- Age: 33
- Annoyance: People not being on time
- Animal: Wolf, Mountain Lion or Black Jaguar
- Actor/Actress: Will Smith/Gabrielle Anwar

B
- Birthday: May 11, 1975
- Body Part on opposite sex: Eyes
- Best feeling in the world: Love
- Band: Tom Petty or The Eagles
- Blind or Deaf: Deaf
- Been in Love: Yes 
- Been on stage: A couple times
- Believe in Ghosts/spirits: Yes
- Believe in Evolution: Yes

C
- Candy: Chocolate
- Color: Red
- Cried in school: Yes
- Chocolate/Vanilla: Chocolate
- Chinese/Mexican: Depends on my mood
- Cake or pie: Cake
- Country to visit: Australia

D
- Day or Night: Day
- Dance in the rain: Yes, not often enough

E
- Eyes: Brown
- Everyone: Deserves a chance

F
First crush: Don’t remember
Food: Variety is the key
First thoughts waking up: Let today be a great day!
Fruit: Apple

G
- Greatest Fear: Dying before Tyler has grown up
- Giver or taker: Giver
- Gum: None
- Get along with your parents: Sometimes

H
- Hair Color: Brown with blond and red undertones
- Height: 5′5″
- Holiday: Vacation
- How do you want to die: Old age
- Hate: Insensitivity

I
- Ice Cream: Chocolate Peanut Butter
- Instrument: None

J
- Jewelry: My wedding ring/engagement ring, necklace Trent bought me
- Job: Mom, Teacher/Administrator, Consultant, Bookkeeper

K
- Kids: 1
-Keep a journal: I try to

L
- Letter: K
- Laughed so hard you cried: Yes
- Love at first sight: Yes
- Milk flavor: Whole
- Movie: Don’t have a favorite
- Mooned anyone: Yes
- Marriage: 10 years in July
- Motion sickness: Yes, very much
- McD’s or BK: McD

N
- Number of Siblings: 1 Brother
- Number of Piercings: Ears (1 time)

O
- Overused Phrases/words: “Really?”
- One wish: To fulfill my life purpose

P
- Place you’d like to live: Either close to the ocean or in the mountains
- Perfect Pizza: Veggie
- Pepsi/Coke: Pepsi

Q
- Questionnaires: Once in a while

R
- Reason to cry: Frustrations
- Reality T.V.: Hate it
- Radio Station: Rock/Pop or Country

S
- Shoe size: 6-6 1/2
- Salad Dressing: Blue Cheese
- Slept outside: Wish I would do it more
- Skinny-dipped: Yes
- Sing well: No
- Stuffed Animals: Have all been handed down to Tyler or my niece
-Single/Group dates: Single, dates with my husband are rare so I want him all to myself
-Song: No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley or Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton
-Strawberries/Blueberries: Both

T
- Time for bed: 10PM unless I want to stay up for a tv show
- Thunderstorms: Love the energy
- TV: Mentalist, Burn Notice, Leverage
- Touch your tongue to your nose: No

U
- Unpredictable: Not really

V
- Vegetable you hate: Brussel Sprouts
- Vacation spot: Beach or Mountains

W
- When you grow up: Don’t want to
- Which one of your friends acts the most like you: Libby
- Who makes you laugh the most: Tyler
- Worst feeling: Guilt
- Worst weather: Freezing temps

X
-X-Rays: Back, Knee, Teeth

Y
-Year it is now: 2009

Z
- Zoo animal: Too many to decide
- Zodiac sign: Taurus

LAST PERSON WHO…
1. Slept in a bed beside you? Trent
2. Saw/Heard you cry? Trent
3. You went to the mall with? Trent
4. You went to dinner with? Trent & Tyler
5. You talked to on the phone? Tyler
6. Made you laugh? Tyler
7. Sent you a text? Sandy

The TKD Talk

Yesterday, Tyler & I had a big TKD talk.  It started when Mr. Birky asked Tyler if he was going to go for a championship next season (which starts in June or July).  Tyler automatically said, “Yes.”  Afterwards, I asked Tyler to think about it and that he was going to have to tell me exactly why he wanted to get a championship.  I let it go for a little while and had been asking around with the other parents to see what that would mean for us.  It all came together yesterday when he was working through his TKD Leadership Manual.  The first section is on goals and that seemed the appropriate time to have the talk with him.

The big reason that Tyler gave for wanting a championship is so that he can put it on the back of his uniform, which is a fine goal and I would be more than happy to support him in that goal.  However, there are quite a few steps between here and there, so we talked about some of those steps.  He understood the steps, but his first question was, “What about going fishing on Saturday mornings with Daddy on Grandpa’s boat?”  It wouldn’t happen if you had a tournament.  (FYI – Grandpa this is your heads up that Tyler is excited about fishing and is hoping to use your boat this year.)  His next question was, “What about when we go kayaking or biking on Saturday mornings?”  They wouldn’t happen either if you had a tournament.  Now he was starting to panic.  There were other things he wanted to do and he didn’t see how he could do them all.

The conversation shifted to how our goals have to be in line with our priorities.  My example to him was how I have lots of goals that I would like to accomplish, but right now one of my main goals is to give him the best educational experience that I can through homeschooling.  So that’s what I do while the other goals wait for another time when they can become the focus.  It turns out that Tyler views TKD as part of his life and not all of his life.  He has other interests that he would also like to continue doing.  And all of that is fine with me.  I would support him no matter what he decided, I just want to make sure he was making an informed decision.

As of right now, there will be not be lots of time spent traveling for tournaments to get a championship.  He may change his mind later, maybe he’ll decide next year he wants to or maybe he’ll be content with how things are currently.  I don’t know what the future holds, but I do hope that he is learning the skills that he needs to make decisions in the future with regard to his goals and priorities.

4-H Wish List

** 4th post today

It seems I am having problems finding a 4-H group for us to join.  So I thought I would jot down my wish list and hope that the Universe sees fit to help me out on this one.

1 – No praying, prayer requests or devotionals being read.  I was under the assumption that 4-H was non-denominational, so therefore this stuff is not needed.

2 – Kids in leadership positions and running the meetings and club with the assistance of the adults.  Typical assention of power would be nice as well – like the Vice President taking the President position the following year.

3 – A good mix of boys and girls of all ages.

4 – A group that doesn’t meet the 1st Tuesday of the month because that’s when the 4-H Fishing Club meets.

5 – Other homeschooling families would be nice, but not an absolute.

6 – A club that meets year-round would be really nice, but again not an absolute.

7 – A club that fits in with our personalities and doesn’t mind that I am a very involved parent and would be more than willing to help out.

8 – Has some rural kids that have animals at the fair so that Tyler can get an idea of what that entails.

9 – A club that encourages the kids to do the very best they can do and helps them do it.

10 – A club that has some component of community involvement, such as volunteering, etc.

While I know I’ll probably have to compromise on some of these things, it would be nice to get closer to the majority instead of the minority.