Life As We Know It
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Monday, April 11, 2005
Where does the time go? Ryan is now 6½ and finishing up kindergarten. He's taking achievement tests at school this week, which he should pass with flying colors. Lately he is extremely interested in the PBS kids' show Cyberchase (a math-based cartoon), and loves to play games on their web site. Yesterday he printed out a board game from the site and played it with Mark and Kyle. (Whereupon Kyle screamed so loudly for so long upon losing that even from outside the house I could hear it, and thought he must have gotten a leg cut off or something!) Ryan also loves secret codes and mysteries, as well of books of all kinds. This school year we've been reading all of the Magic Tree House books in order, though we're currently unable to locate a copy of book #27 so we've been reading other things. He can read at a 3rd-4th grade level, though usually prefers us to read longer books, such as chapter books, aloud to him. Ryan has also written and illustrated a few of his own books this year, such as Bad Guys on the Loose and Ryan and the Tooth Fairy (he hasn't actually lost a tooth yet), and recently he set up a "writing stand" in the living room to illustrate and bind books for other people in the family, after providing us with the materials to make them. This summer, Ryan will be going to a 2-week magic camp to learn to do magic tricks...he's been wanting to go since he was 4 and is finally old enough! Ryan is still a budding scientist and inventor, and always has a project of some kind going on, as well as ideas for about 20 more! He particularly loves math, and will say things out of the blue like, "Is 11x8 plus 1x12 100?" He has the hang of simple multiplication, division, and even fractions and decimal points, and talks about things like inverses and negative numbers...pretty soon he'll be further along in math than the adults in our family! I already can't answer many of his questions about math and science. He loves to draw machines and schematics and diagrams of where pipes go and how electricity is carried through wires or various other substances are carried through tubes, etc. He got a kids' electronics set for Christmas and absolutely loves it. He is also still a Lego expert, and lately adores building with K'nex toys. Last year he made the whole alphabet out of Legos, and this year he made the whole alphabet out out K'nex pieces and then Kyle followed suit! Kyle is 4, and we've just found out he needs to get glasses, which he's getting today. He has had an imaginary and wondrous home on a pretend street called "Glasses Street" for most of a year now, but I'm not thrilled about him getting real glasses! Kyle loves drawing and always draws very expressive people, usually with little hearts inside their chests! (Both boys love drawing.) He is still very expressive himself, full of energy and emotions, and has a great sense of the dramatic. He loves to make jokes and say very silly things. (Speaking of silly, one night this week I checked on him in the middle of the night and found him fast asleep UNDER his bed!) He still loves to dance, and loves to sing--he must know at least 60 songs! He has a great memory for lyrics, lines from TV shows or movies, etc., and has done wonderfully in his Bible memory club. A month or so ago, he mastered the ability to hop across the room (often 15 feet or more) on one foot, and loves to do so every chance he gets! He went through a big Lion King phase this past year, but that's mostly over now. He loves superheroes--his own superhero is "Superbaby," but he's also particularly crazy about Spider-Man, and has Batman pajamas, Superman shoes, etc.! He loves to play games, but as mentioned above, he doesn't like to lose! He's generally very affectionate, though, and quite the ladies' man! He's had at least two fiancees this past year! One of them is still probably his best friend--they're quite tight in Sunday School and light up every time they see each other, but there's another girl at school who told him, "If you don't marry me, too, I won't say 'I love you, Kyle' anymore!" He was quite distraught! But he stuck by his other girl, and the girl at school has started telling him she loves him anyway. ;-) We are a bit nervous as we anticipate his teen years! Kyle is also starting to read now, and is particularly good at letter sounds, so he likes trying to sound out words. On the way to school today, he announced that "dirt" was spelled "DRT" (close!) and "mud" was spelled "MUD," and that was all from his own mind, without seeing the words written out! He loves finding books he can read and will work quite hard to master them. A recent one he likes to read to us is an early easy reader called Hot Dog. He also loves I Spy books, and he can do simple math as well. And he, along with his brother, loves to play guessing games in the car (along the lines of 20 questions), and to spend time outdoors, digging in the dirt, collecting rocks, swinging on our swings, climbing on our playset, and putting on circuses for us! Our kids' wonderful (and affordable...) private school is closing this year after 26 years, so we're looking for solutions for the fall. So far, Kyle is signed up for 2 different preschools and we have to figure out which one to cancel! Ryan will probably go to public school. Our local public schools apparently have a good gifted program that starts in kindergarten, and should also be equipped to deal with some of his attentional and auditory processing difficulties, so we're hopeful that will work out well. I also love it that they have theatre in the elementary schools here. However, it will be a pretty big change, and we hope that it will work out for Ryan! He does well academically, but hasn't quite figured out the social scene. Of course, we're not even sure if we'll still live in this area in the fall, as Mark is looking for a new job right now!
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