Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Update from the North


Today we started a new module called Training Practicum. I think this is going to be interesting. Dennis and I are going to be meeting with a couple who speaks Hungarian in order to practice some language acquisition techniques we've learned. We just found out today what language we will have; this had been a source of great excitement and anticipation in our class.

We finished off our first semester installment of our Structures of Communication class (aka Grammar). Perhaps you noticed that there were fewer posts on here and maybe even a couple that hinted at some frustration on my part....? That class was challenging- learning how to sort through languages to find patterns and predictabilities. The fascinating thing is to remember what happened at the tower of Babel in Genesis 6. God Himself confused these languages, and yet today we still find that no language on earth is completely without order or pattern. Each language in the world follows God-instituted rules of grammar. Amazing.

Most of the course was learning new concepts and then applying that knowledge to a real language. We had real sentences, phrases, words and morphemes from other languages to identify, plug into charts, and in some cases translate. As you can probably imagine, this was fun and exhausting all at the same time, especially for a brain that has been relatively academically dormant for the past 7 years.

In other news:
The weather here this past week has been weird. Mainly it has been cold and precipatory, but we've had everything from rain, to snow, to thunderstorms and rainbows. I know, in October!


We've been healthy for the past week after a 1.5 week encounter with Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease. Yippee!
While the kids were still recovering we went for a picnic at the Conservation Area.
Button has been mainly interested in bugging her sisters lately, although she still remains as loveable and huggable as ever.


Squeaky has mainly been interested in perfecting her dancing moves and doing puzzles recently.

And little Winnie has now graduated to the 'big girl' table with a spot between Mommy and Squeaky. She enjoys drinking from a big girl cup and often will request an adult sized spoon as well. She isn't talking a whole lot. Mostly she just says a lot of mumbo-jumbo using prefixes and suffixes of "Daddy" and "Mommy". She can tell us what a doggy says, what a lion says, sign and say please when she wants to, but mostly she's just a poor intellectually neglected third born who has to figure everything out on her own. She is really good at shape sorting- she can do the 18 shape sorter with ease! What really cracks me up (and scares me a little) is remember what Squeaky could do at this same age! Yikes. No wonder my oldest brother is brilliant and why I'm stuck wondering, "What exactly is a recession...?" (one of my questions this week). I'm just kidding biggest Bro, I love you and am glad you're brilliant.











5 comments:

The Biehns said...

You are often in our thoughts and prayers. Those sweet little ones are growing fast.

Ron Easton for Dads UnLimited said...

Hand foot and mouth never got to our house... in case you were wondering, though, one day Noah said his mouth hurt. There was no more talk of it after that.

Jean said...

Each child is different and learns at his/her own speed. Some wait to talk until they are older and then seem to never stop talking afterwards. I found the one who talked the latest also used the best phrases and sentences more or less right away and could also pronounce the words more properly.

Younger siblings don't need to talk as much perhaps because the older ones understand then without the vocabulary. Parents understand lots of times but are more willing to wait for the proper words before responding.

Enough about all the lessons.

Have a good week. I enjoyed all the new pictures.

Anonymous said...

Sweetheart, you had TWO older, BRILLIANT BROTHERS-- we called BOTH of them SONS!

Dennis and Valerie said...

Yes, Mom, good point.

I just want to clarify- I think both of my older brothers are brilliant, but this post was specifically contrasting a first born with a third born.

Phew, hope that confusion didn't cause anyone any anxiousness... ;)