More About the Kids

The best news here is that a cold front will relieve us of our 100* degree temperatures this week for the first time since early May! I am so excited to feel what an 80* day feels like, and hopefully our electric bill won’t be quite as shocking next month! I plan to take the kids to the zoo to celebrate! We haven’t been to our zoo here since Leonora was about 18 mo. old!

Lily got her parts for the Nutcracker Ballet this week. She is going to be a Party Girl and an Angel. The rehearsals call for her to be at ballet for three hours every Saturday until the performance in November! This year there will also be 3 performances! This will keep Lily very busy and she is so excited!

Nothing else out of the ordinary happened this week. We had some playdates, various lessons, and Casey got to take the kids to the park.

More about the kids:
Lily is very motivated in doing her science and works through all of her lessons and experiments with very little help from me. She is also having a better time at math this year since moving out of the workbook phase of Saxon Math and into the Text Book phase. Lily has been reading at her usual pace and so far this school year has read The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, The Five Little Peppers Midway, The Big Wave, A Single Shard, and The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus (which by itself is over 600 pages). She also reads every story book and history book I bring home from the library (average 30 per week), and even many of the simple readers I check out for Riis and Evelyn. She tends to like most everything she reads and only occasionally will say she didn’t like a certain book.

Evelyn is trying to find her place in our little school. It is surprising to me sometimes that it would be her that is stubborn and also competitive. She is doing much better in reading and is reading more books in her free time which is really great to see. She has taken up drawing and lately we’ve been practicing drawing birds. She likes to trace and color birds out of books, but I checked out drawing books from the library so we’re working on drawing freehand as well. Evelyn has also begun to speak up more when she knows an answer to something which she hasn’t done very much of in the past.

I hate to label Riis, but I’m beginning to see in him a bit of all-or-nothing mentality. He swings on either end of a broad spectrum of emotions and motivation. He works really hard and focused at his work, usually, but sometimes he decides he’s overwhelmed and it takes encouragement to get over his mental hurdle. A messy room for him is very overwhelming so I think he is much happier when it stays neat and clean and no one plays with his toys! In general if he stays fed and gets regular breaks, he is so great to be around. He also loves gymnastics and talks about the skills he learns and how important it is for him to be strong.

Leonora has been a “super-colorer” and a massive producer. Unfortunately I think it’s gotten old for her. Instead of darkly coloring in page after page and staying in the lines, she has moved on to scribble. She loves to use pencils and trace lines and also use scissors. I think she is growing up in so many ways, and she’s moved out of the cute baby phase in her siblings minds, and on to the annoying little sister phase. During our school day she gets out her own activities to do (shapes, play doh, lite brite, puzzles, coloring, etc.) and puts them all away when she’s done.

We haven't started French lessons yet and hope to do so by next week. I used to save French for the last thing of the day on the schedule. It's not recommended to do that since subjects that require more concentration are supposed to be done first in the day. But I never had time to do the French at the end of the day anyway. So I made the kids all their own 3 ring binder with French lessons in it. I keep the binders in the car and we do French in the car as we're driving to our various activities. They can follow along in their notebooks or just listen. This gives them the opportunity to hear French in short bursts of time, but it adds up to about 3 hours during a school week. (And that's not even our total driving time!) It's actually a huge sacrifice for me to do this. I really would prefer to listen to adults talking on the radio and not kid stuff. I have the French Power Glide junior, Lyrical Language French songs, and Baron's French cds. I have another song tape we listen to in the kitchen occassionally, story books, flash cards, etc.