Wednesday 28 January 2015

The Secret Garden

I mentioned in my previous post that we were off to see Biggest's presentation at the literacy fair.  She loves to read and was all over this project from the beginning.  She chose the book, 'The Secret Garden' which was written in the early 1900's and is over 300 pages long.  Several times we asked her if she was sure she wanted to tackle that, but she was adamant.  And she loved the book.  He reviews were so glowing that I am currently reading it.  I must say, it is pretty good.  

For her two main projects, she chose to design a new book jacket and write a diary of the main character.  Here are her finished products:



Then she had to put together a whole display board with various elements of the book explained - plot, theme, characters, vocabulary.  Here she is hard at work on a Saturday morning:






And the finished board:


We are pretty proud of all the work she put into this.  I'm excited to see it at school.  Later.

A day at school

The girls' was celebrating literacy day yesterday with the theme '15 minutes of fun.' They invited parents to the school to eat lunch with their kids and then spend time in the library having fun looking at I spy books or joke books.  So I packed up Littlest and we met the other two in Middlest's class to eat.  They thoroughly enjoyed our 'picnic.'


Then in was off to the library for the lunch time recess.  We looked at some books and they all enjoyed themselves for a while.  Then their different reading levels and levels of attention span began to take over.  Look at this...no, look at this...no, let's look at this one.  It's a good thing it was only 15 minutes of fun.  Here we are:


Right after lunch we were off to preschool, where it was my day to be the parent helper.  Nothing overly dramatic happened on this day, but I was ready to be done when it was over.  Here is Littlest playing with some play dough:


This afternoon we are heading back to the school to see Biggest's presentation for the literacy fair.  Later.

Sunday 25 January 2015

Snow much fun

We've had some abnormally warm weather this past week for January.  Melting snow and rain are not what we are used to this time of year, that's for sure.  However, we did get some snow one day before it all started to melt.  Enough that I had to shovel.  So my helper came out too. 
  

She was a big help.


Then she sat down in the wrong spot and got buried.  Who needs beaches and sand to bury yourself in when you have piles of snow.


Littlest grew tired of the hard work associated with the amount of snow on our driveway and moved onto the sidewalk between us and our neighbour.  He had been our earlier and shovelled it once but there was a slight skiff over it again.  She made a few paths through it and then moved onto his driveway which was nice and smooth and only had about half an inch of snow on it.  She proceeded to make a bunch of stripes up and down his driveway before I realized it. I couldn't leave it like that, so I shovelled his whole yard again.  Did I mention how much help she is?

After all our hard work, we went to the park where slides and snow and ski pants make for a fast and fun combination.



Later.

Friday 9 January 2015

Kind words in the midst of chaos

I think may be slowly losing my mind. Well, maybe not so slowly. All the kids activities started up again this week, or so I thought. School for the older two started Monday, swimming for all three on Mondays and Wednesdays, piano for he older two on Monday, preschool for Littlest on Tuesday and skating for Littlest  on Wednesday. Well, I had it right up until skating anyway. 

We went to the rink Wednesday morning and nothing was written in the white board. Should have been my first clue. No one was behind the information desk. Should have been my second clue. But no, I carried on to the regular change room. It was open and sometimes we had to get the person at the desk to unlock it, so I took this as a good sign. However, as the time for the lesson grew nearer and no one was showing up, I got a little concerned. I checked the email and then read it closely. January 14th. Not the 7th. Oops. I just assumed it started this week. But you know what they say about assuming. Well, it made one out of me anyway. Poor Littlest. She was a trooper though. No tears shed. She said it was ok. I can only imagine the outcry had I made this mistake with one of the other two. 

Before Christmas, Littlest had missed her show and tell day at preschool because I forgot. This year I was going to be organized. I found the schedule and wrote all the days on the calendar. Next week is her first one. So what did I do? Got her all ready and packed for today. I felt so bad. She was so excited. I gave her a big hug and said sorry. That is when my four year old put her hand on my face and said, 'it's ok, you don't need to apologize.'  Well, it was all I could do to  keep from getting all choked up. She is such a sweet, tender hearted girl. 


We truly are blessed. Later. 


Wednesday 7 January 2015

It's rough being the maid

Littlest has been my helper around the house lately. A while back she wanted to sweep, or 'broom' as she likes to say. She was having a little trouble with the dust pan when she looked at me and said, 'Could you help me here?  I'm not the maid.'  Too many fairy tales with maids having to do all the work apparently. 

This week she decided she wanted to run the vacuum. I though that sounded like a good idea, so I got it out for her. The main handle proved to be a bit long, so after some modifications and one section removed, she was off. She still spent most of her time on her knees though. I didn't have the heart to tell her I did some touch up work while she was at preschool. 

She takes her work seriously though. At supper time that evening, she was telling her sisters to eat over their plates so that they didn't get crumbs on the floor. Finally, someone gets it! 

Apparently there was some mess though because she was back at it today. 


Next it was time to fold laundry. She wasn't quite as much help there, but she did point out whose socks belonged to who. 


I wonder at what age sitting in the laundry hamper gets old. Later. 



Thursday 1 January 2015

I find all this girliness ... disturbing

Happy new year everyone.  I hope you enjoy the new look and the changes here in my world.  I thought it was time for a fresh start and to leave the beer business behind.

We rang in the new year by introducing the girls to Star Wars.  They had never watched any of the movies before and I thought it was time.  We started at the beginning with the 1977 original film.  They all started out excited, but started getting pretty fidgety about half way through.  The littlest kept humming Christmas songs in my ear and then started asking questions about what was going on.  When it was over, we asked them what they thought.  The biggest said she she really liked it, but her overly feigned enthusiasm gave her away.  The littlest is asking when we can watch it again (so she can tune out again I presume).  And the middlest told the truth and said it was boring.  Boring?!  What am I going to do?  I find their lack of interest...disturbing.

After the movie was over, the little two went to bed, and the biggest watched the end of the Canada/US world junior hockey game.  There were only three minutes left and I said she could watch before going to bed.  (mostly so I wouldn't have to miss any of it tucking her in)  We talked about how many periods there are in a hockey game (no, not four like football), about how boring the intermissions are (I said that if she watched more, she would understand more and the analysis would be interesting - she didn't buy it), and about how a one hour game takes three hours to play.  The last three minutes of the game turned out to be pretty exciting with the Americans pulling their goalie, Canada scoring, the Americans scoring after that, the American pulling their goalie again and the Canadians scoring another empty net goal.  When it was all over, I said, 'well, that was pretty tense.'  Biggest just looked at me and said, 'maybe for you.'  I've got my work cut out for me, that's for sure.

The other day I overheard a very important life lesson.  I should start by saying we have always called body parts what they are - no made up words for certain anatomy.  Littlest and Middlest usually tub together and as I was walking by the bathroom, I was stopped in my tracks by what I heard.  Middlest was explaining things to Littlest and it went like this:  'Always wash your vagina first and then your bum.  And then don't go back to your vagina!'  So there you have it.  Words to live by.  Later.