Friday, June 19, 2009

Lately...

This week's Friday Night Mystery surprise was going to our local water park. They were thrilled. I just brought in Tornado's V-Tech camera because I didn't want to keep up with mine, and here are a few of the pics. It was so bright I couldn't really see the screen when I was taking the pictures. And I somehow hit a button to put the snow graphics on this one, and now I don't want to go back and figure out if I can get it off there. I didn't want to leave him out, and this is the only one I got of him.
Sissy proved to be my bravest kid yet in the water. She had no problem sticking her face right in there, and she fell under a couple of times; it didn't seem to faze her.
We stayed until closing time. Dash was brave and rode a big waterslide with Daddy. He had the funniest look of panic on his face when they came bursting out of the tunnel. However, when he reached me, he said, "I was scared and didn't want to go, but then I liked it."
The kids and I took all of Tornado's birthday party donations to the Humane Society this week. Here he is, holding some of them. The kids were all really proud, each carrying something inside, and the people seemed very appreciative of everything we brought. We're still going to volunteer sometime, but we haven't been through volunteer training yet.
One lesson/idea book we've enjoyed lately is Teaching Early Math Skills with Favorite Picture Books. It includes ideas for such books as Rainbow Fish (as we were working on here), 12 Ways to Get to 11, and Blueberries for Sal, etc. It's great for us because we love doing literature based activities, and even though it's recommended for grades K-1 (which is none of my kids technically), there is a lot that is helpful to reinforce with Tornado, as math is not his strong point. And the boys can both participate together in the activities.
When we are driving to the library, I always ask the kids what subjects of books they want to pick out this time. They're always decisive with their answers, such as "Dinosaurs, trees, and bicycles." They'll usually pick for Sissy. "She wants caterpillars and spiders, right Sissy?" to which Sissy agrees, "Right." I think it's a great lesson for them to either look up the subject on the computer card catalog, then find the location themselves, or ask the librarian in a confident, polite voice for help in locating their desired topic. I think this trip, Tornado said, "Volcanoes and hurricanes." After picking out this book from the library, we were in serious volcano mode for a few days. We had to find our other volcano books to read...
and then, of course, we had to make volcanoes, per instructions in the book.
No matter how many times we've made them before, making volcanoes never gets old for them.
Last week, one of our big projects was planting flower pots for our front steps. Googie and Papaw were planning to take the kids out for supper, and I was going to head to the greenhouse and Wal-Mart to pick out flowers. Dash said he wanted to go with me instead, which seemed very unlike him, because they're usually ALL about Googie and Papaw. His reason for wanting to go with me - "I miss you." (He hadn't been apart from me all day or really all week.) Well, I'm not going to argue with that sweet little answer. Dash and I picked out the pots and flowers (spending way too much money, but now at least we have the pots for years to come). They were really serious about helping me fill the pots, and it was really helpful having their manpower.
In case you missed our beautiful flowers in the birthday party pics, ta-da!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I am so tempted by this math book, but I already spent way too much money on new books this month. It would be great if you could post some example out of it :)