Weekly Wrap-Up - February 13

Our week started with, of course, the SUPER BOWL!! Daddy is a die-hard Steelers fan, so of course, this year's superbowl was a big deal. The girls & I managed to find inexpensive Steelers shirts for all three girls, so they surprised Daddy by wearing them on Sunday.  Little Bit was very excited once she realized that she matched DADDY!!

Tuesday night I had bookclub, so while Little Bit & I went to bookclub, the big girls went bowling with Daddy. A won 2 out of 3 games (L says when she has her next date with one of us, she wants to go bowling with Daddy WITHOUT A, hee hee).

In school this week we wrapped up our study about blue-footed boobies.

We continued to work on Spanish vocab.  The girls are really taking off with that. Something has "clicked" and they are doing really well with the vocab.  the calendar we are using seems to be a good fit for them. It allows us to add one word/phrase for day. Something we adapted slightly, is, instead of adding 5 flash cards every so often, I've started adding the new day's word each day. So, we learn our new word/phrase, and then we go over our flash cards of previous words, and I include the new word into the mix. Once they have mastered a word I pull it out of the stack, so that we only have a few to go over each day. And once a week we review through the mastered words to make sure they don't forget them.  The advantage I'm seeing in this plan is, it's sort, and they see constant improvement. As long as they feel like they are "getting better" they stay interested. When we tried to add several words at a time, they felt like they would "never get it" so they didn't like it & it became a chore. A program like Speekee didn't work for them because they didn't see themselves as learning anything, so they also didn't like that. We've finally hit the "balance" that works well for them.

We're also continuing with our study of The Princess and the Kiss for Bible. The girls are enjoying looking up the verses in their own Bibles and taking turns reading them, and often underlining them. Shhh . . . don't tell them they're learning "reading" and some referencing skills mixed in with their Bible lesson :o)  Needless to say this study is sparking lots of good discussions on purity, dating, and other "future" topics that I feel it's important we begin addressing NOW, before they come up . . .

To try to get some wiggles out, we've been doing "silly dances", the girls have also done lots of "running" where all 3 of them run in circles in our (very small) living room. It makes me dizzy, but they all seem to like it. Little Bit yells "run run run" the whole time, hee hee.

One day when they seemed to be needing to get wiggles out (even though we haven't had any new snow, it's been cold enough that the snow hasn't melted, and because we had some major(ish) ice AFTER all the snow, it's not snow they can play in, it has a hard crust on top. It doesn't even work to just walk on it . . . I tried sending them to "run to the  barn and back" (my default "get rid of excess energy" method) and they came back in and said "you can't, the snow's too rough". So I'm hoping and praying that the predicted warmer temps this coming week will get rid of this ice & snow!) anyway . . . one day as they were doing their "run run run" game until I was about to go insane, I pulled out some pieces of construction paper & scattered them around the room. Then we played various types of "find the color" that got the kids moving and helped reinforced colors for Little Bit. I think even though it was a "toddler game" as far as the actual color-stuff, all 3 kids enjoyed it.

Some other on-going schoolish stuff that I don't think to mention often . . . L has, for awhile now, been keeping a journal she writes in every night. Despite the fact that she swears up and down that she "hates to write", she does this without any encouragement. Each night at bedtime she writes a couple sentences saying what she did that day.

A few weeks ago A found a book I'd gotten awhile back that is a kids "novel" about the Bible character, Ruth. I'd originally gotten it because A has said for quite awhile now that Ruth is her favorite Bible character (I've never really gotten an answer when I've asked why . . . ). So at the time I got it, she thought it looked "too hard" and set it aside. Recently she re-found it in the bookcase and has been reading it every chance she gets.

A has also really taken off with her own Bible reading. Ever since they were able to read, I've encouraged them to read the Bible each morning. At the very first, I suggested they start with the Gospels, but they wanted to "start at the beginning". Needless to say, the large books and sometimes tedious detail and repetition of the OT was slow going, though they kept at it, a few verses at a time. More recently A started picking a small NT book and reading it a chaper or 2 per day. I think reading these smaller books of the Bible appeals to her need to "finish" things.

L has been working on knitting the "lovey" for Little Bit's friend, J. She had it probably at least half-done. She's pretty proud of herself. I'll have to be sure to take a picture when she's done, before she gives it to J.

Little Bit & I stopped at Goodwill on Friday while the big girls were at work with Daddy. I picked up a pair of purple boots to see if they were the right size for A, and Little Bit immediately said "A". I thought it MIGHT be because A's everyday shoes right now are boots, and not because of the color, but then on the next aisle I picked up a pair of pink boots & Little Bit said "Sassy" (her name for L). So she has obviously figured out the big girls' "color coding", hee hee.

The big girls were scheduled to tell Children's Story at church yesterday. We chose a story about Forgiveness from the Child's Book of Character Building. In the story, the little boy made a clay turtle, and then a classmate broke it. So, for a "visual aid" the girls each used air-dry clay to make clay turtles (they didn't break theirs though). We also got some little plastic turtles to pass out to the kids. But then there were a bunch of visitors, and as I did a mental count before the story of all the kids of "story age" I was afraid we wouldn't have enough turtles to go around (I thought we'd gotten way more than we would possibly need, usually there are only a few kids), so I told the girls not to give out the turtles (didn't want to risk upset kids if there wasn't enough to go around). As it turned out, not all the kids went up, so they COULD have passed them out, but because I didn't want the kids to see the turtles if the girls weren't going to pass them out, we had left them at our seats.  We did compromise and the girls gave turtles to the little kids who were up in the balcony with us, after we got back to our seats.

So that was our week :o)