Weekly Wrap-Up - March 6

We had such a great week! Nothing earth shattering, just a nice week at home. Lots of time spent outside! It's still cold, but after all the ice and snow, we still like to be outside! There are little green daffodils (I think, I don't remember exactly what bulbs I have where) poking up and when I started to clear out the (what I thought was all dead) thyme I saw some little green leaves on it already too! I think I'll leave it and transplant it once it's warm.

We're wrapping up our Life Lessons from The Princess and the Kiss, have one more lesson for tomorrow and we'll be done. I think the girls have enjoyed it, if anything I'd say they're still a tad young for it, we'll probably revisit it in a couple years.

We're continuing to use our calendar and flash cards for Spanish and it's going well. One day this week we took the flash cards outside and we did some running and such in between groups of cards, gotta get that fresh air, and the wiggles out sometimes!

We wrapped up our study about the Kit Kittredge movie this week as well. I think the girls enjoyed it. It was a nice change of pace for us. As with many of our review items this year, we did things orally together rather than me handing them worksheets. They did have fun deciphering "hobo signs" on their own though.

A has been bugging me for awhile now, to get her her own email address. I found that gmail doesn't allow children to have email addresses, and since gmail is what I'm used to, so wanted to stick with that. So we compromised and I set up an account, with the e-mail address she wanted, in my name, then changed the name you see to be hers. I figure since I'm the one ultimately responsible for the account that makes sense. I have it set up so that all her emails come through my account so I can keep an eye on things. I set her up with her grandparents, aunt, our neighbor, and Rodney & I in her contacts and told her those are the people she can e-mail with, and if she gets emails from anyone else, to let me know. So it's got pretty strict controls on it, but she's LOVING it.  And don't tell HER, but it's teaching her spelling too! I've never pushed spelling with the girls yet. At this age my focus is to get them reading and writing and loving those things. Being voracious readers is, in my opinion, the best way to learn spelling, because every time you read it reinforces the spelling. And the rote memorization approach doesn't seem effective to me (I know plenty of people who did fine in school, with all their weekly spelling tests and such, and can't spell worth anything as adults, so why bother . . . ). So, we haven't focused on that yet. And the girls' handwritten things still have very . . . phonetic . . . spelling in most cases. BUT email has spell-checker that tells her if a word isn't right. So I'm spending LOTS of time telling her how to spell words, but she's getting better, and learning, and all without me having to stand over her and force the issue woo-hoo!! Of course reading is happening too. AND it's reinforcing her typing.

I've told L she can have an e-mail account once she finishes her typing lessons, since she's procrastinated them terribly. So hopefully that will be the incentive she needs to wrap up the typing lessons.

For ME this week, I think I've finally found an exercise solution that will work for me! I've wanted to exercise in forever, and I LOVE walking, but not so much at toddler speed. It's fine for going on nature walks with the kids and stuff, but not for walking for exercise. And Rodney's schedule doesn't allow for me to walk when he's home to watch the kids. I COULD do an exercise video, but ugh, I like multi-tasking! When I walk I can listen to an mp3 sermon or seminar, or just use the time to hum hymns, pray and otherwise commune with God, in nature. If I'm watching a workout video I have to be JUST doing the video, ugh! And, on an unrelated (I thought) topic, every winter I contemplate getting a mini-trampoline of some sort so that the kids have a relatively compact way to get excess energy out when they can't be outside. Then a couple weeks ago I heard someone say that they use a rebounded for their exercise routine. And suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head.  I could kill 2 birds with one stone! I could get a rebounder/mini-trampoline that *I* could use to exercise during Little Bit's naptime, or even when she's awake if the big girls were around to help keep her off the trampoline while I'm on it. AND we'd also have it for burning off kid-energy. So I ordered a folding rebounder and it came last week. I'm LOVING it! So far I just job/bounce on it for about half an hour, as I get into shape I'll watch the exercise video that came with it and see what other moves I can add to the routine. At the moment, this is enough LOL. When I used it last week the big girls were outside so I indulged in some stupid daytime television . . . Judge Joe Brown and such. There are some shows that the big girls & I watch together anyway (some of the reality shows like 19 Kids and Counting and Cake Boss, some of the Food Network shows like the cake challenges and iron chef. Also Smile of a Child has a cute cartoon version of "Little Women" it doesn't follow the book very closely, at least so far, we've only watched for a couple weeks, but it's still cute, and we enjoy it) so on most days when the girls are inside, I'll probably work-out during one of those shows. I could also listen to an mp3 if the girls were watching tv I don't care about or if they were doing other school work and such. So I'm excited about this!  Needless to say, the kids are pretty excited about having a trampoline too LOL.

Little Bit is turning into quite the chatterbox! Some of my favorites . . .

• She often mimics whatever her big sisters say. When she does that, if I ask her if she's a copy cat, she responds by saying "meow", hee hee
• When she was sick, I fed her lots of applesauce. When she wanted apple sauce she could come up to me and say "sauce. apple. sauce." 
• She'd finished going potty & was struggling to pull her panties back up, I asked her if she wanted help and she said "no. SELF!" alrighty then . . . 
• Yesterday at church she needed to go potty. As she was sitting on the toilet she pointed to the wall & said "wall . . . eat" I laughed at her and said "no, we don't eat walls!" to which she responded by pretending to chew up the wall (didn't put her mouth on it, couldn't reach it, was obviously just being silly), it was so cute!
• I have my phone set with a ringtone that says "I Love ya babe muwa muwa muwa muwa muwa" when Rodney calls. Anytime she hears it, she says "muwa muwa muwa muwa muwa"
• She prays by herself now. For quite awhile I've had her repeat after me "Dear Jesus . . . I love you . . . Amen" so now she says it all on her own . . . "Jesu . . . ilow . . .amen"
• Continuing with the praying theme, during Sabbath School yesterday the teacher was praying. She tends to pray longer prayers than I personally would use with the 0-4 age group and Little Bit was getting restless, so she (Little Bit) said her OWN prayer, and then thought she really ought to be able to go back to the book she was looking at, hee hee.
• We stayed for Friendship Lunch after church yesterday (a kind of visitors potluck). When it was time to say the blessing, I told her that Mr. Tim was going to pray, so she folded her hands while he prayed. When he was done, she said "Me!" so I quietly had her say her own blessing (she hasn't quite memorized that one yet, at meals I have her say "Dear Jesus . . . Thank you for the food (she just says "food") . . . amen", so she still wants to repeat that one after me. 
• When we went up to visit our neighbor, Miss Judy, this week, the big girls took their bikes up so they could ride (we live on a steep hill, but the road is flat by Judy's house, and she's the last house on the circle (which is only 3 houses anyway) so they can safely ride up there).  Little Bit wants to ride bikes too, but her little plastic ride-on toy broke over the winter and I'm being lazy and trying to put off trying to fix it since she'll be getting a balance bike for her birthday in a couple weeks. So this time, when the girls were riding bikes, Little Bit looked out the window at them and said "sissy. bikes. Me!" I told her "your bike is broken, we need to fix it" so the rest of the time they were outside, she would randomly say "bike. me. fix it!" Guess I need to take a closer look at her ride-on toy and see if we can fix it at least enough to keep her happy until her birthday LOL.

So that was our week. Hope yours was good too!