Hannah has always fought me over what she'll eat at dinner (only). Since I re-arranged the house (again) she now can avoid eating by following her curiosity to learn. She sits against a wall that has a big huge sheet of metal on it. It holds all our magnetic letters. She will not stop turning around and trying to spell words. She actually spelled 'dog' DAWG. Nice. She puts words together and asks me to sound them out. Then I show her how to correctly spell said word, and then I switch off a consonant each time, showing her how one part of the word can change while the rest stays the same. Boat, moat, coat. Her Reader Rabbit computer program is right at this level too, as one of the games gives her a word (MAP) and asks her how they can change it to another word (TRAP). Do you change the beginning sound, the middle vowel, or the ending sound? She grins when she gets it. She's begun labeling the back of her art (like her brother, see below) and when she writes it's indescriminatly left to right, then right to left, then down the side and over the top. I love seeing how she'll work away at someting with no notion that she might be 'wrong'. How important it is at this age and stage for them to try and succeed first, at whatever level they're at, and learn more later.
When she's not ignoring my pleas to eat her dinner, she's asking me how things work. How do binoculars work? How do they make toilet paper? Where does gasoline come from? Well, I found websites to illustrate each answer, including a youtube of How It's Made that is all about toilet paper. I had planned to show her how water can bend a picture like the lenses do in binoculars by putting drops of water onto a covered magazine page. So she could see how the type was different under the droplets. But before I got around to it, we got started on our volcano projects, as both Hannah and Leif had lots of questions about them from our recent trip.
I found a great book at the library (the Kingfisher series of course) about volcanoes and earthquakes, with experiments to do for each topic. The first one we did was seeing how heat can keep thins circulating, like a current in the water. This was to larn about the magma in the earth's mantle, and how it was a current of hot liquid that just kept going around and around. I filled a clear bowl with cold water and into it placed a small bottle full of hot water and red food dye. The hot water cycled out of the bottle and moved in a current around in the cold water. While we were doing this experimen, I spilled some drops of water on our library book. Hannah noticed that the typed words under the drops of water looked bigger than the rest of that paragraph, and said "Hey maybe that's how binoculars work!". I love homeschooling.
We then did a puzzle using paper I'd traced the continents onto and cut out. This was of course for learning about Pangea (Pangaea?). I started to talk about how dinosaur and plant fossils were found on continents far away from each other and that paleontologists had wondered what caused this. Hannah piped up with "So they made a HYPOTHESIS right?". She'd recently watched a Magic School Bus episode where this concept was featured. Way cool kiddo. So these finds backed up the concept of the continents once being part of a larger land mass. I could relate this back to the earth's mantle because we'd already talked about it, and had settled on the idea that the earth's crust was like the shell pieces on a cracked hard-boiled egg. Seperate but touching, and attached to the egg itself. This brought us to earthquakes. After reading and discussing how and why they occur, we experimented with it. :)
Last weekend we celebrated the Chinese New Year at the annual Lion Dance Parade in Chinatown. Leif was interested to see our various Civic, Federal and Provincial representatives there. All of whom we'd voted for, back when I gave him my vote in our Federal and Civic elections. How cool is that? I introduced him to a few of the members who's names he'd recognise the best (Rob Fleming, Denise Savoie, Charleyne Thornton-Joe and our mayor Dean Fortin).
(** I uploaded al the pictures this week on the wrong setting, and it's to much work to redo it. Just double-click on a picture to see it bigger.)
Then we settled in to watch the Lion's dance through the street and munch on lettuce offerings and red envelopes.
We ended up at the Chinese Public School, which I've always thought is a cool building, and a great part of the Chinese community.
Okay, the dude, the Leifster, the Leiferamalama.
Well, the big event last week was opening his own bank account. Here he is counting out his cash, then filling in the deposit slip, and then making the deposit.
Then he asked me to order him a coveted Lego set and blew less than half his dough. He has changed paper routes to a route twice as big as his old one. $40 a month and it's a good hour of work for him. He plans to save $1000 and then spend $100. It'll take him 2 years to do that. He's been asking about the two other friends that he knows who have a bank account. One has a decent sum in his because his distant relatives (no grandparents in town) send him money for his birthday and xmas instead of gifts. And another friend is given an allowance instead of needing to earn the dough. I explained why these 2 other circumstances occur and how his life is different. He accepts this very easily and I believe takes pride in how he's earning his money. Maybe when he reaches a big figure amount in his account, I'll add a bit to. I'm still debating this. But the paper route will give him a $50 bonus if he has no complaints for the first 6 months. We're 4 months in and so far so good. I'm proud of what I've taught him about money, the little Jedi.
So I mentioned his art before. He's done about 15 of these, and the following are a sampling of personal faves, though they all rock. I LOVE the titles he chooses for these. If you look closely you can figure out what's going on, who's on what side and who's just a crazy-wierd animal. My personal favorite is DRAGON'S HILL, the one of the reclusive mountain goat herders who are afraid of strangers.
(Remember to double-click for a better view of these.)
THE PITS OF TREASON
THE DARK MOUNTAINS
THE JUNGLE OF MIS FORTUN (his spelling)
DRAGON'S HILL
And this is the card he made me for Christmas.
Isn't that awesome?
His chapter book reading is moving at a pace that rivals my own. He's plowed through a bunch of Thortun Burgess books, and keeps his current one under his pillow. He found one really boring, saying he kept reading it to see if it would pick up, but it was just about a boring old frog. Way to know what you like buddy.
Ivy is cute as ever, and still as small. Her over-sized younger pal Cohen towers over her by 3+ inches, and she's just fine with that. Favorite books are the Star Wars lego catalogue (of course!), The Gruffao, Goodnight Moon and the ones about trucks and planes and dinosaurs. She had Al hostage for a whole day on the sofa, when Mom and Al came to visit, bringing him more books to read to her. When she sees him in the morning, she brings him a book or three. She survives on Cheerios, eggs, bananas, smoothies and granola bars. She loves to make movies, so here's a few.
She's singing Peanut Butter sandwich made with jam, yum yum yum yum yum.
And then these 2, well, I love 'em. I missed the time where she hid the puppy and then commanded it to "STAY! Stay puppy!". Another time she ordered Bodhi not to eat her gnomes. "Don't eat 'dem Bodhi-cat!".
Kit and I are well, by the way. We're renovating our basement to entice another unsuspecting masters student to rent a lovely posh suite underneath our herd of elephants. We'll keep you posted.
C
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