7 Quick Takes: Take 6

Ready for an update on what's been keeping our girls busy? Let's do some Quick Takes.

1. I Week was for instruments, ice cream, Indians, insects, island, inch. We packed a lot into this week! Homemade instruments were the big hit.

Toilet paper roll kazoos. Miriam's still doing the pose.

Tissue box guitar

We only made one and sharing is tough!

We also tried out painting with a q-tip. Who knows why this is so much fun? But Miriam and Vivian both really get into it.

And some extremely inauthentic Indian (as in Native American) head dresses. We did get several books from the library about Indians and read them together so hopefully they remember those pictures more than these bedazzled strips of construction paper.

2. Game night with Mema and Nana. We love when they come to play. (Notice Miriam on the left "stacking the deck" of Candyland cards.)

3. Climbing commenced. No idea how we can keep Felicity at all safe. Keeping up with the sisters has given her some unnatural abilities.

Speaking of Felicity, it's about time she started pulling her own weight around here.

4. Vivian had an appointment with Dr. Ear. She had tubes put in her ears when she was 8 months old because of repeated, bloody ear infections. It was horrible. (Sorry if that was too much gore.) Anyways, one of them has worked its way out and we're waiting for the other one to come out naturally as well. If it doesn't, Dr. Ear has to take it out surgically. Not the preferred method and Dr. Ear is confident we won't need that. But he'll see us again in 6 months...Anyways (again), we waited a little longer than usual for Dr. Ear. Mommy came up with a fun new game to keep everyone amused called "Take a Picture of My Silly Face". Daddy even got in on it and sent a picture from where ever he was working; Viv said, "Yup, that looks like Daddy." She thought this was the best, funniest game. So keep that in your back pocket for the next time you're crammed in a 9'x9' room full of expensive medical devices with three very young children. Also bring animal crackers.

5. St. Patrick's Week was kind of a break for Mommy. We did fun little crafts and nothing exceptionally educational.

6. J Week Jewels, jump, Jack, journal, jellyfish...

Miriam worked so hard on her jeweled J. It was AMAZING how sparkly it turned out!!

Both girls truly enjoyed "journaling" too in their new notebooks. We did several different kinds; a couple really structured pages and some free thought. They did the drawing, Mommy did the writing. We've continued doing a couple pages a day and maybe we'll share some of our pictures in the future. The best one so far: Mommy handed them the Michigan travel guide, they cut out their favorite pictures, glued them into the journal, drew around them a bit, and described to Mommy what they liked best about the pictures while she wrote it down.

 6. Last weekend Mommy and Grandma went shopping for a Mother's Dress for Aunt Annette's wedding. We found a dress for Grandma to wear! And it was a GREAT bargain. While they were shopping, Daddy took the girls on a carousel ride. This is the same carousel Mommy and Daddy rode on their first date. Too sweet.

7. And finally, Mommy got her hands on a reading curriculum. Sounds so official and feels that way, too. Nana, Tim's Mom, was a grade school teacher and principal during her career. A few weeks back she was playing with the girls and said, "They are showing signs of reading readiness. Now is a great time to start teaching them to read." Mommy had no idea where to begin with that, so she contacted friends of the family who homeschool. They were extremely helpful and got us set on the right path. We're using a phonics based program. It begins with the very basics and lessons are short with lots of review each time. Miriam is picking up the rhythm of the lessons pretty quickly. Vivian also does well and Mommy can tell she gets it but Viv has hard time sitting still so we're doing our best to try to fit this with her learning style...AKA including as much movement as possible.  We have no idea how teachers do it with so many children/so many learning styles/so many IQs in one room. Teachers, you are amazing.