Claire and School

Claire is still the most dramatic and difficult of our children. But she is also the most grateful and physically loving of the kids. She enjoys being a helper and working together with anyone in the family and has become a much better picker-upper during chore time. The biggest obstacle we've been trying to overcome is her eating habits. She has been very picky and she has thrown the biggest tantrums over food. But as she gets older she has learned to power through the food she doesn't like so she can get it over with. She and I have had a lot of fun on Tuesdays (when Ruth and Will are at a class at the Explora Museum) playing with all the exhibits and spending some alone time. She hasn't shown much interest in mathematics yet, aside from playing with the manipulatives that we have. But she is proving to be as precocious as Ruth in the reading arena. She knows all the upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make. This week she has started sounding out words, essentially reading ... her first word was "kids." She has also finally mastered her colors and knows most of the shapes. Claire loves going to primary; she has the most wonderful teacher and a great little girl friend in her class. She is also still totally in love with babies of all kinds and has really started the make-believe stage where every day she is a different animal (today it was a wild hunter dog puppy from a documentary we watched).

Will and School

 William doesn't really like it when I tell him it's time to do school work. However, when I give him time to explore and work on his own he works wonderfully. He loves to create little machines with tape and rubber bands and other trinkets he finds. He has also become very creative with Legos. Will loves learning about dinosaurs and insects and has made his own books about them. He is interested in cooking and loves making and identifying patterns. He is slowly working on reading and really likes learning tricks (like the letters o and w say OW!) He really likes talking about doubles addition and skip counting by 2s, 3s and 4s. Some of his goals this year that he worked on and accomplished were to learn more about insects, read all of his of his Nora Gaydos books twice, learn how to do a flip on the trampoline and learn about place value to the hundreds.

 Lego fun!

 We learned about symmetry and he used these same pieces to create several different symmetrical arrangements. He also made all the numbers from 1 to 12 out of Legos. And then he created a brontosaurus, tyrannosaurus and together we made a triceratops and ankylosaurus.

Taos, NM

I had some work in Taos so I brought the family along. We visited the gorge bridge and the Pueblos. The gorge bridge is 565 feet up and is the 7th highest bridge in the US. The pueblos have been inhabited for 1000 years and participated in the Pueblo revolt. The pueblo is also considered the main influence for south-western architecture.

Lizard Mania/Wiki Stix

 The kids' favorite thing to do in the mornings is run outside and catch lizards.

 We went to a restaurant that gave the kids Wiki Stix to play with instead of crayons...let's just say that is their favorite restaurant now.

Alpaca Farm

I found an Alpaca Farm that is about 5 miles from our house, so one day the kids and I popped over there. The man who runs the farm is retired and he and his wife just started raising Alpaca 8 years ago. He was so kind to the kids and let us feed the Alpaca and they gave each of the kids a finger puppet made from Alpaca fleece.

UNM

One day I took the kids to the University of New Mexico to check out their museums and play at the duck pond...which should really be called a turtle pond.