Week one of 2006

So we discovered skiing and now that's all anyone wants to do. Caitrin, Liam and Jacob all did brillinatly on the slopes and got all that wonderful fresh air mothers concern themselves with.

Caitrin is reading On the Banks of Plum Creek all by herself, slowly, painstakingly, but refusing to let me help. Do I hear shouts from choirs of angels? Yes! She is also coloring in the ink drawings that we Xerox and making a beautiful collection. Challenges: reading fluidly, responding to punctuation as she reads and making her lower case letter only go up halfway on the lined notebook paper.

I got a kick out of two things. One: she received an "Olivia" book for Christmas and read it herself! She just bought the seond one and loves it. Two: We read "Phoebe the Spy" together (she part of the book, and me the other part) and she adored that story. She narrated the whole thing to Jon on a walk yesterday and it tickled me to hear her tell such a vivid version of the story. She compared Phoebe to a CIA agent. So cute!

She's into rewatching old Disney movies such as Aladdin, Tarzan, The Little Mermaid and more. She does a great job of narrating those stories to anyone who will listen. We continue to read mythology too.

Liam is also copying and reading. He finished his first Soup book over Christmas break and loved it. He listens attentively to our read alouds and continues to devour poetry. For math, we are going to dump Math U See (since it is way beneath his current level) and move on to Jacob's algebra starting the coming week. He and Jacob can work on it together.

Both Caitrin and Liam are hooked on Quiddler (card game) that makes you spell words out of random letters (a bit like Scrabble but with cards). Liam is great at it. We are also playing a lot of catch phrase and I'm thrilled at the way their verbal skills are growing.

We got to watch "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" as well as "Charlie and Chocolate Factory" over the break. They also watched myriad Christmas movies such as "Scrooged," "The Muppet Christmas Carol," and "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." I liked comparing these stories.

Jacob continues his cookie business and has nearly finished his level of Math U See (in a semester!). We will embark on Algebra with Liam starting this week. He is addicted to skiing after one day on the slopes. Loved it. He blogs and keeps his journal going. He has done a great job of writing about science and history in the fall. I am going to introduce some testing ideas for those two subjects to help him prepare for essay testing.

Jacob is still playing saxophone and improving lots. Caitrin is playing violin and not improving as quickly but seems happy to do it.

We all went to Festival of Lights this year and Jon was with us. What a treat. Liam lights up himself any time we are around animals. Hope to go again this week (zoo).

Time to close. Life with the kids is good and I feel like they have struck a great balance between organized learning and their own pursuits.