Spring is Almost Springing

The wee little crocuses are sprouting in the garden and the frost is not attacking the grass and windshields...is spring springing? It's light out before seven and the birds are chirping...must be! This also brings on second term reporting....yahooooo...?

What have we been up to? Much more outside activities, more biking and skateboarding, soccer is winding up which leads us to bike racing season.

Nevaen has let his guard down and let me see a glimmer that he can in fact read.We had a date at the library, just the two of us, and he did read me a whole book. I'm certain he did this as quickly as possible to bring the date to an end and get back home to finish whatever I had interrupted. The bottom line is that I don't feel hopeless about the fact that the things I do are in fact helping.

February Fun

We started the month this month with a trip to Mt. Washington with Auntie and Nona. Aidaen and Auntie went off on their own to explore the hills with their snowboards while Nevaen and Aija each took a lesson. Nevaen did snowboarding last year but was frusterated so we signed him up, and Aija decided that she wanted to try skiing so that occupied the two young ones for the afternoon. Nona and I went on the O-Zone which is a innertube ride! What a blast...we had races down the hill and faces full of snow by the end.
We have some different Valentines activities to do..hopefully will make math a little more fun! We started out this morning reading a book together explaining some of the different theories about how Valentines Day got started, there are 4 different main ideas which I also found interesting! The kids followed that up by starting to make their own Valentines for next week.
The kids have all built a playground out of plasticine and popsicle sticks. The kids at our local primary school did this activity and I thought it looked like great fun so we decided to give it a try. It really got their fingers and brains moving...a little frusterating but we were successful and the kids always enjoy the result of building something.
I have gotten a few different computer games from the library for Nevaen. He seems to respond better to learning to read from the machine than from me! Which is fine...whatever gets him reading is ok by me!
Aidaen has started learning German through Rosetta stone...he has worked on the program only a couple times but is already remembering a few words, I am thinking of starting the other two as well...it certainly can't hurt.
Aidaen started the babysitting course a couple weeks ago and LOVES it! They are teaching first aid and all the usual things but also teaching the different stages of development so the kids will know best how to take care of and entertain the different age groups.
We have also done a couple of fun art progects which I will post pictures of as soon as I get new batteries in the camera!