Celebrating Hanukkah

Every year along with all our Christmas book and activities we spend a little time reading and learning about Hanukkah. It is easy to find books about this Jewish holiday. The Library usually has a big group of them pulled off the shelf much like the Christmas books at this time of year and they are set up on top of the book shelves for easy access.  I always find a few good books there to bring home and read with my kids on the first day of Hanukkah. (I do a similar thing with Passover around Easter time)

We read a few books and listened to some Hanukkah music. I had found this DK Sticker book on the used book shelf a few months ago. It looked brand new and was only 25 cents. I am glad I picked it up and brought it home. I am even more glad I remembered it and could still find it when it was the right time to use it.

When we attended Bethlehem this year, and every year past, one of the booths in the "city" hands out a dreidel to the kids. They have been floating around our house for a week and some already but the kids found them and figured out how to play.

And of course for dinner I decided to make some latkes. Mine, I am happy to say, looked almost exactly like the ones pictured.  These of course aren't mine because I didn't break my camera out at all during the day. Henry had at least three of them, Ian had a few too, and Sophie actually finished the one I gave her. For kids who aren't usually that adventurous with food, especially Sophie, this was quite an achievement.

I also served applesauce but we didn't eat it with the latkes. We had it for desert. I didn't make the traditional donuts. We have so many cookies and treats in the house I didn't think we needed yet another.

My husband tried to teach the kids a hebrew prayer that he knows. The kids recognized it from the book/books we had read that day.

We didn't light any candles and we don't have a menorah but I think we celebrated Hanukkah in our own way.

There is a special kinship I feel with the Jewish people and faith. Perhaps because we share some of the same history and scripture. For what ever reason, I like sharing a little bit of the holidays remembering the miracles God has performed for his people.

Evaluating the Wii

 It has been almost a year since we bought our family a Wii.  I am still sitting the fence on how much I like it.  There are good things about having a game system in the house and there are also some aspects that I don't always appreciate.

I personally love to use the Wii Fit and I admit I am a pretty good skate boarder and all those years in marching band have paid off because I can't be beat at the Rhythm Parade. I am however horrible at the Soccer heading and juggling.  My husband and I, after the kids go to bed have been known to have a little bowling tournament or we pass a few levels of Lego Harry Potter or Lego Indiana Jones. My goodness can time fly while you are lost in the world of video games!

Here is Sophie doing the Kung Fu game with the Wii Fit. Aren't our Mii characters cute!

Sophie actually don't really enjoy playing the Wii all that much. She will take her turn on Wii Fit and she has her Daring Game for Girls but she isn't interested in the Lego games or even the sports.  She prefers games like Civilization on the computer.

The boys, at times, live and breath wii games. They talk about, draw pictures about and even dream about their wii games.  They have been known to even pray for help to figure out how to pass a certain level.  I can usually tell when they have had too much Wii time.

We have tried to keep the time on the Wii to only an hour on Saturdays and once in awhile during other days. But for some reason the boys seem to think that any time Mom has band practice or a meeting to go to at night that means they get to play Wii.  I need to break them of this idea but then when Mom is away the mice to play.

So for now the Wii is staying. We have a handful of games and sometimes even try a new one that we find at the library. The boys are each getting  a new game for Christmas. One is an active game that even requires the use of a mat the other is a creative game. We will see how things go. When all I hear about from the boys is their latest strategy to pass the next obstacle in Indi I start to threaten them with a Wii fast. It is sort of scary to see how much power these games have over my boys especially.  They can fly through their chores each Saturday so they can get to their hour of play. 

So, yes, I have a sort of Love/Hate relationship with the Wii. I do enjoy playing the games occasionally and I don't mind that my kids play them a little.  I just object to it becoming the sole motivation to get things done or the ultimate reward.

Everything is a constant work in progress. We will continue to see how it goes.

Mary

 Molly has really embraced the Nativity Story. We have been reading book after book and watching movies about Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus for weeks now. Molly loves this story.  She is always telling me to read "Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus book". Usually this is accompanied by her throwing one of the many Christmas pictures books at me that we have on the shelf or at the moment they are usually scattered about the room.

When the Christmas boxes were unloaded a few weeks ago so that we could decorate the tree and put out the nativities there was a bag of things that Molly in particular has enjoyed. It is the bag of costumes that I made a number of years back so our family could dress up to go to Bethlehem. They have been used ever since so our kids could act out the nativity story. I think it is time to make some bigger shepherd costumes. Sophie and Ian can't fit into any of them anymore.

 Molly quickly picked out a robe and a headdress and asked me to make her Mary. She often doesn't want me to take this off so she has dressed like Mary for several different outings. And her pink hat and bowed baby is now constantly playing the role of baby Jesus.


Molly has caught the Christmas story very well and is often singing away at Angels We have Heard on High. She usually gets stuck on the Glooooooooooo and never gets to the -ia but she has the main gist of the song.

It really is very cute to see her take such an interest in the goings on of Christmas.

But, of course there is also a fair amount of singing about raindeer and she also has appeared as a few other famous ladies lately also.

I think this is a sugar plum fairy mixed with lady liberty.  She bounces from one outfit to the next rather quickly. She hasn't mastered the art of the quick costume change yet.

What we would do without this cute but busy little two year old around the house?!

December so far

 I can't believe it is already almost half way through  December. The days are passing so quickly.

My kids are counting down the days until Christmas but honestly I didn't do any kind of advent type things this year. December crept up on me before I had anything planned out. But that hasn't stopped us from reading a bunch of Christmas books, learning some new Christmas songs or going to our usual Christmas activities.

We of course went to the Christmas Creche Exhibit.  We saw many lovely nativity sets from around the world. The kids had fun going on the scavenger hunt through all the rooms looking and trying to find the nativity with a shepherd holding a chicken or one with an angel in a pink dress. My kids always look forward to this event and are thrilled to see the marionette show performed in the children's room.  Molly really enjoyed the dressing up and finally getting to touch and play with a nativity set.  It is hard to have a 2 year old in a place where she can't touch anything.

We also took a trip to Bethlehem where we get to walk through the Christmas story. It is the same show, usually even the same actors but every year it is a highlight of this season. The pictures throughout this post were all taken while we were at this event.

The kids love seeing the animals and the different booths that are set up to see carpentry tools, foods, natural dyes, pottery and games from that time and place.

We have also had a number of parties to attend. My husband in particular is thrilled that the Ward Christmas Party has come and gone. He was put in charge of it this year and he was a bit stressed having to plan and carry out this event for 200+ people.  But it was a wonderful evening, everything seemed to run smoothly and everyone had a good time.

Everything is packed into the first two weeks of December.  Most of our yearly Christmas outings have already come and gone. We are now at the waiting.... waiting.... waiting sage of the Christmas season. We still have a bunch of pictures books to read, a number of Christmas movies I plan to introduce my kids to, and I plan to have Jim Dale tell us the story of A Christmas Carol.

There is still lots of things in which to fill in the next two weeks. Christmas day will be here before we know it.

Test Results

I met with my Educational Specialist today.  This is one of the necessary parts of joining a Charter School.  I have to report on our studies and turn in samples of their work each month. At the beginning of the school year the kids each took a test to determine a level to base progress against.  My ES brought the results of those tests with her today.

Since my kids have never gotten report cards and have never taken any tests like this before it was sort of nice to see that they are doing just fine.

Henry is reading, writing and doing mathematics at about a 1.9 grade level. Which means he tested at the first grade, ninth month average. So he is right on target as far as age and abilities. Since reading is still a struggle with him (Those front two teeth are still holding strong! Those are the reading teeth as my Sister-in-law, who was a school teacher before having her own children,  explained to me once.)  We will see if reading finally clicks for him in the next little while. He reads but very slowly and he has to really work at it still. So it was nice to hear he is still right on target as far as academics.

Ian was excited to learn that despite being a 2nd grader he is reading at a 4.8 grade level and scored 4.1 in math.  I don't know exactly how they measure these things but evidently he is doing great.

Sophie's number were impressive as well. She scored a 6.2 in math and 9.9 in reading. 

Now these scores don't really mean a whole lot. I don't post them here to brag.  I know they aren't a measure of how smart my kids are or guarantee that they will do well in the future.  It doesn't even tell me that I am a great teacher.  I know my kids are learning and I have been happy with what they have been able to do thus far.  I never felt the need to test them before this but since the school insists on it, and if we want to have access to the funds the school provides,  we have to comply.   More than anything it is a relief to know my kids can take tests and do well at them. 

Now we await to see what the school says about Ian and Sophie's required writing assessment and when I mentioned to the kids that they have to take a scantron test in the spring they didn't know what I was talking about. They knew they needed to take a test but scantron was a new word to them.  So the testing continues.   And for kids who have never taken a real test in their lives I am just happy to see they can come through with flying colors.

 This first assessment was given to them via a computer. I wonder if it will make a difference. Perhaps I need to teach them how to fill in bubbles with a #2 pencil.

Transitions

Molly has not been napping lately. She can climb out of her crib and when I put her in there for a nap she emerges a few minutes later and usually when I go back there later I find all the clothes from her shelves dumped on the floor.  So I have given up trying to get her to sleep in her crib during the day. At night she seems to still be doing alright since by then she is especially tired,  I guess.

When we packed the car to go over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving I took the big stroller out of the back of the van and put it in the house.  I never got around to putting it back when we got home so it has sat here in the living room for a few days.  While we were doing school work one day Molly grabbed her favorite blanket and asked for her Binky (which she only uses at sleepy time). I relented on the pacifier because I needed her to be quiet for a little while. She climbed into the stroller and even gave herself a pillow and before we knew it she was snoozing away in the noisy front room cuddled up in the stroller.  She slept there for a good hour and a half and would have slept more except I had to wake her so we could go out to some appointment.

She did this same trick the next day again.  It was great. But I finally took the stroller out of the front room because we had to rearrange things a bit when we put the Christmas Tree up.  But when she started to get cranky and asking for her binky, I asked her if she could sleep in Sophie's room on the bunk bed. This is where she will eventually sleep full time.  I didn't know if it would work but she went in and laid down on the bed and slept for a good long nap.  I tried to put her in there for bedtime at night and it didn't work out. Sophie likes to read and night so Molly kept climbing up the ladder and bothering her.  I whisked Molly off to her crib, which is in our closet, and she promptly went right to sleep.

I don't know how we are ever going transition Molly into sleeping in the "girl's room" at night.  8 years is such a big difference in age. Sophie also isn't the most patient of girls. She doesn't like being bothered by here younger siblings and isn't helping the situation.  There isn't much of a choice, however. We don't have a 4th bedroom and Molly can't sleep in our closet forever.

Loves the Thesaurus

In her writing assignments with the Institute of Excellence in Writing curriculum that she has been doing the last few months there are some banned words. When Sophie writes she isn't allowed to use words like got/get, say/said, go/went, good/bad, etc. The goal is to get her to use stronger verbs and better descriptive adjectives.  I introduced her to the thesaurus recently and now she can't seem to write a paragraph with out it. She loves looking up words to find synonyms. I have even caught her just reading it.  I don't blame her, words are fun!

Here is her paragraph from today's lesson.  She didn't score full points since she didn't include an alliteration or a simile. She also did not include one of the sentence openers they taught her in her last lesson but I think she did remarkably well. Her writing is vastly improving and she seems to enjoy the process a little more now. It does require more work which she does fight at times but I think she is exploring the creative aspects of writing a little more since we switched to this program for writing.

The assignment was to read through a page of text describing how beavers build dams, outline the main points and then write a short summary paragraph.

Dwelling of Safety


Beavers build their homes soundly so that opponents can't harm them. They build their lodges at night so that enemies can't see them. Firstly, they accumulate sticks and rocks to form a mound. Then place more on top of the mound to make it higher than water level. After that, bevers tunnel to the center from under the water, dig it out, and create a room. They gather small twigs, which they eat and use to repair their lodge, for when they live in their homes all winter. The lodge is a secure dwelling.

It isn't perfect but it is so much better than what she used to write!