19 September 2010

Helen started kindergarten this week. Helen likes riding the bus to school, her very nice teacher and playing on the swings at recess.

After a short summer break, Sophie and Abe are back to work at the piano and the ukelele. Abe's teacher, Steve, is nice enough to come to our house for lessons. 

Abe is playing soccer this fall. He had his second game this week. Abe has great spatial awareness and the ability to anticipate where the ball will be. It's fun to watch him maneuver around the field. Brandan calls him the Playmaker. 

We celebrated a 4-foot party this week for Abe. We had a party when Sophie reached the 4 foot mark and now it's a tradition. At this party we each ate 4 packages of M&Ms while we watched a movie. 

We won't be having Monday School this year. Here's what we're doing instead. Becky made 8 cards representing different genres. Each week when we go to the library, each of our kids will pick 2 of the cards and will have to find books of those genres to check out. They can also pick out 2 fun books. We adapted this idea from Susan Wise Bauer, but she had each of her kids check out 8 library books every week. However, let's face it, we don't want late fees on 32 library books, and despite our good intentions, we often have late fees.

Here are the kids' choices from our first trip. Can you tell who picked which card? The kids had fun looking for books. It definitely made them choose a different kind of book than they usually get and they are enjoying each others books as well as their own.