The new math

William's school has introduced a new math curriculum. This has been met with much parental angst because although it teaches the same concepts, the methods are completely different from how most people were taught*.
Take this math work, for example. William sat down and worked out these two math problems without any help. He was totally confident and proud. I totally do not recognize or understand his work here though.....

*I've done some research and I actually think many of the components of this curriculum are amazing, especially if they work as they are supposed to. So, I am currently undecided about my opinion.

Amelia's artwork

Amelia created this wonderful work of art on her magnadoodle last week. It is, of course, Mommy and me. We are clearly dancing (her words). Amelia is twirling (hence the tel next to her picture) and I am spinning (she sounded out the sn part).

I love her creativity, the precious drawings and the beginnings of her being able to sound out/ spell words!

If oranges are funny....

The night before, Gemma used her orange to have the whole family rolling on the floor with tears of laughter. (See previous entry) Gemma, of course, did it over and over. Why wouldn't you with such a great reaction?

The next day, I turned around to find her waiting expectantly with her strawberry in her mouth. The look on her face says it all. She is hilarious and she knows it. She is just waiting for the inevitable shrieks of laughter.

Amelia didn't want to be left out of the fun....

Guess what?

Guess who is now registered for kindergarten?

She is totally ready. Mama might not be...

Kids are hilarious

Guess who started this trend? Hint: it's Gemma.

Happy birthday uncle Jim!

Birthday cards are so fun. The kids usually get really into signing them and creating pictures. That it, unless there is more than one birthday. Then they do a bang up job on the first one and then refuse to do more.

The kids adore uncle Jim (all of us do, really). They know how much he likes funny stuff, so they all made their best attempt to make him laugh. The result made ME laugh, so I took a picture.

Note: when we were there visiting over Memorial Day, we went to the science center. There was a computerized display about different birds. My kids were gleefully pushing buttons faster than the computer could keep up. No one could read anything. Jim ingeniously discovered if the kids touched in one portion of the screen which allowed the interested parties to continue reading. Which is when he coined the "circle the bob white head" song to encourage our kids to keep touching the part of the screen that didn't impact the reading. This song was such a hit, the kids are still singing it. And they still remember the words and created several pictures about it on his birthday card.

Olympics

John and I love the Olympics. We don't follow any sports or team. We don't have time and are honestly not interested. We don't follow any of the Olympic sports outside of the Olympics either. However, every 2 years we lift the sports ban and watch as much Olympic television as we can. I just love the Olympics.

Most evenings when I am home from work, we have been going downstairs to watch the recorded Olympics. William has enjoyed pieces of the snowboarding and ski jump competitions. Amelia has been the best fan thus far, she's watched and enjoyed everything. William watches for a few minutes and then wanders off to build Legos within earshot. If something exciting happens, he will pop his head up and see what is going on. However, out of everything, Amelia and Gemma loved the ice skating. I was getting ready to fast forward through the skating*, when Amelia hopped up from the couch and began her own performance. It was gorgeous. She was so inspired by the jumps, leaps and twirls. She loved the dresses and the music. Before the segment was over, she was begging for ice skating lessons.

Just after these pictures were taken, Gemma hopped up and joined Amelia briefly in dancing.


* this is going to sound terrible, but ice skating is SO LONG. I enjoy it in very short doses. I'm a much bigger fan of the luge, skeleton, ski jumping, etc that is done and over in about a minute. I'm fine watching 1-2 ice skating routines and then fast forwarding through the rest.