Later than a Lateit
Timmy continues adding words to his repetoire each day and is making great strides in potty training. On numerous occasions, he has told us he needs to use the potty, gotten there with dry pants, and tinkled or pooped in the potty. However, he has gotten addicted to our current reward system (watching a movie clip on a parent's phone while sitting on the potty) and sometimes likes to sit on the potty every five minutes so he can see more movies. (He prefers movies of horses with background music; the girls want songs from the My Little Pony TV show.) We are very excited about his progress.
Sara has come up with a fun new descriptive phrase construction: when she's wrapped up in her new snowsuit, she is "warmer than a warmit" and if she goes outside without it she is "colder than a coldit" and so on. We have fun coming up with "-er than a -it" and laugh a lot.
Rea is making excellent progress on learning subtraction. This week they were counting down until the muffins came out of the oven, and there were 4 minutes left. Mike was asking "4 is 3 and what? 4 is 2 and what?" and Rea was answering. Then he added "4 is 5 and what?" and without missing a beat, Rea replied, "Take away 1!" On another day, Sara spent her savings on a toy Fluttershy at the grocery store. When we got home, Alison was adjusting her bank account and said aloud, "Sara had 4 dollars and 21 cents and she spent 3 dollars, so..." and paused to erase the old number. Rea chimed in, "So she has 21 cents and ... 1 dollar!" It's so fun to see her learn new things.
This week Timmy and Sara both achieved goals: Timmy by using more than a dozen words regularly and Sara by swinging across the monkey bars by herself. We went to the zoo with Aunt Becky and cousin Ellie, but the carousel and train are closed for the winter, so we also went to the DI and got toys another day. Toys from the DI are a cheaper gift, but they add clutter. Sara didn't care what her goal day dinner was (and Timmy's not talking that well yet (though Rea tried to insist that he wanted "horse food," but Alison vetoed a green salad with apples and carrots as a dinner idea)), as long as she had an apple pie. So on Sunday, we made a lovely apple pie. The kids mixed up the crust and Mike rolled it out and made a cinnamon syrup, while Alison helped the kids peel and core and slice the apples with our handy machine. It turned out delicious and we ate it all up.
On Friday Scott and Sheila babysat so that we could go to a play at Pioneer Theater. It was called "Two Dollar Bill" and was very interesting. We found it unusual because it didn't follow a traditional story arc; it was impossible to predict what would happen at any point, because it just followed events as a professor of military history was found out to have lied on his resume and the impact this had on his wife, grad assistant, and student. It was thought-provoking and talked a lot about the purpose of education, which is a topic Alison likes.
Saturday and part of Monday Alison devoted to going all-out into Montessori for the next few months. This involved printing over a hundred sheets of cardstock worth of cards and activities (Montessori's precept for preschoolers is "Give nothing to the mind that you do not first give to the hand," so all reading and science and geography needs physical objects to manipulate and match) and reorganizing all the shelves and containers she got for Christmas with these new activities. The cutting-out is still not done, but much progress has been made. She also put all the kids' toys into a "toy library," with a system so they can check them out and have to clean them up and return them when they're done. We are hoping this makes Team Clean go faster.
Alison was able to get so much done on Monday because Mike had the day off for Martin Luther King Jr day. Besides keeping the kids out of the Montessori piles, Mike made orange marmalade, one of his favorite jellies. We're excited to try it this week.
Mike has been working a lot on his Tower Defense game over the last week to prepare for the 2nd 1-800-Contacts tower defense competition. The competition was held on Friday and was moderately well attended. The players won the game (which was highly unexpected) by exploiting a flaw in the programming. That was a pleasant surprise. Mike hasn't yet delivered the prize that is associated with that feat.
Mike has also had 3D printer woes over the last month. He fixed it for a day, and then didn't adjust the height of the extruder correctly and ended up encasing it in molten plastic. The end result was a broken thermistor and all sorts of chiseling work. needless to say, Mike is not happy with the printer right now.
Sara has come up with a fun new descriptive phrase construction: when she's wrapped up in her new snowsuit, she is "warmer than a warmit" and if she goes outside without it she is "colder than a coldit" and so on. We have fun coming up with "-er than a -it" and laugh a lot.
Rea is making excellent progress on learning subtraction. This week they were counting down until the muffins came out of the oven, and there were 4 minutes left. Mike was asking "4 is 3 and what? 4 is 2 and what?" and Rea was answering. Then he added "4 is 5 and what?" and without missing a beat, Rea replied, "Take away 1!" On another day, Sara spent her savings on a toy Fluttershy at the grocery store. When we got home, Alison was adjusting her bank account and said aloud, "Sara had 4 dollars and 21 cents and she spent 3 dollars, so..." and paused to erase the old number. Rea chimed in, "So she has 21 cents and ... 1 dollar!" It's so fun to see her learn new things.
This week Timmy and Sara both achieved goals: Timmy by using more than a dozen words regularly and Sara by swinging across the monkey bars by herself. We went to the zoo with Aunt Becky and cousin Ellie, but the carousel and train are closed for the winter, so we also went to the DI and got toys another day. Toys from the DI are a cheaper gift, but they add clutter. Sara didn't care what her goal day dinner was (and Timmy's not talking that well yet (though Rea tried to insist that he wanted "horse food," but Alison vetoed a green salad with apples and carrots as a dinner idea)), as long as she had an apple pie. So on Sunday, we made a lovely apple pie. The kids mixed up the crust and Mike rolled it out and made a cinnamon syrup, while Alison helped the kids peel and core and slice the apples with our handy machine. It turned out delicious and we ate it all up.On Friday Scott and Sheila babysat so that we could go to a play at Pioneer Theater. It was called "Two Dollar Bill" and was very interesting. We found it unusual because it didn't follow a traditional story arc; it was impossible to predict what would happen at any point, because it just followed events as a professor of military history was found out to have lied on his resume and the impact this had on his wife, grad assistant, and student. It was thought-provoking and talked a lot about the purpose of education, which is a topic Alison likes.
Saturday and part of Monday Alison devoted to going all-out into Montessori for the next few months. This involved printing over a hundred sheets of cardstock worth of cards and activities (Montessori's precept for preschoolers is "Give nothing to the mind that you do not first give to the hand," so all reading and science and geography needs physical objects to manipulate and match) and reorganizing all the shelves and containers she got for Christmas with these new activities. The cutting-out is still not done, but much progress has been made. She also put all the kids' toys into a "toy library," with a system so they can check them out and have to clean them up and return them when they're done. We are hoping this makes Team Clean go faster.
Alison was able to get so much done on Monday because Mike had the day off for Martin Luther King Jr day. Besides keeping the kids out of the Montessori piles, Mike made orange marmalade, one of his favorite jellies. We're excited to try it this week.
Mike has been working a lot on his Tower Defense game over the last week to prepare for the 2nd 1-800-Contacts tower defense competition. The competition was held on Friday and was moderately well attended. The players won the game (which was highly unexpected) by exploiting a flaw in the programming. That was a pleasant surprise. Mike hasn't yet delivered the prize that is associated with that feat.
Mike has also had 3D printer woes over the last month. He fixed it for a day, and then didn't adjust the height of the extruder correctly and ended up encasing it in molten plastic. The end result was a broken thermistor and all sorts of chiseling work. needless to say, Mike is not happy with the printer right now.
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