In the Dark-Well, Almost

Hmm, so here I sit typing by candlelight and the glow of my iPhone. No, we didn't forget to pay our electricity bill, the winter winds have swept through our rural neighbourhood again and I suspect, have wreaked a little havoc.
I thought I'd relax a little and write tomorrows letter of the day on the board before heading off to bed with a potentially sick husband. First, the 24 hour flu (or something) claimed Savanna on Saturday and now my poor husband is feeling less than stellar. I know it's not my cooking though, because I am feeling fine-famous last words I know.
Tomorrows letter will be "Y", yacht, yak, yam, all that good stuff. We've been working on a little alphabet review here for the last three weeks or so. At first I started out with an overly ambitious three letters per day and I soon realized that that was a bit too much so we've tapered it down to one. It's been a challenge coming up with fun ways to review each letter but thanks to the Internet I've made some progress. Today's worksheet seemed to be a hit. Cutting out x's and pasting them next to pictures that have the x sound seemed to be a fun activity. Anything crafty goes over well with this creative daughter of mine-and math, she loves her math. The concept of adding and subtracting took all of two days for her to grasp so I think we are well on our way there. She's happy to pick out her own math worksheets as long as we limit it to about 15 minutes at a time.
Science was today's big hit though. She loves her Bill Nye the Science Guy-grades 3 and up-ha! Storms were the topic of the day, a day late after yesterday's strange unseasonal weather, but still close enough to be relevant. After the DVD we did a fun little experiment with making our own rain in a glass. Take water, squirt shaving foam over top and use drops of food colouring to make it rain. Amusing and inexpensive. I'm sure we will be doing this again soon.
So I think I will sit a few minutes more and enjoy the peace and quiet. Come April, when our new arrival gets here things may not be so peaceful and quiet, but then again, who knows? This one seems pretty laid back so far, not nearly as active as his or her big sister was. Maybe it will like to sleep in like me. One can only hope.


I'd also like to note that Savanna took this picture of our wintery chandelier-I think she did a pretty good job.

Winter Winds

Winter winds are blowing once again and with it they are bringing change.
The holiday season is behind us and we reluctantly surrender to everyday life again. If I could have one wish for the holidays this year it would be to be perfectly healthy. Four weeks later and I'm still battling a stuffy nose, although my midwife assures me that its a normal part of pregnancy. Not one that I'm enjoying much though.
So as for change, with each midwives appointment we get closer to having a new baby in our lives and try as you might, I'm not sure you can ever be fully prepared. Savanna is now walking around saying she is having a baby sister for Junior Asparagus (think VeggieTales).
It seems we have just about everything except for a place for the baby to sleep. To move or not to move, to subdivide and make another room, to have the baby in our room for a while, those are the things on the table right now. Personally, I'm not in favour of room sharing as I found with Savanna that both of us slept better apart. Myself being a light sleeper, I would wake up at every little murmur and mumble.
We are also getting into more of a learning routine. I have started to put a bit more structure into our days. I try to do some math and some language everyday mixed with a few days of science and her gymnastics and soccer. It seems to be working well so far. Savanna loves her math and is at the Senior Kindergarten level-not bad for a four year old. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of the library books I ordered on math games.
I also noticed something I found very interesting this week. I was getting very frustrated when I would ask her to name letters on a sheet or the whiteboard (I knew that she knew them), she would get some right, some she would guess at and it just seemed as though she had lost interest. So I switched things up a bit and brought in some foam letters, making it into a game-her accuracy went up to about 97%! I don't know if it was the tactile part of it or being a game that it was much more interesting, but I'm glad it worked.
It's a challenge but its greatly rewarding. The great thing is that it only takes about two hours a day (broken up into little chunks) to cover a lot of material and it leaves a lot of time for the most important activity of all-being a kid.