Summer Swan and Monkey

At the beginning of the summer I gave Rachael the option of doing gymnastics or dance. She chose dance. I didn't want my 5-year-old learning hootchie moves, so I looked into ballet. We found the Idaho Falls School of Ballet. They do a Tutus and Fairytales for children Rachael's age to introduce them to a few ballet basics, as well as the story and music from a classic ballet. For a month, Rachael told everyone we met that she was going to do Swan Lake. She was so excited. We went to ballet everyday for a week. At the end, they had a 15 minute performance for the parents to see what they had learned. Rachael loved the story and even recognized the music when we heard it playing on the radio a week later.

Anna was so disappointed every time we dropped Rachael off and she couldn't go dance with her. We started Anna in gymnastics since she was too young for the ballet. She was definitely glad to be down on the floor and all of the equipment instead of watching Rachael have all the fun. She has no fear.

Week 3

For Reading this week, Anna worked on the letter C while Rachael did the "AN" word worksheet. I kind of feel like the worksheets are a cop out, but I guess that's ok once in a while.

We learned about the different parts of plants and what they do. Then we put celery and food dye in water to see how the stems move water to the leaves. We had to wait a day or two to see the results. The blue worked the best, but Rachael had also diluted her red after we set up the experiment.

We made bean mosaics for our art projects. We used navy beans, lentils, and popcorn. Anna liked the different beans. Rachael was more interested in making intricate pictures and patterns. We made sure to have paper towels ready for wiping glue and all went well.

For math day, I had the girls bring 3 toys. We measured the length of each. I then explained how graphs work to help you easily compare information. We graphed the lengths of the toys and then used the graph to figure out which toys were longest, shortest, and in between.

We're Still Alive

This week was Gary’s first birthday. I’ve been dreading it for a while. I decided at the beginning of the month that I wanted us to do some kind of service on the day to make it less about me and more about us as a family and the good that we can do. We gathered up a bunch of stuff and took it to the Haven which is temporary housing for homeless women and their children. Rachael and Anna both donated one of their baby dolls. Then we stopped at the cemetery with some flowers. We grabbed some sandwiches from Geraldine’s afterward. When we got home, we worked on the garage, which needed some definite decluttering. 

The busyness helped. Of course we had a lot of sad moments throughout the month. It is hard to remember the good things that happened a year ago without the intense pain I felt then pouring back over me. I’m so grateful for our family and friends that have helped us through this year and thought of us on this day. Thank you.