2. Today I set Famke up with some math manipulatives. Last week I made her a flip book of numbers from one to one hundred and picked up one hundred foam pieces for her to count. It's easy for her, but it's always good to review. Surprisingly, EVERYONE got in on it. That reminded me that I have all sorts of manipulatives that I've picked up at thrift stores over the years. It wasn't long before EVERYONE was sitting around the table with their very own projects going on. I just KNEW that someday this would all pay off. They sorted by tens, by shape, by color, and by thickness, and we put together very many different patterns. I think I may have had the most fun of all.
3. I made homemade macaroni and cheese for lunch. The macaroni MUST be yellow, orange, and green for everyone to approve. And there MUST be at least three different kinds of cheese. It was extremely good, if i do say so myself, but for the rest of the day I could tell that I had overdone my carb intake.
4. After lunch I thought they would all want to go outside. They did not. Said it was too cold. It was not.
5. So, I read a few more chapter from "Mr. Popper's Penguins". It feels good to be reading something that doesn't rhyme. Now that they are into the story, all four of them sit very still and listen, with only an occasional blood-curdling scream thrown in just for fun, I guess.
6. After the reading of the book, Jonge went back to his work of perfecting a ramp made from wooden blocks. Famke and Kado each had two small dolls they were creating exciting story lines for, these dolls kept getting stranded a top "tall mountains" and were in constant need of rescue. Feintsje was content to build with Legos and spent a good amount of time constructing a fence to keep the zoo animals in.
7. Soon after it was nap time for Feintsje and it only took about five minutes before he fell deeply asleep on my lap.
8. While he slept Jonge stripped the bed in the guest room. All the sheets, blankets and pillows made a tent which had a tunnel to get into it and held three kids, a bunch of dolls, books, and a flash light. But for some reason I cannot guess, that got old quite quickly.
9. Then they filled up old lunch boxes with REAL tools that they found all around the house. They all took turns working to fix a rocking chair that has a loose arm. This seemed to take a very long time, so as they took turns, whoever wasn't banging away on my chair went to the table and made letters out of pipe cleaners. There were many C's, L's, and O's made. Famke made me a tiara and a bracelet.
10. Pake came home from work at 3:45 and took everyone for a walk to see Hertsje and Broeder. While they did this I assessed that it should only take me about three days to get everything back to where it came from. But I could be wrong. It could take four days. But I wouldn't change a thing. Except for diapers. I do change those.
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Do you mean there is macaroni all one colour? Not where kids live. Think not about the four days puttng back tools, be happy about the tools that got "found" while they were lost out of sight for weeks. Put them back where they belong (alas, I do not have a place for everything and everything in its place, too many everythings and too little place over here). Do you have the learning projects thriftstorethings all in one box? Learning the names of colours, shapes and numbers, learning the names of all kinds of animals and objects by playing is so much more fun then learning them when you really need them. In the garden you could also play the - I think you would call it : I spy play. In the Netherlands it is called I see, I see (ik zie, ik zie) f.i. the colour orange and then they must look for everything orange: the crayon at the gardentable, the flower (and tell them just casualy the name of the flower, like, yes, there is an orange sunflower over there, the bathtub for Hertsje etc. The younger ones will be looking for orange as well as the older ones and they will learn by experience, just remember to let them answer some more as the first one (explain that to Famke and Jonge, they know already so much more) then do some really difficult ones just with Jonge and Famke, f.i. in the kitchen things you can eat, or things you display (only birds or candlesticks), cattle from their play-animals. Lying on your back in the garden, looking away from the sun at the sky at small clouds and explaining what shape they see can be fun too, it stimulates their imagination and it tells you about their litlle world. Btw Lego is good for developing all kinds of abilities, just do avoid the newest playpeople from Lego, they have ugly expressions on their faces, like many eastern childrens Tvseries not shy from ugly expressions on faces of "childheroes" in animations. Big bad wolf of Little red ridinghood is a saint compaired to those "heroes". Are you going to tell the stories of The silver skates and the boy who put his thumb in the dyke to them? Have a nice day, temps over here are going to be in the high twenties, about 83 Fahr. I like it much cooler, like 63! DM
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