7's

Beanie writes her 7's backwards (as well as her 2, 5, and 9s), which is normal while kids are learning their numbers. This morning we were working on her numbers and I was showing her how 7's are supposed to be turned around. She insisted she was doing them the right way. I pulled down the calendar to show her the 7's on the calendar, as well as her school lunch menu to show her the way 7's were written there. Her response was "Was that from my school? You can't trust anything those guys do....I think the 7's go this way...." and went back to writing her 7's backwards.

Back at it again!

I hope to keep this blog regular again as life is finally returning to a somewhat normal status now that the last of us has made her appearance! Indie Lynn was born on Dec. 30 and is a perfectly healthy and happy baby:) She has been wonderful so far and her older siblings adore her. So do the dogs - they occasionally try to sneak in licking the toes. What is so appealing about baby toes? I have even caught Parker trying to nibble her toes!

Here's the update on everyone else:

Otter is doing OK in school. His amazing intellect has now become a handicap for him as he thinks he does not need to work at all at school. Its a tough battle to keep him challenged and yet reinforce he still needs to learn the basics. He is going to start playing lacrosse, which should be a lot of fun for all of us. I can't wait to get a stick and practice with him! Once all this snow melts of course, until then, ice hockey on the local pond with his dad has been his sport of choice for the weekend.

Beanie is doing great. She loves school and is such a social butterfly. She is learning how to read and is quite the whiz in math. She can put together puzzles, train tracks, and buildings of legos faster than I have seen anyone else do it! She still has that loose tooth but thankfully has not tied it to anything else yet trying to yank it out. She is taking swim lessons and loves being in the water. She will definitely be on the swim team with Otter this year. I am so happy to have kids in love with the water!

Parker is 2-1/2. 'Nuff said:) Here's a video of him from the summer trying to emulate Otter at the swim meets:



Indie is wonderful. She is not yet sleeping through the night but has good 4-5 hour stretches. Good enough for us! She only fusses when she is hungry and it is not really a fuss, more of a squeak. Very adorable. I wonder how old she needs to be before I can throw her in the pool???

Escape Artist

The little man has decided his crib is much too confining for him....witness the escape:




He now has a big boy bed that he is very excited about:

Popcorn

Otter's blog is going to transition to stuff from all of us from now on! He is returning to public school in September (egad!) so I will try to keep videos and other stuff from the fam on here, as well as some of Otter's writings.....

So, here's the first video! Its the kids dancing to Popcorn from the Barenaked Ladies (excellent kiddo CD they just released btw......)

Otter's Explorer Project

To complete Otter's lessons on the Explorers, he had to put together a "book" of 6 different accomplishments of famous explorers. Attached is his PowerPoint presentation. I showed him simply how to use PowerPoint and how to find some pictures for the explorers; the rest of the work is from him. He also drew maps from all of the Explorers' travels, but we could not get the scanner to work - hopefully at some other time I can post these on!

So, I needed to do a webpage because Blogger cannot do Powerpoints, but you can go to the webpage and click the link and this will open up the PowerPoint that Otter

http://tmpelletier3.googlepages.com/home

Enjoy!!!

...coming soon...

Otter is still working on his Explorers stuff and probably won't do a post until some time next week:) Stay tuned! This one is going to be AWESOME!

Thee Mighty Saga of Explorer Learning

We learned about explorers, landforms, and division this week.

This week we learned about Greeks and Vikings explorers.

Greeks:
There was once a blind poet named Homer. He was a Greek and also was the author of Odyssey. The Odyssey is just about this guy named Odysseus that wanted to go home. He had to battle a giant cyclops, pass swirling whirlpool and Battle a humongous army. Odysseus explored the islands and sent out troops to explore the new territory they found. Odysseus is a character from the book that Homer wrote. Some of the islands Homer mentioned in it were real and he mentions some of the maps in it to show how big the Greeks though the world was. Homer never wrote down the story, it was passed down through generations and then eventually was written into a book. The Greek king named Alexander the Great wanted to explore lands while he led his troops to battle so he brought geographers and recorders so he could record the land and see the different animals that lived there.

Vikings:

We also learned about Vikings. There is this one Viking that I thought was pretty cool named Erik the red. He first lived in Iceland with his mother, father, and two sisters. His dad had been banished from Iceland for murdering a man. Erik grew up and killed two men. He also had to be banished from Iceland. He grew up and had a son. He named his son Leif Erikson. Did you know that Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first one to discover America? Leif Erikson did. And to learn about what Vikings ate were going to make Viking bread. You can too at food network .com. I also read the kids' version to Beowulf. It was about this hero named Beowulf who fought ogres, Serpents and a giant monster named Grendel [In mine he didn’t have to fight his mom]. Beowulf was written during the time of the Vikings and he was kind of like a Viking in the books.

We also learned about the world map. Mommy told me about the places I just talked about were. We also learned about the Map. We learned about longitude, latitude, the Prime Meridian, and the equator. I am exhausted from all the writing so only a little more info. I also learned division. So if you have a question from division just shoot me an e-mail. I also [and this is the last time] learned about different land forms. They are named: strait, Gulf, Lake, bay island, river, isthmus peninsula, archipelago, and that’s all by!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!