Memorization, Fave Book, 9 principles, Play Dough. Sting Rays, Trains, Other

:::::Glenn Beck's 9 Principles:::::

The kids and I discussed Glenn's 9 principles and whether we agreed with them or not. After discussing and agreeing with each principle we took pictures of ourselves and sent them to the e-mail address Glenn gave out for this occasion. See my face? Major TMJ day....the kids look lively and refreshed though.


Being inspired by the book Laddie and their way of living we have begun to add a few things to our daily "learning". We discuss current news events. This last week or so we discussed the speech/article "The Action Americans Need" written by Obama himself and we discussed the article, "Grocery Stores Fight Back Against Food Prices". I receive these articles from http://www.izzit.org/.

:::::Audio Books:::::

We like to listen to audio books and the kids enjoy themselves as they play with play dough or do other "quiet" activities while the book plays.
We were listening to Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl here.

Even Millie played with the dough the whole hour and a half.

:::::Treasure Map:::::

Our favorite library find was The Greatest Power. We read aloud The Tiger Rising and really enjoyed it, I've been reading Julie of the Wolves with Tyra. Ethan has been listening to The Castle in the Attic, Tyra listened to Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, and our current night-time real aloud is The Giver - I've enjoyed the thought provoking discussions its stimulated.

We found a treasure in our house about a week ago thanks to "this here" treasure map. Ethan was cleaning up an area I had asked him to clean up when, all of a sudden, he came rushing over with an old leathery treasure map in his hands. We all gathered round and followed it's clues to the treasure which happened to be the greatest treasure of all - books!

There were three to be exact and each book had a piece of old leathery material within it containing one of the kids' initials on it. Julie of the Wolves went to Tyra, Tiger Rising went to Ethan and a train book went to Cedric.

What a smart pirate! ... Now, if only the kids could find this mysterious pirate - they've been looking long and hard - many times they've even claimed to see him!

:::::Orem Library::::::

We love the Orem Library. They have so many neat events there every month. Most recently we listened to the New York Symphony Soloists perform - they performed music for one of Babar the elephants stories - it really made it come to life. Ethan especially enjoyed it.

They even answered lots of questions and told about themselves and how they came to play the instrument they play....it's interesting most of them began playing a completely different instrument but eventually were led to the instrument they now play professionally.

Ethan now wants to play the piccolo - yikes! And I want to get my fingers on a cello all the more - sigh! Before they played the music to the Babar story they played music from Mozart, Vivaldi and someone else....it was so beautiful.

:::::Living Planet Aquarium:::::

We made a trip to the Living Planet Aquarium (half off on thr first Monday of the month!!!) and enjoyed the colorful assortment of fish.





Tyra and Ethan tried to touch the sting ray's but didn't quite dare - the water wasn't quite shallow enough for their short arms to reach in very far anyway.

::::::Train Show:::::

The train show at Thanksgiving Point was quite a treat (for all the kids) but mostly for little Reeky.

The contents in this picture were Cedric's dream come true - Disney's Cars and trains, oh my!

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Ethan was being so cute with Cedric - showing him around and lifting him up so he could see the trains sets a little better.

:::::Just Cuz::::: She is such a shweetie! Squoosh the cheeks - squoosh the cheeks! Still teething though :( - darn those molars, come through already!