Ice Ice Baby Wrap Up

The first week at my new job went really well!  The time goes by really fast.  My supervisor is very quirky and funny all at the same time.  I officially have 6 days of training time and then he'll be out of the office for 12 weeks.   Yeah...no pressure there!   Olivia was thrilled when she realized that the place where I work teaches children to play musical instruments...she's already put in a request for piano lessons.   There goes the whole "extra income" aspect of the job!

Our monthly activity day was scheduled for Thursday.  I had planned to be teaching my class about the Sioux.  However, the threat of an ice storm caused it's cancellation.   The ice did start, but about 5 hours later than anticipated.  Better safe than sorry though!  So I have everything ready for next month, go me!  I'll just need to grab the reference books from the library again.

Co-op was also cancelled on Friday because of the ice.  Aaaawww...too bad.  Ice is my friend.

Despite my busy schedule, and being away from home 12 hours this week, lessons still went pretty good.   The seven crisis for Lindsey has been resolved.   I hid sevens in various places in the house.  I told Lindsey the seven's were sneaky...so she spent some time sneaking around looking for them.  Now they are officially "sneaky sevens" in her world, and I'm totally ok with that!

I'm completely amazed at how much Olivia's reading has improved in the last two to three weeks!  I finally found a children's book series that she's interested in and that I approve of.  This particular series is The Prairie Skies Series by Deborah Hopkinson.  The first book in the series is Pioneer Summer, so I picked that up yesterday at the library.

We're still studying New Jersey.  This week we focused on literature by New Jersey authors.  Books we read:

The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart
The Quilt Makers Gift, by Jeff Brumbeau
Cross a Bridge, by Ryan Ann Hunter
A Day in the Life of a Colonial Schoolteacher, by Kathy Wilmore

After reading Crossing a Bridge, we practiced building our own bridges using various items from around the house.  Lego's and wooden blocks are easy to use, of course.  So I gave the girls a huge bag of these to work with....

I'm drawing a complete blank on what these things are called.  I bought them at the teacher supply store probably two years ago and we've used them here and there.  They have the same texture as packing peanuts, but they are made of some starchy product.  When dampened they stick to paper, each other and your fingers (eeww).  They will completely melt if left in water.  So when we have our next rain, we'll have a science project to watch...heh heh he.

Anyway, back to the bridge.  I showed them a page from Cross a Bridge, and gave them liberty to work together as a team to build as best they could.  It turned out relatively ok, with the exception of the centerline being nowhere near the center.  Originally there were no guard rails in place; but after several cars toppled into the river below (blue construction paper), Olivia decided improvements needed to be added.

Then Olivia zoomed out the door to ballet.  Engineer by day, dancer by night.

For next week, I'm trying to get a system worked out where the girls will have some school work to do while I'm at work.  My husband doesn't feel confident in his ability to teach, so I'm trying to work out a system for them to be able to govern their own workload.  Translation, they'll be getting some version of workboxes....I hope.

Zippity doo da on over to the Weekly Wrap Up to find out how everyone else's week progressed!