simple pleasures

Lately, J/Prime has been enjoying some simple pleasures all by themselves.

1. Dance !
I bought few favorite worship cds thinking it would be good for our family worship and bible study. But unexpectedly it inspired so much dance from the kids. Whenever they feel like it, the start the cd and start to dance all on their own. They have been dancing like crazy and thoroughly enjoying themselves in large part due to J's leadership. They would dance individually in different parts of the song and then would come together to dance together. J's been directing Prime and doing some choreography with him. Now she says she really enjoys dance and I don't even have to ask her to practice. Ha! (Both kids are a little shy and they dance most freely when they think no one is watching them esp. Prime but I have been videotaping them a little here and there because it's just so fun to watch them.)

2. Writing love notes.
One day my hubby left me a few love notes unexpectedly and that inspired the kids to write love/gratitude love notes to us. They were so excited writing these notes and finding places to stick them. They wrote so many of them and for a few days, I found these notes everywhere and had to tell them to go easy on these. :) Of course, I loved reading them and I will always treasure them. This was also great a writing practice for Prime and J thorough enjoyed helping him with spelling.

3. Independent painting.
I was having a headache so I let the kids loose with painting with no supervision. They used regular paints, the kind that is ready to go in a bottle and construction paper. They put the paints actually in paper cups and shared very nicely. When they finished, they cleaned up and J even put saran wrap over the paper cups to save the paint and put all the cups in a gift bag. I was really surprised and so proud of her. So that was one project I didn't have to lift a finger and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I'm thinking they'll have to do more of these kind of projects! :)

J's Prime's

Productive day

I have no pictures today and considering the kids didn't get up until 10am and Prime had few incidents of nosebleeds, we had a really productive day.

We did quite a bit of cleaning this morning. I rally the kids and we got it presentable together in a decent amount of time. I feel calm returning when the house is in order.

We also did our normal stuff: reading of bible stories and bible. J is making improvements on retelling the stories. Prime has been listening to fairy tales and has been enjoying them. The two favorite currently is Rumpelstitskin and Puss in the Boots. He always manage to find humor in the stories and giggles so much.

J practiced her math. But today I'm happy to say that she actually wanted to do it, again and again. The sand timer must plays a role as the motivating factor. We used double dominoes and she have to do subtraction and put the same answers in the same pile. Finally, she finished before the sand ran out. :)

For lunch, Prime learned to make scramble eggs as that is one his favorite dish.

In the afternoon, J surprised me today by doing a TON (approx: 1 hour) of dance all by herself. I borrowed a dance music CD from the library and she did free dance. She keep saying she was hot, hot but when the next song came on, she was up and dancing again. She uses some of the moves her teacher taught her but also put a lot of her own spin on to it. I felt she was really expressing herself through the music and interpreting what she felt the music was saying to her so it was very nice to see that.

We also tried a Chinese language course called "After School Chinese", borrowed from the library today. It works well for what I'm looking for. Right off the bat, the kids learned to introduce themselves in Chinese- what their names are, how old they are this year, and what they like to do. It has a very realistic clip of what actually happens in Chinese classroom, like when the teacher comes, students would be asked to stand up to greet the teacher and then sit down. only when the teacher gives permission. Also, the kids how to introduce others (like your mom to your classmates/friends and vice versa) when they are in a non-classroom setting. The kids liked it very much, esp Prime. I can see he really wanted to learn and absorb the info. It came as no surprise that J wanted to be the teacher and have Prime and I be the students. :)

Later, we even managed to make it to the splash park and the kids had fun there too.

J' dance recital

J's dance recital is finally all done. I was probably more nervous than she was. The children are all so brave for being on stage.

J performed in 2 shows, doing tap and jazz in both. She is our little performer compared to Prime. It seems like she's always on stage for reason one or anther and has won quite a few awards ever since she was little. Prime has yet to make his 1st appearance on stage. Now that this year is done, I feel J learned how to dance while I learned how to do hair and makeup, esp. in the last couple of days. :) (In previous years, J had no makeup.)

Daddy and Prime went to watch the 1st show while I was backstage and after ward, we rewarded her with a trip to Tim Hortons. All that dance makes you hungry. Her auntie and I went to watch her for the 2nd show and afterward J got to play with her cousins and had a lot of fun. Thank you, Auntie for coming and for all the goodies!

I'm not sure if I should post other dancers in my blog, so I'll just share J's pictures.


The first picture J is in tap costume and her # is called "Wipe out".
The 2nd picture she is in jazz costume and her # is called "Good vibration".

Focusing on your strength and CC

We spent a good part of our day getting ready for J' up coming dance recital - dress rehearsal and last minute shopping for hair accessories and eye makeup. J really dislike wearing any make-up. She is more natural is best and comfort is Queen and let's not fuss kind of a girl. But she might be the only girl I know who don't like jeans. She doesn't care much for the material that jeans are made of. She prefers sport pants. Anyway, I didn't get a chance to take any good pictures of the made-up J. :( Hopefully, I will at the recital.


J was happy to take off her eye make up and be back to her natural self. (lipstick was long gone.)

For dance class this past year, she took tap/jazz and was one of the youngest student in the class. She did a great job and worked hard and enjoyed the class. But next year, she won't be taking any dance class and I am kind of sad about that. But the truth is, dance is not J's passion. So in remembering a talk I heard at the Florida HS conference: focusing on your strength (and passion), I decide to discontinue dance class for J.

This is J's passion - to be a teacher and teach.

So in place of dance class, we tentatively plan on trying Classical Conversations which will be for 1/ 2 day (3 hours)/ week. I will make the final decision after attending CC's 3 day practicum for parents.

I told J it will involve quite a bit of memorization and she say she doesn't mind and really want to do it. This will also give me a chance to observe J in a classroom setting as parents are asked to stay in the room. I'm thinking this will also give J some ideas on how a "teacher" teaches in a classroom. I'm sure I will see J teaching some of the stuff to Prime. CC also have a 'presentation' component each week where students J's age will be presenting for 2-3 minutes each week. Presentation skills are very important for teachers. I remember being so scared for my public speaking class.

Prime doesn't want to go to CC and secretly I'm glad as I think he is still a little young.

For the most part, I will still use a Waldorf-ish curriculum for main lessons but is open to trying new things. I hope CC it will open new doors for us and help me find other local moms and children who use the same homeschooling material as my children.

Enjoying outside

Today is windy but weather is very nice. The sun is shinning brightly though the ground is very soggy and some area are still little flooded. We are soaking it all up and looking forward to many days like this. :)



Doing a little free dance; J doing the hippy hippy shake shake in the 1st picture. Prime is enjoying the sun and doing his little dance # as well.


I found this mushroom under an evergreen tree. We first saw these little pine cone then J found much larger one from this pine trees.


She is taking it all home; some for the nature table and some we will roll seeds and leave it for the birds. I'm just noticing how this branch is going straight up... then I noticed a lot of these trees are growing upwards into the sky.

I asked J why that is despite gravity, they still go up and she replies quickly," because the trunk is strong enough to hold them up. "hmmm... is that so?

Prime copying daddy- Beastie boy style

Alright, show you my very messy family room but that's not the important part. :) We need some spring cleaning... but got too many other things we'd rather be doing. he-he.

Share a little of Prime's efforts. He was definitely trying and worked up a sweat last night. See how he is in his T-shirt?!






This is Prime's goofy side.... he did some other funny ones but I'll leave the "poop" stuff out of the video. :)

Daddy - Beastie Boys style (video)

Upon seeing Erin's post on the Beastie Boys on YouTube, we have had the most fun over it.

The whole night, Prime tried hard to copy the Beastie Boys. Finally, look who we convinced to show us how to do a little hip hop/rap Beastie Boy style. It was no easy task to convince him, but we are persistent people. ;) Seriously funny. No wonder girls like Beastie Boys. LOL.

Update on J

Tonight I asked J about her favorite subjects in school. She told me her favorite subject in school (excluding recess, for that is her absolute favorite thing) is PE, music, art, workshop (this where the students are grouped based on reading/comprehension skills), writing, social studies, and math. She had to think a little between s.s. and math while she was ranking before she gave her final answer. She says,"I likes them both." Yes, you do, but just not as much as the PE, music, etc. :-)

I thought that was pretty interesting ranking considering math is her least favorite. Hmm... math was a not a favorite of mine of either but then again I don't think gym was my favorite either.

These pics are from another parent. 1)Now you can actually see Julie on stage. 2) This is from rehearsal. That's her teacher Mrs. T in the background

1)This is from her winter concert at school. None of the others pictures turned out good. Luckily, daddy did some video recording. 2)J with her friend O from school.
I took these pictures tonight at J's dance class. J takes Jazz/Tap. I mainly wanted to show one of J's best friend, J. W boy normally tags along to the dance class and after class, the 3 of them always wants to play for a long time.