J girl and school news

J girl got her progress report from school yesterday. I'm happy to report she got "4"s in all subject areas. "3" is satisfactory and "4" is mastered. I'm not too concerned about grades at this level but it's nice she did well at school. J girl has also been consistently reading for about 30-45min. a day by herself. Currently, she's reading "Charlotte's web" by E.B. White.

Previously, she read "The Little House in the Big Woods" with me. It was pretty much she read a page and I read a page. That was a difficult book and for reading that book and taking an AR (accelerated reader) quiz at her school, she would get 5 points for passing the AR quiz. Considering any picture book is worth about 0.5 points and some of the Junie B books are 1.0 or 1.5 points. You can imagine the level of difficulty of a 5 points book. Anyway, she scored 100% on the AR quiz for that book. The AR program in her school is set up such that for getting 5 points in a marking period, they would get invited to the AR reader party. Considering most books at 1st grade level are 0.5points, they would need to read 10 books and take 10 AR quizzes and pass in order to go to the AR party where they watch a movie, have popcorn and drink after school.

One thing I'm trying to work with J girl is summarizing. I came to the realization that in order for J girl to summarize well, she had to have understood the story well. And I'm not 100% sure how to help her. I know one thing her teacher mentioned at PT conference is to let her tell us the beginning, middle, and end of the story. For example, we watched the movie "BOLT" and when J girl was summarizing, you can clearly tell she did not understand the gist of the whole movie. She did not understand that because BOLT was on a movie set for most of his life, he believed wholeheartedly that it was his duty to use his super powers to protect Penny and to fight the "green-eyed" monster. She told us the beginning, middle, end parts but they did not connect.

When J girl first started 1st grade, her idea of a summary would be pretty much tell you the whole story. In places where the story really caught her attention, she would attempt to tell you all the details. Then we moved on to try shortening the story and getting rid of some of the details, and that was better. The problem with that was she was not always sure what to cut out. So sometimes, the key parts got axed out and the story ended up not making sense in some parts. Anyway, its been a work in progress.

slow day

Yesterday I had a relapse on my infection so I was in bed most of the day. DH even came back early and picked up J girl at school. During the day, W boy did more embroidery. This time he sewed a "V" and I taught him a little more phonics at his request. But for the most part, we just napped together in my bed for a long time.

Switching topics..here some pictures of J girl joining in the fun of digging in ice the day before yesterday. She was digging for a long time, even when W boy had enough. She kept on digging and thinking all kinds of ways to get the coffee can out. Gotta admire that perseverance.


woof-woof! Com'n, come out! I'll show you who's the boss!
Like my pose?

embroidery crafts

Yesterday, we bought our embroidery supplies at Joann Fabrics. Today we took them out and W boy tried his hand at embroidery and did a fabulous job. I showed him, then he pretty much could do it by himself. I did the "J" for fun and W boy wanted to do "W". So for him, I asked him to first write the "W", then embroider it.


Later in the afternoon, we brought some popcorn and tried our hand at stringing the popcorns together. That was a lot fun too! We left the stringed popcorn as gifts for our bird friends who actually come to visit us often. Oh, and the squirrels too. It's precious when the animals come to our deck and eat the food we leave them. J/W enjoy watching them.

Look at W boy... lots of concentration and focus. (bonus: fine motor skills) :)

Look at what I made! Like my new necklace? I think its better I leave them for the birds.

Now that I'm done, back to eating more popcorn. This is how my daddy eats. I'm just copying him. he-he. ;-P

little ice fun

This morning W boy had a little fun on the frozen sandbox while it lasted. :)


Hey, I can slide on ice! See what I found? I want to dig some more out of this ice.

I'm trying to stand still. I'm pretending to be BOLT. Now that I'm in my snow pants, I am free to wallow in the ice.

We also read the "Mournful Goodbye" from Enki Education. It's a nature story about the migration of Canadian geese family. That made me wish we can go somewhere warm to how him the different weather conditions and maybe even find a few geese. We also did the painting yesterday that went with the story and W boy was really into it. W boy also continue to work on his phonics, learning short o, u, e sounds.

Girl Scott Investiture Ceremony

Today, J girl joined her fellow daisies for the Investiture ceremony. She will be able to iron on the blue daisy center, the red petal, dark green petal, the rose petal ,and the yellow friendship petal for bringing snack to one of the meetings.

Below is description of each:

Blue Center- is for learning the girl scout promise.

Red Petal – is for being courageous and strong. The girls will earn this petal by saying their promise pledge in front of an audience.

Dark Green Petal – is for using resources wisely. The girls earned this petal at the November 18 Daisy Meeting. They are using recycled CD and Pine Cones to make Ornaments for our Plymouth Kellogg Park Tree.

Rose Petal- is for making the world a better place. Decorating the tree in Plymouth.

Yellow Petal - is for bringing a snack to share with our troop. The Snack Daisy of the day is responsible to make sure girl has drink and or snack.

All the daisies!! Doing the pledge of Daisy. The left hand"squeeze".

Having fun! Sharing with W a frosted cookie (J girl made sure she saved a piece for daddy. Sweet girl. )

W boy also earned his share of good behaviors today by helping me clear the table and sweeping the floor. W boy has also been taking good care of Fluffy (our pet hamster) by cleaning his cage, and by giving him food/water. This job was previously J girl's responsibility, but lately W boy has taken on an main role with J girl assisting occasionally.

sweet get well cards

Children can be such a delight! :) This is a card (more of a note)J girl made me a while back when I was sick. Notice how she drew me saying "ow" and the rest of our family are with sad faces. It just so warms my heart to look at it and read it. I keep her handmade cards in my nightstand to look at whenever the urge rises.

Here is another card she made tonight. This time, notice it is more like a "real" card. :) She caught on the little secret that I like her cards and even where I put it. This time, after I read it, she took it and put it in my nightstand for me. Guess there is no hiding from J girl. LOL.



This is the picture W boy made me last night. He tried to use creative spelling to write," I love mommy. You are my sweetie." He drew me with the long hair and drew himself on the right as a baby because "I wanted to."

Thank you Grandma Chan

Well, I have pretty much been held "hostage" in bed by what is turning out to be a flu. But thank God, J/W's grandma came over on Sunday. She was such God sent. She gave me a few good homeopathic remedies which relieved some of my symptoms. She also played with W boy all morning while DH and I got some much needed rest.

She also brought W boy a transformer-like toy from China. W boy actually "requested" a power-ranger toy but I think the one she brought was just right. W boy was immediately smitten and spent hours taking it apart and putting it together mostly by himself. Grandma was so impressed at W boy's concentration. Grandma also brought J/W some clothes from China, including a set of Chinese New Year clothes for each of the kids. Surprisingly, it fit them really well. J/W both loved it. W boy would wear it to sleep if we let him. :)

So a big thank you to Grandma ("ma-ma" is what the kids calls her) for loving us and taking good care of us.

Oh, forgot to mention, "ma-ma" made us some food/soup but W boy loved the meatballs "ma-ma" made. He had like 8 of them in one sitting and we are talking about good sized meatballs. What a little pig!! :)) ha-ha