staying home and having fun

Today, the kids stayed home. They did not want to go out even though it is pretty warm but very wet/slushy due to some rain and melting of the snow. I think they are having too much fun with each other at home. Well, they won't stay home all day since we have a Christmas Eve get together with some of our friends tonight.

Anyway, we continue our reading from "The blessing of the Lord". This time the story is about God testing Abraham's faith and how Abraham proved faithful. After we read it, to make it fun, we acted it out. With Isaac tied up on the altar, and Abraham about to pierce the knife into Isaac, the angel of God said, "Abraham, Abraham, do not lay a hand on this boy. Do not hurt him in anyway. For now I know you fear God. You have not withheld your son, your only son." J did a splendid job acting this little scene out. She pretended to be the angel of God and W boy pretended to be Isaac and I pretended to be Abraham.

W also learned how to fold a big blanket today. He tried to do it himself but it did not turn out "good". The only problem was it was not smooth and he was very displeased. I was on the message chair so I gave him instruction verbally and very soon his folding was perfect. The main thing was matching the corner and always standing on the short side of the blanket and match up the corners. Once he got it, he went to fold 2 more blankets by himself and was very pleased that he was able to do it just right.

J has also been teaching W a little bit out of her own initiative. Pretending to be teacher is the one thing J love to do. She drew lines and tells W to write the letters. Then she tells W which ones he did a great job. Just like the way I use to do with her. LOL

They also did a lot of free play, wrapped few presents, opened few presents and just spend most of the day "laughing all the way".

Here is pictures of J from this morning. See how mischievous she is? :)

J's learning style

Today I began reading a book called " Discover Your Child's Learning Style" by Mariaemma Willis and Victoria Kindle Hodson.

I had J girl take the Learning Style Profile Assessment and this is a summary of what we found out about her.

Disposition Assessment: She is Performing. (Other possibilities include Producing, Inventing, Relating/Inspiring, and Thinking/Creating)

Modality: She is Tactile/Kinesthetic (other possibilities include Visual and Auditory)

Environment: She likes it quiet but with others people who are also quiet. She likes lying on the bed, floor, or couch (vs. sitting at table,sitting on the floor, standing at the board), and bright light(vs. low light, sunlight, light from window,or none)

Time of day she is most active: after breakfast
Time of day she is least active: during/after dinner

Talents: she scored highest in interact-self, interact-others, interact-animals, Humor, Life skills (all 100 points). Other area include language/verbal, artistic/visual, music, numbers, mechanical, logic/reasoning coordination and interact-nature. But according to the book, a score of 60 and higher is considered talents. In that case, J has talents in all areas except mechanical reasoning. She got 50points on that one. :)

She learns best when she
1) listen to someone talk
2) look up info in reference books
3) write about the lesson
(other possibilities include listening to tape, talk in group, see pictures, watch movie/slide, read about lesson, hands on, act out the lesson, draw picture of the lesson)

Something she want to do sometime in her life: "To do good." Examples of what she means, "help an animal, help a person." (This is where interest is assessed and find out what's important to the person.)

Anyway, I thought it was very interesting and definitely helpful. One suggestion made by the authors of the book is to re-take the assessment every few years. I think that is an excellent recommendation.

Observations

Ever since J has been home, she and W have just been having so much fun with each other. They both make each other giggle so much and have shared many hugs and kisses. J usually takes on a leadership role as the big sister and invents many games for herself and W. But W will also not be persuaded if he wants to do something else instead.

Very few times, they have had the normal brother-sister bickering. J will come to me and say, "W stuck out his tongue at me" or something along those lines. But one thing I had to say to them quite a few times is "settle down and be quieter". They have just been so excited so they talk quite loudly and laughs non-stop no matter where they are. Someone at the grocery says,"At least they are happy". Yeah, a little too happy sometimes. :)

J has also been catching up on her sleep since she often sleeps til 8:30 in the morning instead of her normal 7:15 forced to get up by the alarm clock. Sleeping enough have helped her to have lots of energy during the day. She is definitely enjoying staying at home and I think W definitely like her to be home as well. It's good they play so well together. I also really enjoy having both my children home and hearing all those giggles. Priceless!

The Blessing of the Lord

This is the book J/W are currently reading along with dozens of others. Anyway, "The blessing of the Lord- stories from the old and new testaments" is retold by Gary D. Schmidt and illustrated by Dennis Nolan.

Today we read the story of "Hagar, The Egyptian Maidservant" from Hagar's perspective. In case you don't know,this is a story from the old testament. Hagar is the maidservant of Sarah who is married to Abraham. Sarah, not believing God's provision that she will have a miracle baby when she was over 100years old, marries Hagar to her husband, Abraham.

Hagar bore a son named Ishmael for Abraham and taunts Sarah. Angered, Sarah ousts Hagar and her son but they comes back to Sarah and Abraham under God's instruction but later was again albeit permanently ousted by Sarah and Abraham. Believing she and her son will die in the desert, God saves Hagar and Ishmael and tells Hagar He will let Ishmael have many descendants and will make his descendants into a great nation.


This is J's rendition of the story and this is W boy's.
This is picture of W on an earlier day when he was cold. We took a picture since everyone thought he looked like Mary with the blanket around his head. :-)

Adventurous J

J is proving to a very adventurous girl. I forgot my camera today for our outing so no pics to show you. First she ran and jumped on her tube to slide down hill. Then she led us to all the way to the top of the "mound" and digging her feet into about 6"-8" of snow in some places. W boy and I had a hard time keeping up with her. Then when she got up to the top of mound, at least she said, "whoa, this is really steep. I thought it was a little hill." It was a nearly perpendicular slope maybe shy of 20 feet in height. She decided to slide down just with her bottom, sans her tube. Then W boy did the same.

The big problem was they could not climb back up. Though J/W was not willing to give up but they would climb a little and slide down and they are not even 1/4 way up. They had some good team work mainly with J trying to help W up. So I slide down to help them climb up but I discovered I could not climb up either. So we trudged around the "mound" in 6-8inchs of snow to find a less steep slope to climb up.

I was getting concerned at this point, not sure whether we could climb up or not. Or maybe we had to walk even further in this deep snow. Luckily, we were able to climb up on a lesser steep slope though that was a lot of hard work. Both the kids needed lots of help especially since we also had to lug our snow tubes. We definitely got our work out on this cold(14F) day.

We are so glad to be able to come home and just enjoy the warmth of our house. :)

Happy Holidays!

Here are Christmas pictures of J/W. From our families to yours, we wish you a holiday filled with love and joy!



My first holiday letter. (Jan-Oct) since I started this blog November.

2008 Holiday Twitter

Jan: Trip to Air Zoo to ring in the New Year. We also went tubing and tobogganing and absolutely love it. If you have never tried tobogganing, you are missing out. J/W both take ice skating class and parents gets ice skates and joins the fun.

Feb: D quits her job and is officially a “stay-at-home” mom. A trip to Creation museum with HB church was both fun/educational. Too bad it was a day trip.

Mar: D receives her material from Enki education, a home schooling curriculum and starts pouring over it. She wishes she had known about this when the kids were babies. Well, better late than never. J continues her gymnastic class and can do a cartwheel but is afraid when it comes doing cartwheel on the balance beam. She also works on doing a full split.

Apr: W is learning soccer and enjoys a little competitive scrimmage at the end of class. The kids fall in love with “Ginger” restaurant especially with their milk tea and ask to be taken there often. J even drew a picture of “Ginger” in her journal at school.

May: D can’t wait until W and J is out of school. The 30 minute round trip to AA every day is taking a toll, plus another 30 minute to get out of the parking lot of school for J. W continues to have discussion with his classmate about God in his Montessori school. W gets repeated declaration of love from a girl at his school but responds with silence.

Jun: W finishes his Montessori school and J graduates from kindergarten. Both kids take tennis class. M was not impressed with the class. W spent lots of time socializing in tennis class and finds a buddy in Charlie. D gets to know a mom who has a daughter who is born on the same date/month/year as W.

July: Camping trip for J’s birthday. D once again is not a big fan of camping especially due to the mosquitoes. Luckily, there were days spent at hotel. M loved the bon fire best even though he had trouble maintaining it at first.

August: J loves sports camp and craft camp. W can’t wait to turn 5 so he can go to camp next year. W attended tot Olympics and enjoyed getting a medal for participating.

Sept: J joins Girl Scotts through her school. She also starts tap/jazz class. W stays home and loves to be read to and can spent 1-2 hours playing by himself with power rangers. M and D watched “Fireproof” and enjoyed it tremendously.

Oct: J takes tennis class again, this time through a tennis club. She also scored 99% in reading and 96% in math for her assessment at her school. W continues to thrive at home and D loves staying at home with W.

lantern walk

Today was a very busy day but we found time to read a short story called "The story of Martin and the poor man". We also made lanterns for our lantern walk and sang "This little light of mine". Two of our lanterns were made from mason jars, and two were brought from IKEA though we decorated three of them with paper tissue and using food coloring/water as paint. The kids and I all did one. They turned out beautiful. The only one left undecorated was my hubby's.

J/W was so excited about the walk. I was a little nervous trusting J/W to carry candle in glass jars. But they did beautifully and our lantern lasted us through our walk except daddy's. His candle was always faint as there was no tissue paper covering his lantern and when we almost got home, his lantern blew out. So not only is decorating lantern aesthetically appealing, it has a practical purpose. :-)


Our lanterns shine brightly in the dark. Here are pictures of the kids with the help of flash, W/J enjoys the walk.

Here is a picture of W cutting apples. I didn't get to post earlier because my camera's battery died. Anyway, better late than never, right?