Tuesday, March 27, 2007

-The midwife came for our home visit. The girls helped measure my uterus, listen to the baby's heart and take my blood pressure.
-Astrid helped me fold and hang laundry.
-The girls made a parade out of little cars and toys.
-They built a playground in the living room out of couch cushions and stuff and played on it.
-They drew pictures of what they can see out of our front window and then cut strips of paper to glue on top and form window panes.
-They worked on their memory verses.
-Astrid completed a few of the activities in her new National Geographic magazine, including a "wacky fill-in" (aka, Madlibs) which is great for learning the meaning of "noun", "verb", "adverb", etc.
-She started making a new food chart which will be easier to read than the old one, which was a little disorganized.
-The girls went to Sparks and Cubbies clubs.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Sorry about the week of absenteeism. It was a full week. Jason's sister was here from Monday to Thursday, much to the girls' delight. She read them lots of books, played games with them and came along to all of their activities. We spent a day shopping for a flower girl dress (Angela's getting married in the fall and Astrid is to be her flower girl) and went to the pool for a swim (Joannie did various games and songs with the girls in the pool as she is a swimming teacher). Astrid cut many pictures of brides out of Angela's bridal magazines and they are now taped up all over the house. We did some painting. On Friday we packed up and headed for Kitchener for the weekend. On Sunday we celebrated Ethan's fifth birthday with our family and most of the Klavers.



Now, on to today...

-Got the groceries and did the shopping we needed to do to have all our supplies ready for the birth. Went to the hospital to pre-register (just in case) and to the optometrist to see about getting my broken glasses fixed. These errands took up a lot of the day.
-Joannie prepared an activity about the fruits of the spirit for the girls in the afternoon. She printed Galatians 5:22-23 on two sheets of paper in large letters. They read them over together a few times with the girls pointing to the words on their pages as they said them. They talked about the meaning of each of the "fruits" and thought of examples of when they have acted loving, kind, patient, etc. and when they have not. Joannie taught them a song that lists the fruits. They cut out pictures of fruit from grocery fliers and magazines, as well as the words from the papers Joannie had printed. They glued each word to a fruit (Astrid tried to pick fruits which went with the words, for example: love went with strawberries because they're shaped like hearts. Patience went with grapfruit because they take a long time to cut up and need to be waited for. Gentleness went with pears because they get bruised so easily. Joy went with bananas because they're shaped like smiles...) They then glued the fruits and words onto pictures of trees that Joannie drew for them. They both drew some of their own fruits as we had a shortage of ones in the magazines. They did this by looking at actual pieces of fruit we had on hand. When they were done, they ate some of them.
-Astrid filled in her food chart.

Friday, March 16, 2007

-Astrid worked on the scarf she is making on her weaving loom.
-Muirgen did a bit of weaving on it as well.
-Muirgen worked on her embroidery.
-Our housemate, Joannie, who's in education, is doing her alternative practicum with us since we're pursuing a path of "alternative education". Today she and Astrid talked a bit about the sea and made a list of words that all started with 'S' and had to do with the sea. Astrid sounded out the words and drew little pictures depicting each one beside it.
-Joannie played piano and sang with the girls and read them a couple story books, one of which had a little clock in it with moving hands. The girls moved the hands to the positions which coresponded with the time talked about on each page.
-We baked cinnamon buns.
-The girls played 'Rock, paper, scissors'.
-I read a counting book to Muirgen.
-The girls played various make-believe games.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

-Went to the sugar bush with our friends from PEG. Took a guided tour of the bush and saw how maple syrup has been collected and produced since it was first discovered. Ate pancakes with freshly made syrup outside. The kids played in the mud and got very dirty!
-Our dear friends, the Sieberts, have been staying with us since Tuesday (they headed out this afternoon) so the girls have spent a couple fun days playing with Soren and Nathan. We stopped at home after the sugar bush to say good-bye to them and let the kids play together a little more before we headed over to Jordins.
-The girls played with Jul and Clover this afternoon. They all watched a nature documentary about snow monkeys.
-We filled in the charts we made which document how much food we're eating from each food group every day. Astrid did all the writing on her chart and fills it in herself. I fill in Muirgen's, but she enjoys talking about it as I do so. This has been an excellent excercise for getting the girls eating more fruits and veggies. We've discovered that they both eat way more than enough grains and enough dairy products. The generally get enough protein, but always fall short in the fruits/veg department.

Monday, March 12, 2007

-Got the groceries.
-Checked out Little Ray's Reptile Zoo. The girls got to see, learn about and touch lizards, snakes, scorpions and turtles. They enjoyed telling Jason everything they learned when we picked him up after work.
-Astrid sounded out short words she saw on signs.
-We talked about bridges and ferries.
-Astrid completed 4 pages in her math work book.
-She drew a couple princess pictures.
-Muirgen coloured.
-She glued coloured pom-poms on a paper and counted them.
-They helped me make chili for supper.
-Read a couple story books, one of which was an Irish fairy tale. At the end of the book was the music for a song called 'The King of the Fairies'. We joined together to play it, the girls with hand drums, Jason with a tambourine, and myself, the piano.

Thurday, March 8, 2007

-PEG. The girls made finger puppets of each of our family members (including the new baby, which I thought was cute) and played 'What time is it, Mr. Wolf'.
-The Peters' came over for lunch and the kids played together for the afternoon.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

-We practised the girls' new memory work from Awana clubs.
-The girls coloured.
-We sorted the pictures of food the girls cut out yesterday into the four different food groups. We then took three plates and designated one for breakfast, one for lunch, one for dinner. The girls chose pictures of food to create meals for each of the plates. We talked about what makes a meal balanced. We looked at the Canadian Food Guide and discussed it. They then fed Gregory the Goat (who we made yesterday) the healthiest breakfast, lunch and dinner that they could think of. We talked about what their favourite foods are from each of the food groups. At lunch and supper time, we talked about which groups the food we were eating came from.
-Astrid had her ballet class.
-The girls pretended that Muirgen was a little girl without a mother or father who Astrid found in our garden. Astrid loved and cared for her for the rest of the evening.
-We read a couple story books in the bath.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

-We read a couple story books that we got at the library yesterday.
-The girls played grocery store.
-They listened to three stories on tape, also from the library.
-Muirgen played with the Barbies.
-We read a book from the library called 'Gregory the Terrible Eater' which is about a young goat whose diet is very poor in the eyes of his parents. We then made our own Gregory by drawing a goat on paper, which Astrid coloured in. We glued it to cardboard, cut out the mouth and attatched a plastic bag to the mouth to be his stomach.
The girls then went through food magazines and cut out pictures of different food, which they fed to the goat through the hole in his mouth.

This activity was part of a sort of mini unit we're doing on nutrition as March is nutrition awareness month.
-The girls went to Sparks and Cubbies clubs. Astrid has memorized enough verses to get her own vest to wear to club. Muirgen should be able to get hers next time. I must admit, I have misgivings about the organization that runs these clubs and how they are run. The style is very structured and disciplined. It seems quite militaristic. The kids learn a pledge of allegience to the Awana Flag and wear their little uniforms (the vests). The emphasis seems to be on a very different aspect of Christianity than what I feel is most important for the girls to learn about our faith. But anyway, they love going so much and the structure seems to induce good behaviour in the kids. The girls have been commenting that there is no time-out chair and that the kids don't seem to act up and get in trouble. I do feel it's good for them to practice memorization (a big thing at Awana). I also feel it's good for them to get used to different styles of authority and working with different groups of people. So they will probably continue going.