We were on break this past week, due to the holiday chaos. I've gotten wise enough to NOT try to get anything accomplished after a glut of new toys enters the house! So the kids spent the bulk of the week examining new toys, discovering how they work, building things, experimenting with things, and in general just sinking into play. Here's a photo of our living room, for your amusement. It pretty much looked like that (or even worse) all week, as we just let the kids have a LOT of freedom.
Which worked for me as, you guessed it, we had another ice storm. Mid-week I was out most of the day doing this: shoveling shavings and dirt and sand and anything else that might provide traction in our pens to make sure people and horses were not falling and breaking hips. Fun! (NOT!) But actually, other than being a lot of hard, physical labor, it was not really stressful because I knew the kids were occupied and happy. I just ran in occasionally to check on them, put out some food, etc, then headed back out for more ice-rink improvement.
The kids show off their new Spiderman jammies. Our big news of the week (although he'll no doubt kill me when he's older and realizes I announced this to the world), is that Zoo Boy finally FINALLY pooped in the potty! Once anyway. I have to assume that he'll repeat this performance at some point. Anyone who has kids with Sensory Integration challenges will know what a big deal it is for a kid that basically doesn't feel how their body works to organize themselves enough to accomplish such a task. And anyone that doesn't, well, just imagine still changing diapers on a nearly-5-yr-old and you'll instantly be able to conjure up a bit of sympathy for my situation. He's still beating his brother's mark by about a year and a half, so I guess I shouldn't complain.... (but it's easy to forget that now that J is completely potty trained and has been for about half a year now). The amount of money we've spent on diapers and pull-ups over the past 7 years surely would have put one of them through Harvard....
J shows off one of his ZoobMobile creations, made with the set of Zoobs he'd asked Santa to bring him. He's methodically working his way through the entire set of instructions to build every single model possible. He's impressing me with his ability to work on something very contracting like this, then set it aside and fluidly move on to more expansive pretend play with his brother. It's a really cool and amazing thing to watch! And is what I am MOST grateful for this year -- not only his ability to do this, but the path that has allowed me to understand how amazing this bit of natural development truly is!
I figured since I showed photos of the other two house cats this week, I should put up a photo of Candy Corn, too.The time I wasn't outdoors preventing law suits and vet bills, or indoors marveling over my kids, I was busy working on the rest of our winter semester. I've been planning a really fun Adventure Circle (which I'll post about as we get rolling with it) to replace our formal Movement Circle, choosing some great folk tales for our Curriculum Stories, and gearing myself up to get going with the painting/art portion of the Enki Education curriculum. I'm looking forward to getting back to our regular homeschooling rhythms starting tomorrow!
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