summary week #32, spring #8

Only four weeks to go in our Spring Semester!! And our "school year", although we are going to probably work right through the summer. We'll slow down a lot of our field tripping and museum/nature center classes, since it just makes more sense to do those things when most kids are in school. I prefer to avoid big crowds! But we're still sure to have some nice adventures this summer.

Anyway, last week we had our usual busy, running around sort of week. The kids got to meet this albino hedgehog, plus many other museum residents, during their last Museum Explorers class for the semester on Monday. That was also the last day of Zoo Boy's Monday Munchkins class. On Tuesday we had their Speech Therapy appointments, and Zoo Boy got to meet his new Occupational Therapist -- the SLP and OT are joining forces to better compliment working on his clarity of speech. (His difficulties lie in the muscle tone and usage of structure in his mouth, all wrapped into his sensory issues, so a team approach makes the most sense.)

They also each participated in their own theatrical class based on the musical The Lion King. (Here's J taking a bow -- on the end to the right -- after his class's performance.) Both boys really enjoy the performance-based classes, and we're hoping to be able to do more of those with them next year.

Here are the boys working on a lacing project at home during our "lesson time". This was the last week of our Five Little Ducks Adventure Circle. I adapted it a bit to target the areas that Zoo Boy's OT wanted us to work on, so we substituted in Snail (an Enki Kindergarten activity that works on Naval Radiation) for one of the activities, and changed the main characters from ducks to mink (so that we were doing a lot of crawling around on our hands and knees rather than waddling like ducks). One day we were cats instead, so we got to lie on our backs batting at the clouds" (parachute). Our curriculum story this week was "Three Billy Goats Gruff", which was a big hit with Zoo Boy in particular.

The week wrapped up with a letterboxing adventure in a state forest with The Map Man. The weather has been really weird lately -- cold and rainy, not very spring-like, but they did manage to eek out a nice couple of hours to have their fun in the woods. Here J takes a rest on a tree stump.




And Zoo Boy find a big rock that he enjoys climbing all over.

Family Story Time books for this week were: The Lamb and the Butterfly, by Arnold Sundgaand, illustrated by Eric Carle; The Giant Jam Sandwich, by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway (silly, just plain silly....); and The Great Kapok Tree, a Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest, by Lynne Cherry (which was a bit of a disappointment in regards to storyline, but the illustrations were just gorgeous and the kids seemed to like it OK).