A Week With No Activities

It was a week without any activities.  No karate, no Awana, no WAM, no CC.  It was such a welcome change to have our afternoons and evenings free.  The kids played outside a lot this week.  I have never been so grateful for a fenced-in backyard so they can play freely and I don't necessarily have to sit and watch them like I do in the front yard.  I think it's good for them to play by themselves at times without me always hovering around.

With the extra time in the afternoons, Josiah read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again and came down at the end of the week dressed as Mr. Willy Wonka.  He stressed the "Mr." part of the name.  He walked with a Lego cane for most of the morning.

Somehow dressing up as Willy Wonka inspired Henry and Caroline to dress as ninjas.  And they all wanted an early morning picture outside.

We made salt blocks many weeks ago.  We were studying the salt and gold trade in West Africa and made salt blocks that were supposed to sit in a sunny area for a few days.  We left ours for 4-5 weeks just to make sure they were good and hard.  They just kept sitting on our windowsill in the sun.  I'd look at them and think, someday...  This week seemed as good as any to try to build with them.  The boys built a few things and then quickly Hulk Smashed their salt blocks to smithereens.

We learned about the different Greek columns (Doric, Ionic, & Corinthian) and tried to make them out of playdoh.  As we were out one day, I noticed Henry staring at a Greek looking building for a while before happily exclaiming he saw Ionic columns.


One of my favorite activities was when we studied about Martin Luther and how he was a monk and how some orders of monks take vows of silence.  So, we took a vow of silence.  They were allowed to gesture and write things down, but no talking.  We went quiet at 9:40 a.m.  Josiah lasted about 35 minutes.  Henry went even longer.  But it required a lot of paying attention to them gesturing wildly with their hands and trying to write words they couldn't spell.  So it wasn't exactly a peaceful vow of silence.  Probably not what the monks had in mind originally.

The boys started up my school again.  Josiah always has a craft for his school.  One day we made Pete the Cat out of index cards and the next day he had a Finding Dory theme so we made Nemo out of index cards.  They made quite a few worksheets for me.  I aced their test, too.

Todd has been wanting the get more strategy games for the kids, more thinking games.  We finally got Catan Junior and have been playing it through the week.  The very first game, Henry surprised Todd and I and won without us even realizing he was close (so much for us playing strategically).  He was so excited.  He went to bed with a huge smile on his face and it was the first thing he spoke about when he woke the next morning.  So after that, we stepped up our game.  Between that and the kids focusing on Coco cards, we've been beating them every time.  Josiah's getting better, though, he nearly beat me yesterday.

The kids are just learning to think more strategically, but they are already quite good at speaking antagonistically.  I had noticed that Josiah and Caroline would get in these one-up type arguments and in the midst of it they'd call each other "Carol" and "Joe."  Josiah did it to Caroline once, saw her reaction, "That's not my name!!!!" and it went from there.  She quickly picked up on calling him "Joe" just to mess with him.  Now, she calls Henry, "Henny," to get his goat.  It's amazing what they come up with to mess with each other.
  
Henry finished his week on a happy note.  He used some birthday money and a Toys R Us birthday coupon and got a Luke Skywalker Lego.  He could barely contain himself in the store when he saw he came with a real Lego lightsaber.

And while we had hoped we'd all get healthier this week, somehow all the kids caught a cold.  So, there's lots of sneezing, coughing, and runny noses.  A few more years, I think, and all the kids will figure out this whole "how to blow your nose" deal.  It has proven amazingly hard to teach.  "Close your mouth, blow out through your nose.  No, no, close your mouth.  Don't wipe your nose, blow your nose.  Blow harder.  No, close your mouth."  We'll get there one day.  You don't see too many teenagers with their parents blowing their noses.