Olivia's Birthday Gift

Our Olivia is now an amazing 11 years old! She is so thoughtful and possesses wisdom beyond her 11 years. She asks great questions. She is an avid reader. She is also giggly and playful. She is creative. She is going through a stage of find her voice and doesn't always realize her facial expressions or how she sounds. But she is mostly respectful and continues to be a great role model for her friend and siblings. She cares for her siblings with the instincts of a mother but she also has been sure as of late about wanting her space from them too. Totally understandable. She loves girl time with Rebecca.

When we asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said all she wanted was to get her ears pierced. We talked about it and decided that that would be a fine idea. She peppered us with questions about what it's like and if it hurts and all that jazz, but she bravely stuck to her guns.

 Rebecca took her to My Friend Kate to have them done.

 She seemed a bit nervous.

 The lady put dots on her ears to show where they would go and make sure they would be even.

 First one...

 Then the other. So brave!

 All done! Then she convinced Rebecca to get hers pierced as well. :)

She is so excited to have them. Now she keep asking to have her hair put in a braid so that she can show them off. :) And she is counting the weeks until her studs can be changed out for a pair of treble clefs that she found.

For another treat, she and Rebecca had some "girl time" and went to get a cupcake. :)

Gabe's First Book!

Olivia was an easy child to teach when it came to reading. she really wanted to learn and picked it up fairly quickly. Our biggest difficulty with her was getting her to slow down and actually absorb what she was reading.  Gabe, however, was a different story. it took a long time to get him interested in reading. It was a daily chore to get him to work on sounding out words and phonograms. Then, once he started with readers, we had to work closely with him and help him work through the frustration. But finally, all that patience (and impatience...) has paid off!

Gabe has finally read a book all on his own for fun! HE wen ton his own and picked out the first Boxcar Children book from Olivia's bookshelf and over the next week, sat down whenever he had free time and read his way through it. He was so excited to be reading something on his own that wasn't schoolwork. We are so proud of you, Gabe! Keep it up!

Electricity and Magnetism

We recently finished a specialty unit on Electricity and Magnetism. The kids got to learn all kinds of cool things.

 They learned about static electricity

 Magnets

 How to make a compass from a needle, magnet and cork

 Everyone got involved.

 They made an electromagnet (which promptly started to smoke and get really hot!)

 We walked in our neighborhood to look at the power transfer station and the transformers.

 And we talked about how power gets from the power plant to our home over these big transmission lines that we can see from our house.

 And finally, we bought a set of Snap Circuits so they could learn about how various electronics worked.

It has over 100 different things they can build and learn from, so we expect hours and hours of fun. :)