Saturday, September 24, 2005

Rhythm and New Friends

It was a very good Saturday. Yesterday I had planned to take the girls to a storytelling festival for the day while DH worked all day, but when I read the What's Happening section of our newspaper I found out about a children's performance series that our Art Museum is doing and that this Saturday it was going to be an African Rhythm and storytelling group. What great timing to go with our Africa study. I took the girls over for the afternoon performance and it was wonderful!!! MB and K were totally into, K even more than MB. The group introduced the different kinds of instruments that they use, taught the group a few words in various languages and performed an audience participatory story. At the end the children were even able to come up to the stage and learn a traditional dance. I really wish that I had thought to bring my camera, but being the art museum I never really think to bring it inside.

The only thing I wish I had done differently was to find someone to watch EM for me when I took the girls. Unfortunately, between the little cold and the teething EM was not happy to sit for very long. She wanted to either crawl around on her own or have me up and walking her. Being that it was an auditorium, it was mainly me up and walking along the aisle. This kept me from fully engaging in MB and K's enjoyment.

When we got home, DH had already returned so we all got ready and headed over to a neighbor's house for a small cookout. DH and I met some new friends that live on the other side of the neighborhood. They have a girl MB's age and an infant son. We spent several enjoyable hours watching the kids play and actually being able to visit with adults. DH and I really enjoyed the new couple and I hope that we are able to get together again soon.
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Totally off topic for tonight's post, I just want to share how impressed I am recently with MB's reading. For the last couple of weeks she has stuck with and been very positive about doing a reading lesson each day. Even though today is Saturday, and I generally give her the weekend off from 'organized' lessons, she asked for her reading lesson this morning. She has passed the halfway point in 100 Easy Lessons, this is when the remove the little dots under each sound - it was like boom, suddenly she is getting the whole blend thing now that the dots are gone. Each day she is doing one lesson and then later in the day reading one page out of an old reading primer.

So far she is not voluntarily reading additional books or stories, but each night she is going to bed with a different book. Last night it was actually a couple of the Egypt books I had put out for our transition from an Africa study to an Egypt study. Every few minutes she would come back out to show me something different that she had discovered in the books.

Today was a warm fuzzy kind of day - one for me to put away for those tougher days.

Peace,

Amy

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A family of six living and learning. You might catch us outside in the mud or working on crafts. We always seem to be on the go, come on and join us.