Friday, May 9, 2014

Relaxing at Mom's house

 Zalmi was chilling at Gramma's house watching Paw Patrol.
 Here's my view of the kids playing their devices "together".
 Ok. So not together, but in the same room.
 Zalmi had a blast roaming around in the wide open spaces.
 The children had fun doing a new cast at the Children's Museum.
 Zalmi loved crawling for a few minutes in the toddler room, but he thinks he's 12 years old, so the fun wore off quickly.
 Tzipi made a great meteorologist!
 Here they are running a business.
 Zalmi is getting busy with all the hands-on fun.
 Climbers gotta climb!
 Grab nose0 (glad he wasn't real).
 Zee at the Planetarium with Jar Jar Binks and sister trolling the pic. We watched a show on the Google Lunar X Prize. It's a great concept. We're looking into their Ocean X Prize project. Click Here to Learn more!



Here's Gramma and her three beebs. Miss her already!

Friday, April 18, 2014

Busy bees

We had a good solid month of learning and then came the trip to Dallas. Learning doesn't stop, but the structured learning becomes more fluid and less tangible. We did the April Dallas trip in two days. Then we came back and it was Passover. We have some fun local events to look forward to:

April 26th and 27th is the Lubbock Gem and Mineral Show
April 29th is Game day at the Groves Branch Library
May 3rd is Dino Day at Museum of Texas Tech

Zee is working on his Mitzvah Project for his Bar Mitzvah in January. I'm so proud of him and can hardly wait until he gets up to give his speech. My future Toastmaster is extremely talented when it comes to public speaking. He's also been given the opportunity to get back into drama when he enters 7th grade. I know he'll be great at that. We found this great math assessment program with Khan Academy and he diligently works on it to fill gaps in his education every day (caught him doing it on Sunday too). :-) He's fascinated with physics and his creative writing has been full of brilliant new ideas. He's been learning computer coding and still loves doing stop motion with his Legos.

Tzipi is doing a great job with her reading. Her teacher has been so diligent with her and Tzipi has remembered everything she has been taught. I catch her reading to Zalmi and she's eager to help make lists for me. I can't give her enough math work. If she had her way she would do nothing but math. I fear one day she'll be better at math than I am and I'll have to find a new teacher for her. But G-d has provided her a teacher due to the dyslexia/dysgraphia so I know He's got math covered too.

 She loves watching old black and white movies with her Daddy. Avi calls them historical documents (shout out to Galaxy Quest) and they truly do give you a glimpse into places and people that we would not know about otherwise. The other day he was watching a movie from the 30's and a woman was eating potato chips from a brown paper bag. I was amazed that they ate potato chips back then. I figured that was a 50's invention. She said she couldn't eat popcorn but she loved chips.

Zalmi is showing good signs of wanting to potty train. I just need to get some cloth training pants and a potty seat ring to fit on our toilet and we'll be ready to start the learning. YAY! He comes to me when he's dirty and tells me when he's too wet for comfort. Zee was about his age when he showed interest and was trained before he was 2. Then Zee trained Tzipi.

 He clearly understands when you ask him a question and will answer with a yes or no. He loves cars. I mean LOVES them. He races with his dad and makes his cars kiss each other. It is the cutest thing ever. He definitely gets frustrated when you don't understand what he needs and pitches typical toddler fits. But they never last very long and he's a pretty happy boy for the most part.

We go to PE at Tech twice a week and its been a great adventure. The kids have made great new friends and are learning new things all the time. It hasn't been so great for Zalmi because he thinks its cool to hit people because during free play all the kids take the opportunity to whack each other with pool noodles. I wear myself out chasing Zalmi but it's so important for the kids to have this opportunity.

Well it's almost time to get dinner started for Shabbat. I'm looking forward to a peace-filled weekend.


Monday, March 10, 2014