Bedtime Dance Party

A few nights ago, the kids were getting ready for bed, when I noticed Ben's t-shirt - a sky blue shirt with a dark blue graphic of an electric guitar and the parts of the guitar carefully labeled.

Now, Ben is a very physically affectionate child who loves being touched. "Hey, Ben," I called, "Come here for a second!"

Ben wiggled across the room to me. (The kids get very silly at bedtime.) "What, Mama?" he replied.

"I just got the urge to play the guitar," I told him, scooping him up in my arms, holding him sideways across my body, and "strumming" the guitar on his shirt.

Of course, as I intended, this tickled him very much. Through peals of laughter, he yelled, "Stop! Stop! Please, stop!"

I plopped him down on the carpet, laughing. "OK, Ben," I said. Flashing me a silly grin, he simply said, "Do it again!"

This game went on for several minutes, before we both felt too tired to continue. As I helped him out of his t-shirt and into his pajamas, Ben began asking me question after question about electric guitars. Josh plays his acoustic guitar most of the time, especially at home, so Ben knows very little about the electric guitar. I read him all of the parts labeled on his shirt and tried to explain how to play the guitar and what the various knobs and bars do. However, I know very little about electric guitars as well, since I do not enjoy the noise and distortion that typically accompanies an electric guitar. At this point, Daddy enters the story...

Josh came up right around the time I finished tickling Ben. As he heard me faltering for words in answering Ben, he tried to explain a few things as well. Then, he said, "You know..." and glanced at me with a sly look in his eye, "this would be a lot easier to show you than tell you." He added, seeing the pleading, it's-really-past-their-bedtime look in my eyes, "Just a few minutes... really..."

I finished getting the kids ready for bed, while Josh set up his electric guitar and amp in the living room. Then, in their pajamas (and Becca in her sunglasses), the three kids hurried downstairs for a bedtime dance party. They love to dance!

Josh played his guitar for quite a while, much longer than the few minutes he predicted, but I did not mind because we were having so much fun.

Becca always dances with full abandon, but she did pause occasionally to adjust her stylish shades.

Hannah danced with her favorite stuffed animal, Puppy, whom she had dressed in appropriate attire for the occasion.

Ben danced around for a bit, before discovering the pedal Josh uses to adjust the sound while playing. Anything electronic captures his attention at least as much as anything musical.

Finally, after at least half an hour of jamming and dancing, Ben revealed that he does, in fact, take after me in some ways...

"Turn it down, Daddy! Turn it off now! It's too loud!" he yelled, until we all decided that the kids needed to dance themselves back up the stairs and into their beds.

Although bedtime happened quite a bit later than normal that night, we all enjoyed the opportunity to have fun, laugh, and be silly together while listening to just the right amount of slightly-too-loud music. We'll have to do it again sometime!

B-E-C-C-A

Becca's new favorite skill to practice is spelling. Once she learned all of her consonant and short vowel sounds and figured out how to put them together to sound out words, she quickly discovered that she could turn the skill around and spell words as well.

Last week, I spent an afternoon cleaning out my room, even under my bed, and found a plastic bag full of magnetic letters. I must have hidden them there when we were trying to sell the house and I was attempting to make our kitchen look a little less like an extension of a very disorganized preschool. Anyway, I knew Becca would love the letters, so I brought them downstairs and set them up on the refrigerator. As I suspected, Becca squealed with excitement and began naming and organizing the letters.

Today, as I washed dishes, I noticed her playing with the magnets, and she happily announced, "I wrote your word - M-O-M!" I began asking her if she could write other short-vowel words, occasionally peeking at her to see her progress.
When she finished, I had to take a picture of her work. I can't believe my barely three year old accomplished this without any help from me:
What am I going to do with her next year for preschool, when she can do all of this already?

Cloudy With a Chance of Manna

The kids discovered a new favorite movie last week - Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. I've heard mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed it, possibly because I have never read the book on which it is based. They enjoyed it so much when we rented it that we took them to see it at our local dollar theater that Saturday.

Then, Saturday evening, we sat down together for our nightly Bible reading before bed. I opened my Bible to Exodus 16, where we left off, and began to read about the Israelites crying out for food in the desert. God caused manna to come down from heaven each night with the dew and cover the ground each morning. In a way, a special kind of bread rained down from heaven for them. I laughed and told them, "Hey! It was cloudy with a chance of manna!" Flint's invention in the movie was fantastic but dangerous. However, God's provision was perfect. The food came down gently, with the dew, and the leftovers melted away in the heat of the sun. The kids loved the story.

Tonight, I decided to deviate from our normal reading and jump ahead to John 6:30-59. I especially focused on verses 47-51:

"I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

I explained to the kids that, while wonderful, the manna in the desert was still just food. People who ate it still died. However, the manna served as a picture of Jesus, the true Bread from Heaven, the Bread of Life. I told them that Jesus did not really mean that people had to eat him in order to live. Instead, He meant that He had to die and that following Him would satisfy our greatest need - the need for salvation from our sins. If we follow Jesus and accept his sacrifice, then we can have everlasting life - not that we will never die, but that we can live in heaven with Him forever after we die.

At first, I worried that the comparison might confuse the kids, but Hannah and Ben seemed to understand it. Hannah's eyes sparkled with excitement as she connected the ideas in her mind, and, though Ben appeared less focused, he correctly answered a few questions I asked him about the Bible story.

I intended to return to Exodus tomorrow night, but I stumbled across one more lesson centered around manna - Psalm 78. It explains the many signs and miracles God performed throughout Israel's history and details their rebellion and lack of trust in him. The writer of the Psalm encourages the reader to listen carefully and learn from the story, trusting in God and following Him instead of rebelling. Now that I think about it, I believe we will have one more night in our "Cloudy With a Chance of Manna" Bible series after all.

My New Favorite Author

Hannah came down from her room the other day, excited to show me her newest creation. She had written and illustrated a book about "Puppy," her favorite stuffed animal. Here is her book. I included the text of each page after it, with some corrected spelling and punctuation, to make it a little easier to read.

"The book about Puppy my stuffed animal."

"Once upon a time there was a puppy that lived in Ohio. Hannah her owner said she was cute. She had toys."

"One day puppy wandered off and got lost. Hannah was sad."

"One day Hannah went out to find Puppy."

"Then she heard a barking - arf arf. Then she ran into something. It was Puppy. We got popcorn and hot chocolate."

"I love Puppy. She is cute."

"The end. Hannah"

On Thursday, she brought the book into her kindergarten class, and her teacher allowed her to sit in the "author chair" and read her book to the class. Hannah was so excited! Now, she tells everyone that she wants to be an author and illustrator when she grows up. Should I tell her that is what I want to be someday, too?

Ladybugs and Litterbugs

Though I am a global warming skeptic, I believe very strongly in keeping the environment clean, reducing pollution, and leaving the earth beautiful for the next generation. Whether or not global warming exists, I do not like the idea of pumping the planet full of energy bi-products and waste. I like to do whatever I can to reduce the amount of waste our family produces. However, adding recycling to our garbage service costs significantly extra per month, so I felt thrilled this year when I discovered something called "SCRAP" in our community.

Each elementary school has a day assigned to it - for example, the second Tuesday of each month. On that day, a recycling trailer visits the school in the afternoon for a couple of hours to collect recycling, and the school gets any proceeds from the materials collected that day. So, once a month, I load plastic bins full of cans, newspapers, and plastics into the back of my van when I go to pick up Hannah. Before I get her, I go through the recycling lane, and the workers unload all of my recycling for me. It only takes a few minutes, and I do not even have to get out of my car. Could recycling be any more convenient?

In order to organize the recyclables, Josh purchased a set of large plastic drawers/removable bins to keep on our back porch. I can separate out the various items and save them for the monthly drop-off without having them take over my house or garage. Often, as I cook, I rinse out empty cans, remove the labels, and then ask one of the kids to put them in the bin on the porch. Though I viewed this as a "chore" initially, the kids actually fight over the job.

Ben especially enjoys recycling and often comes into the kitchen to ask if I have anything for him to put outside. Because of this interest, I decided to do a small unit on waste and recycling with him.

One day, as I was looking up the SCRAP schedule, I stumbled across this educational page on Richland County's Solid Waste Management Authority website. The elementary unit, "Windows on Waste," seems like an exceptional educational tool. The pdf file consists of 335 pages of lesson plans, worksheets, information, and resources to teach a very involved unit on waste, trash disposal, recycling, and the environment. I think the unit is slightly above Ben's level right now, but I plan to teach it sometime in the future.

This time, however, I chose the preschool/kindergarten level activity book called "Lucky the Ladybug." This book contains fun activities and games and tells the story of Lucky the Ladybug as she tried to save Bugville from becoming Litterville. With a small amount of extra teaching and guidance, Ben learned quite a bit of basic information about recycling and keeping the community clean. I printed the pdf, punched holes in it, and put it in a folder to make a little book.

I intend to add more activities as we explore recycling in more depth. Perhaps we will weigh our trash and our recycling and figure out what fraction of our trash we recycle. Or, maybe we will just count the bags we put out and see how many more bags we would use if we didn't recycle. We can also visit the worm bin again and see how we recycle our food waste as well.

Regardless of how we study this, I am glad that my kids are actively involved in helping me recycle. Hopefully, as they grow older, this will help them develop the habits and attitudes necessary for them to care for the earth as well. I do not want to raise "litterbugs," who think nothing of their waste and view it as someone else's problem. Instead, just like Lucky the Ladybug, I want them to care about their community and about the planet God gave them, and to focus on using its resources carefully and wisely, so they can leave a healthy, thriving planet to their own children. Maybe the small steps today will start them down the path to living carefully and sustainably for the rest of their lives.

Craft Time

Although Hannah spends more time "crafting," Ben also enjoys cutting and gluing and making fun creations. For Christmas this year, my parents bought him a wonderful craft set, perfect for a little boy who loves cars and trucks. It contains supplies and instructions for making colorful cardboard models of an ice cream truck, a school bus, and a race car.

For his first project, Ben happily chose the ice cream truck, which did not surprise me at all. For quite a while last year, he told me that he wanted to be an ice cream truck driver when he grew up, and the three kids played "ice cream truck" together all summer long. Ben usually pretended to be the ice cream truck, walking around humming the truck's distinctive song and doling out pretend ice cream to his sisters in exchange for imaginary dollars. So, I knew he would love this craft!

After I assembled the cardboard pieces, Ben followed my instructions, gluing the various materials in the correct places.

Becca enjoyed watching the process, though she was a bit sad that she could not "help." She alternated between hovering over Ben and popping a piece of bubble wrap that I gave her to keep her little hands busy.

Ben did his best to be patient with Becca and even explained some of what he was doing.

For the finishing touch, he put round stickers all over the truck to add to its colorful, whimsical design.


He was so proud of the finished project! He excitedly showed Hannah and Josh when they returned home after school and work.

Because all of the kids are now interested in crafts, we knew we needed a better place to do them. Josh had a wonderful idea for this, once we took down our Christmas tree. Instead of returning the furniture to its previous location, we set up a folding table with a vinyl tablecloth in the living room. Now the kids can cut, glue, and color to their hearts' content without taking over the entire house! However, we soon will need an entire room dedicated to storing hundreds of paper snowflakes, heart chains, paper scraps, handmade cards, and toilet paper roll creations...

Gifts for Growth

All three kids received many wonderful presents this year for Christmas. A few gifts, however, have captured their creativity and curiosity as they encourage them to develop their minds.

Ben's favorite gift this year is a Snap Circuit set, which allows him to build circuits that perform various functions. So far, he and Josh have built light switches, a musical doorbell, a radio transmitter that acts as a microphone, a "helicopter" launcher, and many others. Ben has learned how to create his own circuits as well. Yesterday, I heard a buzzing sound as he was playing and, concerned, I asked him what he was doing. "I accidentally bypassed the switch," he explained. "I'll fix it." He also surprised me by asking if I had seen the CV capacitor he needed. I had to tell him that I did not even know what a capacitor was!

Hannah has two gifts that she enjoys very much. We gave her a tub of craft supplies - tissue paper, streamers, stickers, feathers, rick-rack, doilies, googly eyes, pom poms, paper, pipe cleaners, and more. Additionally, we gave her a large roll of tape and a bag full of toilet paper rolls I had been saving. She has been cutting and gluing and taping and creating constantly since Christmas morning!

Well, almost constantly... Grandma and PopPop gave her the best gift this year. It is a kit with plastic dinosaur bones encased in stones. Using a chisel and a hammer, she has to chip away at the stones until she can extract all of the bones. When she finishes, she can assemble a complete model of a t-rex skeleton.

Unfortunately, we discovered that the stones fly all over the house when she chisels them, so she has to work on it outside. Grandma stood outside with her in the cold for hours yesterday as Hannah slowly and carefully tapped the tiny rocks off of the bones.

She has revealed a few bones so far, but I think this will be a long term project rather than a short term activity. Though she felt quite disappointed when she discovered that the bones are plastic and not real dinosaur bones, she still loves to work on it, practicing to become a paleontologist someday.

I love giving the kids gifts that encourage their minds and their creativity to grow. They focus so intensely, exploring and learning and experimenting, that I can almost see their little brains working. They each have such individual interests and aptitudes, and I enjoy watching them develop and grow as they get older. I wonder what they will be and how they will continue in their passions when they are adults. For now, though, I am glad to know that these gifts for growth are not only my favorites for them, but their favorites as well.