It's Family Day!

Today, in Ontario, we are celebrating "Family Day". During the last election, our premier promised the people of this province that if he were elected, he would bestow extra holiday on us. He was, ultimately, elected and this extra holiday appeared on our calendars last year. Some folks like it. We aren't particularly fond.

A lot of people, DH included, had to give up one of their regular vacation or floater days to have this statutory holiday in February. We would prefer to dictate when and how his vacation time is to be used and an extra day off in Newfoundland in July or at home in December or anywhere that WE choose would be better than a random Monday in February when the weather is typically too unpredictable for making plans for things like road trips.

We are trying to make the best of it though. When Claire's school sent us an assignment to decorate a puzzle piece with her family to decorate her classroom, we decided to sit down together and do it. The puzzle piece wasn't large but we did the best we could. We just put little photos of ourselves there and had Claire label us with our names. She and I spent some time at the computer picking out a piece of clip art to represent each person and her choices were pretty cute. Here's the finished project:


Claire wanted Princess Aurora for herself, a photo of "Dolla" for Jillian, a football player for Daddy (I told her it was Randy Moss and she's all proud that she can "talk football with Daddy" now), and someone knitting for me. She thought long and hard about the others but for me "knitting" was the first thing out of her mouth. Could be worse I suppose?

So, if you are in Ontario, Happy Family Day! If not, feel free to squeeze your family today for the heck of it. I think I'm also a touch offended that I'm being told to spend time with my family as if I'm not a family-oriented person to begin with. Sheesh.

Happy Valentine's Day...

...from our lily pad to yours!

A sample of photos from our photo shoot to make cards for the family:




Poor Jillian had been sick - you can tell because, as we say in Newfoundland, her eyes looked like two pee holes in the snow.

I wanted us to have a 'blowing kisses' shot for the cards but one or the other of them almost always had their hands over their faces. The second photo got to be the money shot instead.

Math Lessons From A Four-Year-Old

Last weekend, someone in the house offhandedly told Jillian that a ball was a circle. Not a big deal, right? Honestly, we have picture books here about shapes and almost without fail, the "circle" page will show a ball. It's something we say to kids.

Claire has been learning about three-dimensional and two-dimensional shapes at school and in her world a ball is NOT a circle. They are spheres and how dare we spread such evil lies about balls. Seriously...she gets really mad about it. I learned about her vehemence on the topic on the day she learned it. She got in the van at the end of the day and basically recreated her entire math lesson for the day for my benefit. You know, because despite the three university degrees including several advanced math courses, I need education about three-dimensional shapes (though to be honest I'm certain I didn't learn that stuff when I was four).

So, when the poor unsuspecting soul said "Jillian, a ball is a circle" (I think it was my brother but might have been my husband), her sister decided to take matters into her own hands. I noticed her shoot dagger eyes around the room and then she got up and went to her table and set to work. Three minutes later, we all got a lecture, complete with visuals. I've tried to recreate the gist of it on video for your entertainment. You'll have to excuse the cinematography and Jillian interruptions - that little person wants into show business big time and can't resist a camera:



I love the part where she says "circles are flat like a pancake and spheres are........not".

Her school has sent home strict instructions about writing. They believe in "Kid Writing" which is basically phonetic spelling (or just plain guessing). If our children decide to spontaneously print words or write a sentence we are to leave them alone and let them sound out the words in their own little brains. They have a list of common words they are expected to learn to spell (like, he, in, is, big, go, see, me...stuff like that) but otherwise they sound it out and we praise 'em if we can see the logic.

At first, this was really hard for me. When she wrote a card to her cold-stricken grandmother that said "I hop you fel betr soon" I had to resist the urge to correct all the spelling and explain the rules about silent Es. The more I sit and think about this method though, the more I like it. Ok, fine, SFER is no more like SPHERE than my mother is like an elephant but she has sounded it out, used good logic, exercised her brain and it makes perfect sense if I abandon all the things I know about the English language (which is a crazy language on so many levels). I can also see that as they teach her spelling rules, things will gradually improve until she's a superstar at this stuff. Maybe I just like seeing how her mind works.

As an aside, they are learning about proper punctuation and spacing and I like that a lot. Hearing Claire read a sentence with a question mark or an exclamation point is an absolute hoot.

Somehow I get the feeling that over the next few years, until she's old enough to think her parents suck, we're going to get lectured on quite a few things. I'm not sure if this makes her a natural schoolteacher or a girl with an urge to always be right. I suspect it is the latter, especially given her genetic background. Heh.

Oh, and just cause it annoys me and I feel the urge to share...neighbours of ours put their Christmas tree out for pickup today. Of course, I forgot to take the lights out of my window so maybe I should shut my yap. But the TREE? It's February 12th!

ETA: Bloglines hates me. Make it stop!