We spent a good part of the afternoon outside today. Matthew throwing snowballs at Marc . . .
Samuel skating and playing hockey . . .
And Renee learning that she really does like dogs. Or maybe what she likes is the control of having one on a leash and holding onto that leash.
We went to Ottawa to visit Marc's family and we all had a great time
Conor and kids eating "chicken on a bone" (i.e. drum sticks)
The brothers holding hands during Finding Nemo, and Renee doing a puzzle in the forefront.
Zaida showing Renee how to play guitar
And Renee showing Zaida how to play guitar
Matthew and Renee having fun at the hotel with Marc and my shoes.
And at the Museum of Natural History.
The 3 kids did great in their song and dance, it was hard to capture a picture because they were moving so fast.
Then Samuel enjoyed fruit while lying on the ground watching the Hebrew play.
And then the DJ came on and so did Renee - she danced up a storm, she had all the moves, she forgot that she usually clings to my legs when there are 100s of people around. If I knew how to transfer video from my BB to the blog you could see it for yourselves. Samuel also danced up a storm. Matthew who is usually the musical, active, gregarious one wanted nothing to do with the dancing. He went back to the table, ate his sufganiot, a cookie and then put his jacket on and declared it was time to go.
We left Samuel to continue partying with my parents and took the little ones home. They were very concerned about Samuel, where he was, why he wasn't coming home, etc. Very endearing. He came home at 10!
Renee set the table and did the "cooking" (put the pre-made latkes on a cookie sheet, sampling a few along the way).
Renee reviewing her week's work with me. She is prolific with drawings and papers with the letters R E.
Matthew sporting my boots. he insisted that I zip them up.
Samuel catching a little private iPad time under the table, where his siblings were unlikely to see him and the iPad.
And, not to be left out, my Babby has a tablet too. And look at the smile on her face :)
I went to observe Samuel this week, and as with the previous years, I swelled with pride and loved seeing him work.
The first piece of work he wanted to show me was reading Hebrew words and placing the words next to the corresponding pictures. His Hebrew reading is excellent. He then did an Engligh reading exercise where he read the sentence that described the picture on the card. He chose "The glass has lots of frost". He got the first 3 words after a few tries of sounding them out and then stumbled on "lots" which he pronounced as "slot" several times. Seeing him read easily in Hebrew and struggling with English really pointed out how hard a language English is, with vowels and groupings of consonants having so many sounds.
After reading, he showed me the stamp game and added 4-digit numbers. When he wrote the solution, he inverted the number 9. When he couldn't find an eraser, I showed him how he could cross it out and write the 9 in the row underneath. He liked the crossing out and crossed out each of the other 3 numbers in the solution and wrote the numbers again on the row below.
Then came examining the bee and monarch butterflies. With the magnifying glass you could see the eyes, the wings, the colours, the stinger.
Then he worked with geometry material, triangles that when put together form squared, rhombuses, triangles, trapezoids. Material I remember working with.
And last was this hammering activity, where he copied a design from a card and hammered little pins into the center of each shape.
All in all a great show case of this work, maturity, progress, and our decisions about his education.
