Camping

The kids have gone camping with Grandma and their cousins and Aunts Cole & Chel. Here are some pictures. Them in Grandma's truck. Devyn in the front seat (in all there were three dogs, three kids and Grandma in the truck and a camper in tow). The kids out on the lake. Breakfast and dinner with cousin Ava. And snuggle time for Evan.

This evening I heard that Evan and cousin Cade were jumping up trying to catch some stars. Good times.

ABCDs

The other day Evan was reciting his abc's. Ava and Vivian were around so he was hamming it up. Another future stripper...? Look at the full video that Jo captured. It's on youtube (I am having trouble loading the video here) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlNvkTEOkFs . Here are some stills but they fail to convey the amount of pelvis shaking going on.

Book Review and Reading

Some kids bring their homework folder in on Monday. It's not due till Thursday. Vivian works on hers before breakfast on Thursday morning. Luckily last week we checked early and saw that she had a book review due on Thursday morning and she would have to read a book in front of her class on Wednesday . She selected If You Give A Moose A Muffin. By Wednesday morning she had read the book sufficient times to master most of the words. It was also the day of her máquina simple exhibition. And by Thursday before breakfast she finished her review ("I will tell my friends to read the book because it is funny").

Her English teacher was very happy with how Vivian read the book.

I find it amazing that Vivian can pick up almost anything and eventually and painfully read it. It's a quantum jump - almost like when she started speaking. Most of us read. It's easy to forget that it takes a few years of work to master this seemingly simple but precious skill.

Máquina Simple

Vivian just finished her máquina simple unit of inquiry at school. For weeks dinner table conversations at home centered around poleas and rampas and tornillos and finally she had to dream up a problem to solve it with a simple machine that she and I would build and she would take to school for the exhibition. One day she returned from school with a plan. She was going to use a polea to build an elevator so she could get things that her little brother wanted from shelves to tall for him to reach. Evan is pictured crying a healthy stream of tears.

The next day Vivian found a cardboard tube from a roll of paper that she wanted to use for the pulley. I built a little cardboard contraption and added the tube and a shoelace and the model was done. Then I cut up pieces for the real machine.  Vivian glued them together. I drilled a couple of holes and Vivian added some toothpicks and a tin of pancake mix and took the finished machine to school. It worked pretty well and Vivian and her friends showed off some amazing machines at their exhibition. You can see Evan listening and watching.

I don't think she's going to be a nerd. But she has the capability to. If she wanted.