The goings on

There has been a lot of imaginative and creative play around here.  Also, lots of free form art activities, with everyone helping themselve to supplies for whatever project they were in the middle of or just to start a new one.  One of my projects is to organize all this mess so they could continue to help themselves in a more organized way.  The boys , mostly one boy, have been very busy working on the house they were making from some foamy type building material, they put in windows and floors and were working on wiring (elastic thread type).  The building keeps morphing as they keep discussing their plans, in its current incarnation, it's a shopping center, with advertisements on one wall and store signs to be coming soon, I've been informed.  Geography is still quite popular around here.  There's been quite a lot of singing and dancing.  We've been doing a lot of reading. Kids Speak series are very popular here right now, also various miscellaneous picture books, especially those by Michoel Muchnik with really lovely illustrations.  Everyone has been browsing throw those postcards I wrote about.  We've done quite a lot of baking - bagels, muffins, cinnamon buns.  So just a lot of usual horsing around, tons of paper and tape and such everywhere, lots of reading and looking at pictures and listening to music.  Spontaneous conversations on the subject of airplanes, Yom Kippur War,   Exodus  from Egypt, holiday sequences, familial relationships, rain, baseball, adoption, good middos and so on.  I have some Chanukah crafting plans, we'll see how that pans out.  The nightly cup of tea is a something we all enjoy before bedtime and between that and stories that eases the transition for the night.  We play and ooh and ah over the baby, the girls experiment with various hair and head gear, we play or walk or ride outside and take care of errands. So much like this post, our life is often a hodge podge of all kinds of things within a loose structure that keeps it all together.  Some days are easier and some harder and more stressful but somehow with Heaven's help we always seem to get some kind of learning in.  We really liked the Lost Scotch II by Rabbi Avrohom Bookman, great stories with a halachic question to ponder in the end, the author provides his answers at the back of the book.  I really like the idea and the book cover has other educational suggestions for using the book.  I am thinking of introducing some challenges for the older kids, such as drawing a picture or making a photo based on some theme, we'll see how they'll feel about it.  And we'll continue with the three R's  and hopefully make some progress in the penmanship department with some grammar and vocabulary thrown in for good measure probably in the guise of copywork. So this has been a somewhat rambling update on the recent goings on around here.  Thank G-d:)