Archives for December 2009

More Sweet Shop…

Katherine and Allison swapped gifts with their grandparents last night and with Patty today. They were overjoyed with their gifts, with some interesting outcomes:

– Allison received three sets of Benderoos from her grandparents (long story brought about by infomercials on Nick). She gave one set to Katherine.
– Katherine promised to buy Allison a new stroller at Build-a-Bear using part of her gift card. Apparently, Allison’s stroller was slightly damaged in a recent playdate.
– They both received Playdoh sets, an ice cream maker and burger maker, from Patty. Both kids pretended to be staffing Katherine’s Sweet Shop, making pretend food.

Bookworms

Allison walked into the house yesterday with her nose stuck in a book. She was just thrilled beyond belief that her librarian at school let her check out a Magic Tree House book. From 4:00 to 4:40, she sat in the family room and read aloud from the book. She ‘shined’ the book and held it up for us for see pictures. She then carefully put a tissue in the book to bookmark her spot and closed it to read later.

Tonight we took the kids to Borders. We told them that they could pick one chapter book a piece to take to Boston. Allison picked a hard-bound Magic Tree House book. Katherine picked a Rainbow Magic Fairy book and read the book cover to cover before bed. Allison read the first chapter aloud of her book – so proud to read a big girl book all by herself just like Katherine.

The Body Shop

The girls went with Patty yesterday after school to pick up a couple Body Butters at the Body Shop. With cold weather and dry house, shea butter seemed like a good solution to dry skin. The kids must have really enjoyed their visit. After bath last night, Katherine lined up their “product” and asked us to shop at her store. She gave us the salesperson spiel, asked if wanted to try the moisturizer, and gave us fake money to buy it. She assigned prices to her product and rang up the sale using her play cash register. Katherine’s imagination is boundless.

Spelling Test

Allison recently figured out that she can give Katherine her spelling test. Simply, it involves reading five sentences clearly and slowly. So when she sees us whip out the yellow handout with spelling sentences, Allison rushes in and asks to help. She rolls around Katherine’s bed while reading sentences. It’s fun to watch.

Catching Up

Yes. I haven’t updated the blog in months. 🙂 So, let me try and catchup.

Both girls are working hard at school these days. Katherine asked me a couple weeks ago to help her with math. So…we’ve been practicing lots and lots of problems, rote memorization (ex. 7+8, 9+6), dynamic addition and interesting word problems. Katherine’s been plugging away at dynamic addition almost every night, diligently carrying the one. The kids love the word problems. Several of our sample word problems are as follows:

• Paupau plants two tomato plants in the beginning of the summer. In June, they produce 8 and 5 tomatoes. In July, because of slugs, her production is down to 3 and 5 tomatoes. Then Allison brings over beer from our house to reduce the slug population. In August, the plants produce 9 and 8 tomatoes. How many did she get by the end of the summer?
• Katherine’s classroom goes to the Space Needle for a class trip. There are 20 children. The elevator can take only 5 at a time. How many trips does the elevator need to make?
• Mom and Dad are walking thru the Costa Rica rainforest. We look up and see 5 monkeys. Each monkey has eaten 2 bananas. How many peels should we see on the ground?

Allison is bringing home amazing preschool works. This one caught my attention: “thE LIYIN FISH has SPICKS that can make you sick and make you diy Love ALLISON”  Transcribed it says, “The lion fish has spikes that can make you sick and make you die. Love Allison” Her classroom is studying the ocean and different type of fish, hence the study of lion fish. Katherine and I both looked at the drawn picture, read Allison’s description and had to smile. 🙂 

Both girls are reading up a storm. They recently finished a Geronimo Stilton book about cheese pyramids and moved on to Rainbow Fairy Magic books. Katherine can mow through one in about 20 minutes (they’re pretty fast). Allison read a few chapters aloud last night; she’s a bit slower, but still able to make her way through the book well.

Katherine’s Sweet Shop

Since Katherine was home today with a low grade fever, we had some time to chat about what she wanted to do when she grows up. This is her description of what she wants to do:

• Katherine wants to run “Katherine’s Sweet Shop”
• She envisions Allison working part-time at her store. Since Allison has said she’d like to be a dentist, Katherine said that Allison can work full-time as a dentist above the sweet shop.
• Those kids who get cavities from the sweets can go to Allison to have their cavities filled.
• Both Katherine and Allison would live in a condo above the sweet shop, right next to the dentist office.
• The sweet shop would serve donuts for $1 a piece.
• And, it would serve healthy burgers, unlike Wendys.
• Mom would get a discount on candy. 

Katherine has also used Word to create a menu for her sweet shop and drawn many pictures of her shop. As part of our visit to Boston, I told her we should visit Rosies, so she can see a successful bakery. I’m blown away by how intently she’s been thinking about this.