Spelling test:
“Word Study” which is somewhat different from spelling, but I am not sure how:
Category Archives: daily life
Belated first day of school picture
Rachel is ready for her first day of school as a fourth grader.
Weekly cleaning
Rachel was a giant help (again) today at cleaning the house. She loves to mop the kitchen and clean the bathroom sinks.
I’m working through appropriate rewards for her because this is above and beyond the expected workload for a nine year old. I don’t want to go the extra allowance route because allowance isn’t about doing work in our family. Today, I let her watch an episode of SpongeBob when she was done.
I’ll owe you
We live in a household with three other children. The converstaion went something like this Saturday night:
“Rachel, go tell Aiden to close the bathroom door and I’ll be forever indebted.”
Rachel runs upstairs and shouts into the bathroom, “Aiden! Close the door or you’ll be forever dead.”
Camp Barney: Day 1
I sent Rachel off to camp yesterday. She’ll be gone almost four weeks in north Georgia.
Today I received a phone call from her unit counselor: Rachel left her toiletry kit at home. Sure enough, I found it sitting on her desk, just where she described to counselors that she’d left it. I’ll mail the kit tonight and in the meantime she’s using borrowed items.
The counselor assured me several times that Rach was doing well (“great”, even).
As with any phone call from someone you’ve turned over care of your child to, this one started with, “Rachel’s fine but…” I love those calls. I can imagine that before they started saying that, parents the world over panicked when they heard from camp or school.
I can provide Rachel’s postal address to anyone who asks me. She comes home June 30.
Maryland on her mind
This message just in from Rachel’s father in the metro-DC area:
Rachel has been talking up Drama Camp a lot. She really likes the idea.
Just so you know what Rachel is up to this week: No camp (school is still in
session up here), so she’s mostly hanging out, watching TV, reading, playing
with the dog (a lot). I send her outside to play when possible, but its
pretty rainy. She’s making a good effort to eat right and is snacking on a
lot of fruits and veggies.
Report card time
Dogwood days
This is Dogwood Festival weekend in Atlanta so we went to Piedmont Park to browse art and watch the frisbee dogs compete. We went with my girlfriend and her family.
My favorite art was by Win Blazier, who works with glass. Here’s one of his works:
Rachel enjoyed watching the dogs in a frisbee-catching competition.
Shark!
Rachel and I are visiting Florida for spring break this week. Yesterday, we went to the beach to enjoy the sand, sun and surf.
We spotted a small shark in the shallow water, not more than 50 yards from where we were! The shark was about three feet long.
Several people on the beach spotted the shark at the same time and one guy alerted a father-daughter swimming combo. The father put his daughter on his back and hurried toward shore. He passed only a few feet in front of the shark. Fortunately, they made it out of the water safely.
One surfer told us the sharks were migrating north and it’s common to see them this time of year.
School news
Math:
Rachel reports they’re studying measurement. They’re estimating the volume of common objects, heights and widths. Looks like they’re learning English units (gallons, pints, cups).
Spelling:
afraid
explain
payment
sleigh
straight
height
favorite
radio
relation
Science:
They’re talking about minerals. Because they just started today, Rachel can’t tell me much right now.
Last week was International Week. The school hosted an International Night potluck and carnival. We went and took challah as a Jewish traditional food.
