Searching for a Passion
One of the things that I feel is challenging in our home schooling is exposing the kids to "extra"curricular activities. I can cover all the basics like writing, math, and science but what about everything else? In school they have art, music and phys ed. In these classes they discover what they really like or don't like about these "extra" subjects. Chance picked gymnastics for the Fall semester and really liked it but when it got time to sign up for this semester he asked me not to sign him up again. This is fine with me. I would rather have him engaged in an extra activity that he likes than struggling to get him to attend. He wanted to try out Taekwondo. Here he is at his first class:
So far so good. It's unlimited classes and he's wanting to go at least four days a week.
Finn loves his swimming and gymnastics classes. He's all set for this semester.
This semester I arranged both classes on the same day so we can make one trip for both. He can swim the length of the pool without help which is fantastic. A year ago he didn't want to put his face in the water so he's come a long way in a year.
It is winter weather here in Illinois and the kids were waiting for another snow so we could head out to go sledding again. Last week I took the kids to the sledding hill. It was a bit icy but we had the hill to ourselves and the kids and I had fun racing each other down the hill.
Roadtrip!
Yesterday we met up with my Aunt who was in Madison, WI for business. Our first stop was the
Madison Children's museum. The good news-it was empty and we had the place to ourselves. The bad news-there wasn't much for a child over 5 years old to do. We've been spoiled by the museums in the Chicagoland area that offer activities for all ages of children. The kid's didn't mind and we were able to spend a couple of hours out of the cold.
Next, we went over to the
UW Geology Museum.
We were amazed by the exhibits here. We followed a self tour with a brochure at the start of the exhibit. The biggest hit was the museum's black light display with the fluorescent rocks. There was even a window to a lab where students were working on uncovering dinosaur fossils. Finn loved the full sized skeletons in the vertebrate room.
Next we headed to the on campus dairy production facility. They have a huge observation window on the second floor where the kid's could look down on the production floor and observe how milk is turned into ice cream or cheese.
We also visited the free
Henry Vilas Zoo. We only had a short time to make it through a few of the buildings before they closed. They enjoyed seeing the polar bears, penguins, otters, and the animals of the rainforest exhibit.
My Aunt arrived in town about 6pm and treated us to dinner. We got back home after midnight and I'm exhausted today but we had a blast.
A nice break
We're starting back up today after taking a week on a break. The kid's enjoyed spending time with Dad who also took a week off of work. The weather decided not to cooperate with their plans of sledding everyday.
Dad helped the kids decorate cookies for Santa.
Christmas was nice and relaxing as we spent another year at home not traveling anywhere.
New Year's eve the kid's had a blast mixing up mocktails and watching the ball drop in New York.
Gymnastics and swim classes are on break this week so it's a week of getting back to our studies. Chance was eager to start this morning and see what I had planned for this week.
