March 21 - 25

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

PRESTON

Preston has been working on memorizing lines for his Shakespeare play during a two week break at Polar Star.  They are performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with a Mexican theme.  He's playing a smaller part, but he's still very excited.  He's playing the part of Fernando.

Preston has also been asked to do the prolog in Spanish at the beginning of the play.  Another person will then come in and translate the prolog.  Preston understands Spanish because his dad is originally from Argentina, but he doesn't speak or read much of it.  He's having to work hard to learn to read and speak well in his second language.  It's been a lot of work, but he's really enjoying preparing for when rehearsals start next week.  

MARISSA

Marissa has been in a creative mode lately.  One day, she and Caleb were playing Legos.  She decided she wanted to invent a machine that could pick up Legos.  She dug through the recycling and went to work.  It was definitely a promising invention.  

She has also been loving Snap Circuits.  She was working on finding a way to combine her invention with circuits to make it automatic.  It didn't happen yet, but she's not giving up.  

She broke her arm at the zoo last week (Caleb came down the slide and landed on her).  We didn't realize it was broken for a few days.  We finally took her in on Friday and found out it was broken.  Then we had to wait for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to make sure she didn't need surgery.  Thankfully, she emerged from the appointment with a hot pink cast and no surgery.  A broken bone doesn't seem to slow her down with all her ideas and inventions and discoveries though.  

Marissa also got to attend a formal etiquette dinner.  She had so much fun and learned all about manners and formalities.  I had to include a picture of her in her fancy dress!  ;)

CALEB

Caleb's favorite thing this week was building with Legos.  He's been reading a lot about animals and learning so much.  One day he ran in to tell me how excited he was because he was going to build a habitat out of Legos.  Of course Marissa thought that sounded like so much fun and decided to join him in building.  

OTHER

PRIME NUMBERS

Caleb and Marissa had a great time learning about prime numbers from "Life of Fred."  He was talking about how no even numbers are prime except for the number 2, but that not all odds are prime.  The kids got out gems and lined them up to see why the numbers 9 and 15 are not prime even though they are odd numbers.  It was a really good visual to help them understand at a different level.  

SCIENCE

Marissa and I had an unexpected lesson about prisms and light when we were at her great grandma's.  She was reading on the couch and we looked over to see that the crystals on the lamp in the living room was creating tiny rainbows on the curtain.  It was so much fun to see and discuss together.  We remembered learning about that from the book "Pollyanna" which was one of Marissa's favorites a year or two ago.  It reminded us to play the glad game just like Pollyanna did.  Such a fun day!