June 15th, 2007

Today is a rather pleasant day, although it is still very humid. At the same time, it's a bit cooler than the weather has been lately.
The children have already had their riding lessons today, and both are improving. They even learned how to make Sugar jog today, and I could tell they were having a lot of fun with it. Susanne keeps working on balance exercises with them, and also works on improving their coordination. I always bring a book to read, but I never get to actually read, since Susanne's english is not very good, and so I have to translate quiet a bit. After the riding lessons, Christopher proudly showed off his latest bionicle creation to Susanne, and Annika told her (IN GERMAN!) about how her uncle Eric comes to visit us in Gaggenau every weekend with his girlfriend. Her grammar was not exactly correct, but this is okay. I'm thrilled with any efforts the kids make when speaking german.
A couple of days ago, on wednesday, I drove to the children to the city "Kaufhaus" (department store). They were all eager to spend their pocket money, so we spent most of our time there in the children's department. Christopher is never able to afford much, since he spends his pocket money almost right after he gets it from his Omi. He bought a small Lego set that looks like a helicopter. I think it has options and you can build it in a few different ways. Annika had the most money to spend, and bought a "paint-by-numbers" set for herself. Lily, oddly enough, fell in love with an old-fashioned children's broom that she just had to have. It cost slightly more than the €4 she had saved up, so I discreetly snuck in another euro into the plastic container she uses to keep her pocket money in, and all was well.
Christopher has been doing rather well with his lessons, and has been keeping up with his daily journal. He never writes much, but I see him making more of an effort and I'm pleased to see that. I was very impressed yesterday when he spent some time on the internet researching local (AZ) wildlife for his social studies. He drew pictures of mammals, reptiles, fish, etc. and also labeled them all. I liked how he signed each of his drawings with "by Christopher", lol.
Annika has been working on math, mostly, and she's also improving. I'm letting her have a small bowl filled with red kidney beans to help her figure out more complicated addition and subtraction problems, since we don't have our math manipulatives with us here.
Rassa is here today, to clean. I'm waiting for her to leave before I start on today's lessons. I suppose I prefer teaching when it's really just us here.