Snow

As soon as Selena looked out the window this morning she announced a snow day, NO SCHOOL! Of course I knew we would be bundle up for some fun snow time. Though we did not have very much snow Selena did enjoy making snow angels and trying to make snow balls.

It always amazes me how happy and at home Selena seems in the world around her. She is truly going to be an out in the nature type girl. (Yes, she is in her Pajamas, every year I think I should buy snow clothes, but on the average this is as much snow as we will see for the season, so it truly would be a waste of money.) Once back in the house and out of a nice warm bath, we had lunch and settled down for some quiet cuddle time.

Even with her hair in pony tails, she still almost sits on it. I just can’t believe how long her hair is getting. She still refuses to let us cut it. I sometimes wonder if she ever will have it short. I do however believe we will keep her hair about this length, when she gets older and wants to take care of it herself, she can let it grow longer then. Right now though since I have to help wash, and brush it, this is about as long as I want it to be. Even at this length it takes us nearly a half hour just to brush it out every morning. While she does complain about the length of time it takes to brush it out, and the pulling from so many tangles, she still refuses to have it cut.

Winter Science

I had some huge plans for this post when I decided to join in the Blog Hop at TOS, but life got in the way. We were really going to dig in and explore what takes place in Winter within the world around us. With this said, I thought instead I will share some of the things we have done in the past to try to explain to Selena all the changes taking place around us this time of year.

I am sure like many of you we have fielded over 100 questions about Winter. With each question I have attempted to have fun while answering them. I think one of the most interesting recent questions I got from Selena was, “Why do we really have to have Winter? Why can’t it be Summer all the time?” This question was a pretty deep one needing a pretty deep answer, as we stared out the window at the snow that laid before us we talked a lot about how important sleep is for us, so why wouldn’t animals, and plants need sleep as well. Selena quickly remembered her little friend Nibbles who hibernates in the Winter.

From this we were easily able to move forward to why other animals and insects who need to sleep in the Winter. We then started discussing plants, and we remembered when we dissected a rhododendron. 

Selena quickly came to the conclusion that plants need to sleep so they are rested up for all the work ahead of them come Spring, of growing buds, producing seeds, all in preparation of being beautiful and bountiful.

Some of the other fun things we have done concerning Winter have been to make clouds, rain and fog. We have done this a few times now, it is one of our favorite experiments, but here is our first time discovering.

Then of course there is no better way to explain to our children about Winter then to take them out and just let them have fun.

While we might look at Winter as being cold, gray, wet, icy, just what do our Children see? Let's see if we can't see Winter through their eyes, as well as take this time to answer some of their questions about why we have to go through Winter. I hope through our examples of how we have learned about Winter have given you a little inspiration to just dig in, get out there and have fun. Oh and please remember it is always fun to bring a little bit of the Winter indoors too, just to dig a little deeper or to see the results of melting snowmen on the dining room table.

Pop over here and see what others are exploring in their Winter World.

Our January

Poor Pal, in the above picture dressed up in a baby sleeper, but boy if he isn’t good about putting up with what ever torture Selena puts him through. That look on his face is so cute and you can see him looking at me just begging, “Hurry up take the picture and get me out of this mess!” No, really Selena is very good with Pal and doesn’t torture him too much.

We had a rough time getting back into school after a long break. I really wanted to get back to school before we did but I also wanted to make sure Selena was totally healed from her tonsillectomy. Right after the first of the month she had her yearly physical and received her flu vaccination, well she came down with a bug right after that and was pretty miserable for the rest of the week. Finally she got over that and we were able to get back to school.

Selena is doing very well with her writing, it is improving all the time. She told me the other day, “Grandma I love my school books!” I am really happy to see her taking to her curriculum so well and working so hard. She is becoming more independent and so we are in the process of making a check off list that she can follow on her own.

She is truly showing us that she is six years old. While, I have seen worse, we are having a little of the testy attitude. Through consistency though she is improving and now we see it more when she is tired in the evening. I had a good laugh the other day when she asked me, “Grandma how long do I have to wait for my Birthday? I can’t wait to turn 7.” I couldn’t help but think, “I can’t either!” I asked her why she wanted to be 7 and she informed me, “I don’t want to be 6 anymore, I want to be 7 now.”

One of the things the doctors told us going into the tonsillectomy, and I had read it somewhere here in the Internet is that sometimes slight hyper activity can be caused by chronic tonsillitis. It is amazing the difference we are seeing in Selena since her tonsillectomy. She has her moments like any child, but she quickly calms herself and transitions into a quiet play or cuddle time. Who would have thought that the tonsils would affect a child in such a way?

It is very obvious though that Selena is getting cabin fever, just as she healed from everything our weather dipped way cold, freezing through the night. We had hoped to get out today for some fun time and burn off some energy, but we had quite a cold breeze all day long which was very bone chilling. I know her and I have to go to town and get her a new softball mitt, so we are hoping for one more sunny day even if it is cold, to just go and have some fun girl time. We do have a couple of play dates for next week, so that should help with some of her cabin fever.