Swim and gym and more

This morning was swim class. Sayer is now doing the length of the pool several times with a short pool noodle in front of her so that when she does her arm strokes her hands land on the noodle and she holds it while she does the other stroke. And she's doing her side breathing, and showed great improvement in just today's lesson! The other girl in her class wasn't there today, so she got all the teacher's attention, and he had her going back and forth and was encouraging her and making corrections and suggestions the whole time. She's now much better and simply turning her face to the side to breathe rather than lifting her whole head out of the water. Hooray!

And I had a bit of an epiphany while watching Duncan's class and talking with the mothers of the other two students. In an earlier post I mentioned that one child is older than Duncan, and the other is younger, and both are much more enthusiastic about the water. The thing is, they're not really more skilled, it just looks that way because they're willing to splash and be splashed. But as I talked with the other moms and listened to how they pointed out the things their children *weren't* doing, and some of the things that Duncan *is* doing ... well, he's not going to move up a level at the end of this session (this Thursday), but he's not unskilled. He's just not as confident in the water as his classmates. And that is something I am sure will change, and when it does, and enthusiasm combines with skill - watch OUT! :)

And after swimming we headed off to Duncan's gym class. I asked him if he was going to take a nap between the classes like he'd done last week, but he said no. He was hungry, not tired. So he ate a snack and when we got to The Little Gym early we sat in the van for a bit reading Ms. Frizzle's adventures in Ancient China, at Sayer's request. Then we headed in for class. Duncan greeted his friend, Jack, and I sat down with his mother, Kim, when the teachers called the kids in. Even before all the students had arrived Kim and I could tell that this class was going to be ... chaotic :) The kids were like pinballs, bouncing off one thing and heading for another. Duncan was more sedate than many of his fellow students, but I'll attribute that more to being a bit tired from swim class than to his desire to sit and pay attention to the teacher. The kids all had fun, and all the parents watching in the lobby were just shaking their heads at the antics in the gym. There must have been something in the milk they all had on their cereal today.

When we got home Sayer attacked her ETC while I made lunch. Her handwriting is improving - hooray! Every now and then I will correct the way she makes a letter (make the bubble first, then draw the line ...) and then as she continues with the assignment she'll announce to me each time she makes that letter that she's remembering to do it the right way. Right now I'm trying to get her to leave space between her words so that I see 'shave shave shave' instead of 'shaveshaveshave.' She plowed right through her assigned pages and then did two more and earned a nickel. :)

We did a little crafting today, but the wind knocked the trays around before the crafts dried, and the glue got everywhere. We'll try again, perhaps tomorrow.

The kids decided to make a fort and kidnapped all the blankets from the couch and first tried throwing them on our bed and bringing a book light inside, but there was nothing to hold the blankets up. So then the dragged them into Sayer's bed where they could drape them over the rails on the loft bed. Once inside their fort with a book light there was much giggling.

Tonight we introduced the kids to Looney Tunes via 'What's Opera Doc?' They thought it was terribly funny that Bugs Bunny was dressed like a girl. After watching it, while they were brushing their teeth tonight the kids kept stopping to break into song. There were several renditions of 'spear and magic helmet!' and then they started substituting other words for helmet. We had 'spear and magic pickle!' and 'spear and magic nose!' followed quickly by 'spear and magic nostril!' ... there were lots more.

One of these days Netflix will deliver another Looney Tunes DVD so we can show them 'The Rabbit of Seville.' Can't wait to hear what lovely songs they'll make up from that one. :)