No school!

Dima's off school today since the teachers in our school district have decided to strike. I guess this could be a good thing if the strike continues during our Vermont vacation next week. At least then he won't miss any school days. We had a nice leisurely breakfast this morning, the kind we have in the summer when we're not rushing out the door for anything. I made eggs and bacon while the kids goofed around in the playroom. Then while I cleaned up from breakfast they played some more and of course Dima was hitting things and totally wound up - he always is for some reason or another, but I had him take a little time out and once he finished that he did seem to have settled himself down enough to play nicely.

While he's out of school I decided to have our own lessons here, I'm continuing writing numbers by having him fill in the blanks from 1-31 like they had been doing in class. Josh sat with us at the kitchen table and I gave him construction paper and markers to "decorate" the paper and then let him have at it with the scissors and Mr. Destructo created a mess of teeny little pieces of paper all over the place. He was kept busy then after the cutting, cutting, cutting by taking each bit to our recycling bin. Since Josh keeps asking when we're leaving for ski school we made a construction paper chain with one link to represent each day until we leave. Josh still gets a little confused about when a new day starts since they take naps and sometimes he thinks it's a new day when they get up from nap. After the paper chain I showed Dima how to make a "hot air balloon" out of construction paper by using two sheets of different colored paper and making them into stripes then alternating them to make a stripey balloon. Now I'm planning to keep the pieces of paper for him to use as a puzzle.

Josh saw skiers doing jumps and moguls on TV over the weekend and as he was going into school yesterday he was saying that he's gonna tell his teacher the he can do that. I can only imagine what he'll do when he gets on skis and tries to imitate what he saw.

This teachers strike should be interesting cause if it goes on for a while Dima will have days off now that Josh doesn't have off and then later when they make the time up Josh will be off while Dima's at school. The news says it could go on 12-22 days but we haven't used up any snow days yet so that could make rescheduling of the time easier.

After we drop Josh off in the mornings I'm thinking I'll take Dima for walks in the parks we usually go to so we can both get some exercise and we'll do more writing lessons to settle in at naptime and just before bed. Since Josh is still in school we'll keep our same routine as far as no TV on school nights and normal bedtime so he can get himself up and out in the mornings.