For the past few days the “rude” flu has been passing through our family. Cassie had it first on Monday/Tuesday. Then Eric on Wednesday. I succumbed on Thursday. And it hit Dad and Adam on Friday. We suspect Steph may have felt it on Sunday/Monday. The girls seem to have gotten it less harshly than the boys. Anyway, here are a few observations of learning activities that took place while we all weren’t at 100%.

Take 4: This is a game I got from Discovery Toys when I used to be a distributor. There are letter tiles and individual  gridded game boards. And cards with 4 letter words on. The idea is you draw cards and try to make the word on the card with your tiles. The person who makes the most words wins. Cassie and Eric played a version of this, evidenced by the tiles strewn around.

Eye to Eye: This game I purchased as a consultant for Simply Fun, a great direct sales game company. I love the games from there, but alas, am not a good salesperson. Anyway, the premise of the game is you read a card with a subject line like “things that are green” and you are to write down three things that are green. The idea is to think alike or “eye to eye” in order to avoid points. Of course when my kids play it they score based on how unique their answers are. Eric and Cassie played this with Eric picking cards that interested him and then they would draw their answers, rather than write the words. Appealed to both of their artistic nature and got Cassie off the hook of having to know how to read. (she won’t be able to fool us for long as we keep catching her reading…).

Cooking: Cassie now eagerly pulls up a chair to the stove to watch whatever I am cooking for dinner. If I can give her a task to do to help it totally thrills her. We’ve been trying to eat less meat and more vegetables, so tonight I made vegetable soup. I used a can of tomato basil soup as my base, with added onions, celery, garlic, red, yellow and green pepper, carrots (which Cassie helped peel) and frozen corn. I also added in a box of wild rice mix and a can of stewed tomatoes. Lots of salt and pepper and chili powder for flavor and spice. Well, maybe not lots of salt.I do try to be modest with that. Art. Tonight while dinner was simmering. Cassie started working on an art project. She found some construction paper that Les had cleverly “strewn” in her path (he put it on a new shelf we have in our living room). She decided to make a picture of a night sky with moon, stars and a lone tree Most kids would have started with a black piece of paper and then added the cutout shapes to the picture. But Cassie did a silhouette cutout of the tree and grass on the black and then placed a green piece of paper behind. She than added in the brown tree trunk for added dimension. And glued on the moon and stars to the black night sky.

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