This Week in Pictures...

Presently, we're at a great phase were everything (and I mean, everything) is "Awwwww!!! CY-OOOT".  Small sticks, itty bitty pieces of paper, ants, not to mention the usual suspects of baby animals, babies in general and Sprocket (I know!). 

Evelyn and her best-friend-this-minute found a small grape in Evelyn's lunch this week.  They proclaimed it to be The Cutest Baby Grape in the whole wide world, and swore they would take care of it.  I gently informed her that Baby Grape wouldn't stay in its present pristine condition, so we decided a reasonable substitute would be a small stone she coloured green and wrapped in a piece of Kleenex.

Then, when Evelyn was helping me with lunch over the weekend, she noticed a small pepper growing inside the larger one we were cutting up.  This, she informed me, was the Cutest Baby Pepper in the whole wide world, and she insisted that we put it in a glass of water.  At present, the Baby Pepper seems to be sprouting a root, so we'll put it in some soil and see what happens!

Evelyn, wearing her crown, showing her specially selected stone.

Baby Grape Mk II on the left, and Baby Pepper on the right

Colouring, drawing and letters are huge in our house right now.  Edward and I are pretty laid back when it comes to pushing reading and writing skills, because we believe that this level of skill acquisition must be spurred by each child's motivation, interest and ability (we did learn something from our Potty Training Saga) and not necessarily enforced on a time-table.  Luckily, our school board has heavily invested in play-based learning at the core of the Kindergarten Program, so they also promote a child-centered curriculum that lets the kids move at their own pace. 

In any case, despite our laissez-faire attitude, reading and writing is happening before our very eyes... which, as an aside, is just about the coolest thing.... ever.

Colin's portrait of his alter-ego, Angus the Goat.  Pictured is his yellow tail, green horns, ears, eyes, and beard, a pink nose and a big red grin.  Underneath, Colin took a few stabs at an uppercase "A", before adding an "n", "g", "u" and "s".  It's spelled right to left.  This picture is a real treasure for me because Colin churns out a lot less artwork than his siblings.

Evelyn's attempts at completing the alphabet.  She kept getting stuck on the letter "k".

....so Colin was determined to draw an entire page of "k"s, along with car (kar?) headlights

Malcolm and his blueberry "muffas" this morning.

Our Spring growing projects - Myriam planted some alyssum in the blue pot on the left, the Ducklings came home from school with "real beanstalks!!!" and Evelyn's Baby Pepper in a glass on the right.