Friday, November 05, 2004

School and Ukrainian Months of the Year

I finally feel pretty good about our routine for school. Thankfully kids love routines and habits, so they've been helping with remembering "what comes next." The kids love calendar time (thanks, Sharon!) I laminated numbers for our calendar and they get to take turns each day telling me what number goes up next, and what day tomorrow will be, what day of the week it is, etc. They know the days of the week and we are working on the months. I know the months of the year in Ukrainian, so we also go over those too. Don't want them to forget those either. I just love the Ukrainian words for the months of the year. Ukrainian is one of the most beautiful languages in the world. Very poetic. Let me digress and ramble a little on the subject... (I can do that, it's my blog!)

The words for the months actually mean something in Ukrainian. Like the word for January means "Slicing" as in "the wind slices right through you." "February" means the "angry month." I suppose it is because of the weather. "March" means "birch tree" because the sap starts running in the birch trees then. "April" means "flowers" for obvious reasons. "May" means "grasses" for obvious reasons. "June" means "reddening" as in the fruits and vegetables start growing and turning red. "July" means "linden tree." "August" means "Sickles." "September" means "heather." "October" means "yellow colors." "November" means "leaves are falling." "December" means "the ground freezes." Sure beats our boring names of the months. When I learned the months of the year I really started to feel bad that our "future kids" would have to trade in such a beautiful language for our dry and toasty one. *Sigh.*

Anyway, I've been having fun with school stuff, and having to be creative to get things into their little heads. Today I invented a game using alphabet refrigerator magnets and a bag. They put six letters at a time into the bag and then suggested what letter the other person had to "find" using just their hand in the bag. It was great, because they really had to know what they were looking for, and they could be a little competitive and have fun. Worked great. Adam did better than I did, in fact!

Liana hasn't been feeling well the last few days. She's been running a fever and felt crummy. She perked up this afternoon, thankfully. I think she'll be fine by tomorrow.

Lets see, not a whole lot else going on. I had some leftover verenyky dough from last night, so I pulled out a can of cherry pie filling and made some filled the dough with that. YUM. Just boiled it up a few minutes and yum, yum! When Adam saw what I was doing tonight, he patted me on the back and said, "Good JOB, Mama!" I thought that was cute.

Their English is coming along. I decided to try reading a *much* harder book today than usual to see how well their comprehension was. It is a chapter book with only a sketch picture once every chapter or so. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at how well they followed me. They even begged for an extra chapter when I said we could read more tomorrow. Amazing how fast children pick up a language. Not even home three months!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Shelly, I admit that I sometimes skim your post to check to see if you have entered a photo. I am loving and blessed by their physical changes. I think their growth has encouraged many of us. A sick child, reading a story, leaves with Aleksa - you are a real mom now. I am very glad for you and for them. God's economy is great. Your dream has been realized and the children's have, also.