Friday, May 23, 2008

By 4:30 pm on Friday, I find myself being less likely to respond to questions and play suggestions with enthusiasm, and far more likely to slip into half-hearted "Yeah"s and "Sure"s. As such, on Fridays I strive for us to have either a family field trip or a lazy at-home day when I can slip in a movie by 5. Since Nick worked an early shift this week on Wednesday and that day ended up being less than ambitious, I decided today would be a good day to go out somewhere. The weather was good and we had to renew our membership anyway, so we headed to the zoo.

What I learned at the zoo: Isabel remembers a lot more about mammals than I'd expected. She also asked a lot of really interesting questions about the animals, most of which (luckily) were quickly and easily answered by the signage on each display. Her most consistent questions were about what each animal ate, but she also wanted to know what the rhino's (well, she calls it the hippopotamus) horn is made of, if the giraffe's skin has spots like its fur, if Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep can jump, if sea lions are mammals or fish and if bears can climb, among other things. Which reminds me, I told her we'd research whether or not the sheep can jump when we got home and then we forgot - something for over the weekend, I suppose. I was particularly surprised when, in the giraffe house, Isabel told me, "You know, Mom, it's good that giraffes have those long necks because then they can see if the lions or tigers try to come eat them!" She then described, in great detail, how the long necks help giraffes to eat the leaves in the treetops, "and those are their favorites!"

We spent the most time with the gorillas and sea lions. Isabel was less interested in the tiger, which was unfortunate because he was very close to the glass and roaring quite dramatically. We did stop and watch him for a while, but only because I wanted to.

We stopped at the playground for a bit and Isabel played with a very nice little boy. It was short-lived, however, because the zoo playground has a very large, very ominous-looking snake slide that, every year, it takes Isabel several visits to get re-adjusted to. This is the first spring in a few years that Isabel isn't attending the zoo's weekly preschool program (she aged out this year), so we haven't been there as often as usual. I can hardly blame her for being nervous around that slide - it is intimidating. So we got ice cream instead. Aidan had dry cereal, which sounds boring but he's quite happy with it.

Back in the car, I gave Isabel the zoo magazine that came with our membership information and she sounded out the words "zoo" and "log." She also practiced spelling "fox" - she started spelling it a few days ago and says she sounded it out, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she picked it up when she was up late earlier this week and watched American Idol for 45 minutes or so. In any case, she can spell fox.

I decided to go out for dinner, frankly because I was too tired and lazy to cook anything. We went to Denny's because it's fast, convenient and relatively tasty, if not necessarily good for us. While we were getting our food, Isabel told the waitress that she has "beautiful!" fingernails (they were purple). The waitress was appropriately flattered.

Aidan says "Dah-dee" now. In the past four days he's picked up three new words. "Uh-oh," he uses in context (namely, when he drops something or gets himself stuck somewhere); "wow," he seems to just be having fun with as a random sound. It remains to be seen if "Dah-dee" has any context for him. So far he seems to be using it specifically for Nick, but it's too early to tell. He's also starting to sign more often. I'm sort of in awe of all the things he's doing.

I'll be working most of this weekend, hoping to finish my project before we all go on vacation June 1. There won't be any dedicated homeschool work for the next three days, though I'm sure Isabel will strong-arm us into teaching her something during this time - she has more curiosity than a dozen adults.

One final, fun note for today - I sat with Isabel this morning to read through her monthly issue of Your Big Backyard magazine and we found a spread inside about two kids who live in Tanzania with their wildlife conservator father... and they're homeschooled! Isabel was thrilled. She was especially pleased to see that they also sit at their table to do homeschool work.