Caden has officially been invited to pre-team for gymnastics! He will be starting in the summer session. Until then, we are going to try to find time for an occasional private lessons with Coach Tom. We did manage to get one private lesson in this month. It was a great opportunity for Caden to work one on one with Coach Tom, and for Coach to get a feel for what he can do at this point. He was particularly impressed with Caden’s pullover on the bars. Coach Tom has never had a 5 year old able to do a pull over because it requires a lot of core strength. I believe his words were, “That is going to cost you a lot of money” after Caden completed the pullover (alluding to a lot of gymnastics in his future). Caden is super excited to get to do more gymnastics. He really liked the private lesson too — even a 30 minute lesson had a lot more content and activity since he didn’t have to wait his turn.
Caden loves to fish! Neither kid caught anything at the marina on Lake Palestine, but Caden caught three fish in Linden! His casting is actually pretty good and I don’t think he has caught a tree yet. =)
Both kids have spent lots of time on the trampoline and bicycles. The weather has been so nice — rain once or twice a week and otherwise sunny and in the high 70s or low 80s. No complaints here! We pulled the kiddie pool out at the end of the month too, so now there are wet kids on the deck again!
Caden has been reading Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Daddy at night. He loves the humor in the story and he does a pretty good job following along. He is super wiggly, but Daddy is learning to deal with it.
I have started reading a chapter book to the kids during dinner time. I don’t typically eat dinner with them, but they need supervision or dinner takes forever and they have a tendency to mess around. We are working on the MENSA Excellence in Reading list, so this is a good opportunity for me to read a book on the list. This month we read Little House on the Prairie. It has led to some interesting conversations about the early settlers and Indians. We talked about how Pa and Ma were not supposed to be there and that the Indians had a reason to be mad at them.
Caden planted a mango seed and watermelon seeds in garden box. I told him the mango wasn’t likely to grow, and if it did spout it wouldn’t survive the winter, but he wanted to plant it anyway. It won’t hurt anything regardless!
We drove up to Pittsburg one afternoon to pick strawberries. It is a bit of a hike from our new place, but we were completely out of strawberry jam and frozen strawberries for muffins. Caden’s favorite jam is strawberry, so he was motivated to pick a lot of berries! He filled two full baskets — a vast improvement over his productivity in 2015. My post from 2016 said he had only 10 berries at the end of the day. LOL!
In response to Kamy, Caden made cookies for her as a surprise too! This time he chose chocolate chip cookies with both regular and white chocolate chips. A half batch was plenty. He is so thoughtful. =)
Caden is learning to read and doing great! TYCTR is working well for him. The stories are starting to get longer each lesson, which he doesn’t really like, but it is a good mix of repetition and new words. His goal is to finish the book by the 4th of July. It might be tight, especially with our upcoming trip to Colorado, but we will see!
Caden is starting to help me read too — when we come to a word he knows I’ll pause and let him read it. Between our literature reading for school, reading during dinner time, reading before bedtime, and reading with Daddy before bedtime, we go through a LOT of books each day! Kamy is even starting to read stories to Caden while I make lunch.
Caden is plugging right along on math and is working on double digit addition, early fractions, and subtraction. I’m proud of him!
The Discovery Science Place in town hosted a Mini Maker Fair this month where the kids got to watch artisans create pottery and jewelry, and blacksmiths working a forge. The kids also got to climb in an ambulance and turn on the lights, shoot little ball bearing cannons at model ships, paint a sun catcher, and build a tool box. They had a lot of fun and could have spent all day there!
