Well, my kids are still sick. And I hate it, because I feel motivated to go places but instead, we're stuck at home. We're all starting to get on each other's nerves.

Yesterday, they did a page or two of "Explode the Code". Then, they got bored and put the workbooks away. B really loves the absurd questions that he has to answer in the workbook. Normally, he would balk at reading something like that but he laughs a lot at the funny questions. T is getting bored with "a", "at", "ag", "ap" and all things "a". We're skipping ahead, because he clearly knows "a" cvc words backwards and forwards and it's just unnecessarily repetitive at this point.

Afterwards, they drew and wrote on their own. B wrote "The Umazing Spidrman" and drew a picture. T wrote "Batman" and decorated it with stamps. Then, he got upset that he couldn't draw Spiderman's web like B.

Honestly, they're driving me a little nuts. They're fighting more often, because nobody feels well and we're all tired of being stuck at home. You know it's bad when introverts are desperate to leave the house. Sigh.

Yesterday, B asked how much 3 30s were, because he was trying to figure out roughly how many days were in 3 months. After I told him, I asked him to tell me how much 3 3's were. We also used 2 3's to determine what 2 30s were. T announced that 2 5s were 10 and I taught him that 2 50s were 100.

I brought home workbooks from my Chinese Mandarin class. The workbooks are actually designed for Chinese children, so they have lots of cute cartoons in them. My kids loved the books. They were insatiable in wanting to know what all the words said. It's good for me, but it's not pleasant when it's 7am and I'm still struggling to wake up. It is really good for me, however, and they enjoy it. They learned words like: butterfly, big, "the Great Wall", flower, green, etc.

I taught them the words for Grandpa and Grandma, the father's parents only. When I said 'paternal grandmother': nei-nei, B heard me speak in the third tone and he used his hand to make the third tone gesture when he repeated the word. I was pleased that, even though they only remember a few words, B can hear and identify the 4 tones. I wish he could take my class; I think he'd love it.

I finally left them to look at the workbook by themselves and I heard B tell T, "Oh, that's ge-ge, older brother." I had taught him that a a few days ago; he used the correct tone, i.e. the first tone.

Languages are sooo much fun. And even though we're not aiming for fluency, I'm sure the multiple language exposures are good for their brains. They'd never get this in school. They'd get one Spanish word a week, which used to really upset my oldest niece because it's such a tortuously slow way of being "fed" a language. Although, I should say that they could do an immersion magnet school if we could ever get off the wait-list. It's a trade-off, whichever education method we choose. Oh well. So far, they've had good exposure and language practice with Spanish, German and Mandarin. They've had minimal exposure to a few other languages like French and Polish. I don't know what we'll try next.