This weekend was completely opened for us as both the basketball game and the piano class were cancelled.  We started Saturday with tennis first.  The boys remembered the drill we did last week and enjoyed doing that again for part of the morning.  Later the boys moved on to soccer.  In the afternoon, we also took a walk to Logan’s school playground to play.  Logan taught us all how to play one of the games he learned at school “4 squares”.  He seemed proud to share and be the one who knows the rules.  Today we did not plan on watching the Super Bowl, so Stuart decided to take advantage of everyone else watching the game and utilize the nearby school’s nice courts with Logan for another round of tennis.  I was told they had fun with that again.

    Later in the day while the boys were playing video games, Stuart found a live feed of the Super Bowl on our Roku/TV.  It was quite enjoyable for us to watch in peace and quiet for awhile.  At dinner, we kept the TV on and this was a first time that the boys really sat and watched a football game.  We tried to explain the basic of the game to them and they seemed somewhat into it.  They cheered for the “white team” and was happy that they won.  It was a good end to a relaxing weekend for us.

    Over a week ago Logan took out his old deck of Yu Gi Oh cards to play again, and the excitement of that spread to Connor too.  Logan shared a few cards with Connor; the two of them held on to their decks dearly, and had fun dueling with each other.  Later Logan decided that he wanted a duel disk to wear on his wrist.  For the next couple of days, he kept asking for us to buy one for him.  He let him down gently that we would not able to find one, but he was not convinced.  When we were at Target one day, he wanted to ask a staff there but was too shy, so he convinced Connor to try.  They managed to ask the Cashier at the end of the trip but of course no luck.  Logan continued to ask for it, so we suggested that he could make one himself but should wait until the weekend to do that.  Obviously he could not wait that long.  One morning he came in to our room with his eyes half opened and asked us to help him make the cardboard duel disk.  He was so happy with it once Stuart helped him get the rough draft done after school.  But the next day, his excitement of it had thankfully died down and the disk is now just sitting on his desk.

    it was a Small World Day at Connor’s school on Friday, and the kids were welcome to dress in their cultural outfits.  I managed to find the last piece of Chinese jackets at home that still fit Connor, but he was not keen to wear it as he was worried being laughed at.  I encouraged him in the morning and he finally agreed to wear but not without a huff.  For the school event, he also brought a Chinese red envelope for Show and Tell which he did not mind doing. 

    At the end of the day when I picked him up, Connor was still in the jacket and looked quite comfortable in it.

    I had another art lesson with Logan’s class today.  We have been so busy lately that I felt rushed last week trying to prepare for this one; fortunately I managed to get out from work early one day to go to school and get the supplies ready.

    Today, I arrived at the Art Vistas room to load up the cart, then as I wheeled to the classroom, I said hi to Logan and a few of his classmates while they were having lunch.  I had six moms volunteer to help and I prepared them quickly before the class returned.  When the kids were back and we were getting started, one of the girls came up to me to give me a rainbow loom bracelet and put it on for me.  She is a sweet girl that often gives me hugs.  I was so happy to receive her gift.

     Then the lesson began.  This was a fun lesson as the kids could use paint brushes and paint, and do they love to paint!  I reviewed previous lesson materials with them first, then moved on to the new topic, the value, which represents the lightness and darkness of a color.  We learned about tints (adding white to the color) and shades (adding black).  The kids were eager to answer questions.  Then we started our hands-on project by making a value scale as practice.  I showed the kids step by step how to mix in the colors with the overhead.  The kids were very diligent with mixing in white and black, and the scales came out quite nice.  Afterward we moved on to painting "monochromatic clowns" by using one color with its values.  Again, I walked them through drawing the face and the eyes, then they continued painting the rest of the clowns on their own.  The kids painted some creative one of a kind clowns, and the results were awesome.  It was hectic at times when the excitement became so high that it was too loud for me to talk through them, so the teacher needed to calm the class down.  One kid cried at the end when she wanted to paint more.  I had a few incidences of saying or almost saying “toothbrush” instead of “paint brush”, but other than that the lesson went well and we were on time.  The parents helped clean out the room and the supplies, so we could wrap up quickly.

    Logan did fine today.  He asked some random questions initially instead of answering my questions to the group.  But with the project, he did well.  He called out “Mommy, help me!” aloud a few times, but he was the first to finish painting the clown.  And with the papers I gave the class for free paint later, he painted another clown and castle.  He was quite speedy today.

   We went to play some tennis this morning.  Four of us started with the usual pairing and we hit the balls for awhile.  Connor enjoyed it the most when I stood next to him and dropped the balls for him to swing his racquet.  He had some good hits with this method.  After awhile, the kids wanted to take a snack and they had fun playing with each other on the sideline.  They finally returned to play with us but they were goofing around by then.  Rather than hitting from the far court, Stuart decided to toss the balls from half court to them to change things up.  The boys seemed to enjoy it as they had a better chance of hitting the balls.  Later I switched with Stuart and he became the ball boy to get more exercise.  I started rewarding the boys with more tosses if they were in a good position and had a good swing.  The boys enjoyed being challenged and were more motivated.  Their swings got better.  Logan made contact with almost all the tossed balls and the hits started to improve.  Connor improved on his contact and had some good hits too.  I was tossing to them as soon as they were ready again, so we were speeding up a bit.  They were so into it that they did not want us to stop until Stuart got tired of running around the court and my arm had become sore.  We must have been out on the court for over an hour and a half, and done a hundred tosses.  We will have to continue this trend.

    I decided to sign Connor up for a piano class.  I thought it will be nice to learn to play piano the proper way as we now have a keyboard that Stuart purchased a while back.  Also with Connor’s age, a parent needs to accompany him, and as I have no music knowledge at all, I was curious to learn a little something too.  Connor had never asked to take lessons, but he did not mind once he found out it was going to happen.  After Logan’s basketball and snack time on Saturday, Connor and I drove off to the recreation center.  We were the first to arrive and met the instructor first, then three other kids, along with their parents, joined us.  The kids tried the keyboards and colored the workbooks when told.  They learned the finger numbers and learned about low and high sounds.  They listened to the tunes the instructor played.  All the kids participated and listened to the instructor quite well.  I felt like we had learned quite a lot in 45 minutes.  We also have been given a home assignment and were told that we will have to practice 5-10 minutes a day at home.  I guess I did not realize what we had gotten ourselves into, but Connor had fun so far.