Snowfall

The skies were cloudy Saturday morning and in anticipation of the storm, there was a calm but electric feeling to the air.  Snow began falling shortly after we ate lunch and continued throughout the day.  At one point, in the very late afternoon, Emily didn't understand why she couldn't just walk outside and play in the snow, and why no one wanted to go out there with her.  Although we weren't hit with blizzard conditions, it was still very windy.  When all was said and done, we ended up with about 6 inches.  The roadways, parking lots and driveways were easily cleared.  We found a safe place to bring the girls sledding and amazingly enough, it wasn't crowded.  Anna had trouble climbing back up the hill and then she did a backwards roll off of the toboggan after she tried to hitch a ride to the top.

Friday night, Allie told me that she'd had a test in her music class that afternoon.  Each student had to play Follow the Drinking Gourd on the xylophone by (him or) herself, singing along was optional.  Allie chose to sing.  She sang the song to me because I had never heard it before and then she explained the meaning of the song, which she had learned in music class, in great detail.  A few nights earlier, Emily, who has a different music teacher, had announced, "We had a really hard test in music today.   We had to read music and play it on the xylophone.  It was real music that a musician would read.  I totally guessed."  Yeah, not identical in that skill set.
    
Allie felt inspired after teaching her sisters to sing Follow the Drinking Gourd and so on Saturday morning, she decided to create a play that involved characters played by the girls and by stuffed animals.  I was curious to see how this project would end as there isn't always mutual agreement amongst the three of them.  Rich was gone for about an hour and a half in the morning running errands while I (read and) cleaned the girls' bathroom.  The girls were downstairs and I could hear them practicing their play.  There was zero fighting.  They rehearsed several times throughout the day and performed the play for us that evening.  Rich and I were both very impressed with their creativity.  



Also, on Friday night, Allie explained to me that at school, they will need to work on independent research projects.  Here's her list of topic ideas:

• Musical theater
• Yellowstone National Park
• Jennifer Lopez
• Outer space
• The ocean