Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Beating the winter blues

Today was the first really cold day (okay, cold for the south, but still) and it really got me thinking about how we are going to make sure we beat the winter blues rut. One thing I did was sign the kids up for some classes/activities. I was excited to find just the things I was looking for. The first is art! My eldest will be taking a ceramics class at the local art museum. Not to be outdone, the twins will be taking their own art class. Lucky for me, the two classes are at the same location at the same time - yes! Those with multiple children of various ages know my pain about different places at different times! The next is science classes (same place, but unfortunately not the say day or time). My eldest will have a science class once a month while the twins will have a class twice a month. They will also be continuing in a weekly Mandarin class.
For more extracurricular activities we will be attending an "open gym". This is a weekly 2 hour block of time for homeschoolers to come and have some neat gymnasium fun. The good thing about this time is there are a variety of ages that attend. The only downside is there aren't structured activities. I think a rousing game of "duck, duck, goose" is actually good for kids! However, the time is there weekly and its free - so I won't look a gift horse in the mouth!
We also started our robotics club which is mainly made up of our kids a couple friends - but at least there will be some weekly interaction for a couple of months. Just to jazz things up a bit my daughter will be having a tea party with friends in a couple weeks as well.
I put in a mid sized order for arts and crafts supplies from Oriental Trading - and yes, we purchased some new games for the Wii. I figure the important things is to stay AHEAD of the winter blues!