Life's Whirlwind Adventures

Lil Man loves (and needs) to play outside!! He has so much energy all the time so it's very important that he has appropriate clothing and opportunities to be outside.  Last year we built a snow fort in our front yard, this year we've now done two in our back yard.  t he first one was really basic, but it was fun and Lil Man played outside for hours in his fort, it even had a garage!!   The second snow fort was built thanks to our neighbours and their snow blower!! So the neighbour kids came over and snow blowed our yard into a pile and then Lil Man got to build in that fort. We missed the good days for tunnel digging and there was some freezing rain and melting so it became more of a hill, but Lil Man still loved it!!  Last year while we were working on the snow fort, we let Lil Man 'paint' his snow fort, and that activity kept him busy for hours over many days.  It was so easy too, just fill a squirt bottle with food colouring and water and send him o...

I am feeling the need to stand on a soap box right now.  I've recently heard that some schools are considering doing away with recess (this is an older report)because they are unable to meet all the objectives of the curriculum in a school year.  I think this will only make the situation worse, it will not improve it!! Kids need unstructured time in their day, especially the 4 and 5 year olds in Kindergarten and grade one.  Kids are being pushed to hard to be academic, being pushed to hard to grow up and they are missing out on their childhood.  Ok that last statement may be a bit of an exaggeration, but come on, school is putting a lot of pressure on kids now a days. Now it's been many years since I was a student in an elementary school, but I remember my school days very clearly.  School started at 9 am, but the buses started arriving at 8:30.  I was a town kid, so I walked to school, now because I liked to play before school I would get to school jus...