May Showers Finally with Sun and Flowers

May has been grouchy this year. Come and Go, Up and Down, Happy and Merky. Last year's weather was not much better as I remember in mid-June freezing while waiting for the EL at the Cub's station on the north side.

This month has been dedicated to music. Both kids performed at the Fourth Annual Bulgarian Piano Festival for kids. Both performances were nice: the little man made some mistakes, the young lady played too fast and skipped a repeat, but aside from these few glitches, they made music which I enjoyed.

The little man has his choir final rehearsal and showcase today! Hurray! He has enjoyed this year's spring choir. He learned more of the songs and more of the choreography than he did last year. In addition, it has been plain nice to know that he is somewhere, learning something, while I am sitting in another piano lesson.

Both kids have a final studio performance in June, and I also hope that we can double with the young lady's Suzuki book 2 graduation then. This weekend the annual illinois music association competition is taking place. Two weeks from now is the nationa guild audition. In both ballet girl will participate. I am preparing her for the guild. I think that we are a little behind and may not have all the scales and all the pieces polished, but I am not stressing over this. I will finalize her program with respect to what has been polished since we want to showcase her strengths, not weaknesses and misses.

Aside from that, with the weather improving, we have been spending more time outdoor. The park is our friend. We watched Zootopia, The Jungle Book and Angry birds during the days when the weather was only so-so. We travelled to Indiana to spend Easter with friends. We travelled to Bourbonnais to celebrate a friend's mother's 92nd birthday! The kids treated the lady to a nice round of piano tunes!

I started Sunlight boy on a review of First Grade Math with Challenging Word Problems. Ballet girl is working on the chapter on fractions in Beast Academy 3D.

I have been reading aloud a bulgarian book, a story of a fox. It is very descriptive, a bit like the Jungle Book, so it requires a lot of interpretation. The story is wonderful and talks about the circle of life, the dangerous in life, the battles and triumph in life.

We have also talked about the importance of water filtration. We will build a water filtration plan from paper and cardbard. I also intend to build a ferris wheel and a merry-go-around this weekend.

In the portuguese front, things have stalled a little. Slowly I am picking up the pace with some readings from Turma da Monica.

School is practically over. I have not pushed much new material on anybody. With sunlight boy we read 3-4 times per week. Ballet girl is on her own with the reading. I bought her a book to get her excited about coding, and we did some very basic codes exploration. I need to devote more time to this particular topic, but at the moment until the piano competitions and graduation are done, there is just no time.


Here are the books that I tackled this month:

Chernobil is a very disturbing book, but a must read for anybody who cares about humanity, the environment and the recklessness with which the world has been governed. I knew what Chernobil was, from the ager of 6 up. However, I had no idea that the locals were so recklessly regarded; I had not idea that people from other struggling parts of the union had been relocated to this god-foresaken region which they loved to call home. This alone exploded my head. I could not sleep for days. How is this possible! How is it possible that we do not talk about the danger of nuclear energy.
My thoughts recently have been directed towards the way society these days is organized. Society demands services and stuff. Just sixty years ago people were happy to put bread on the table, and to work tirelessly for it. The hardships of manual labour were replaced with the carelessness of office labour. I struggle with finding the balance between two extremes. On one had, you don't want the great depression to happen. On the other hand, you don't want the over supply and senseless spending and wanting stuff to persist.

The next two are lovely chilren/youth's books. The Detectives in Togas is a mystery involving interesting characters, and time-specific references. I liked the suspense, and the evolution of the characters, and the teacher. I found it a little naive at the end, but more or less this is how good stories look. The mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil is a very profound book about journeying, looking for strengths while harnessing the weaknesses. It is a very wise book and a lot can be said about what the characters are telling us. I would like to read this book to the kids this year, maybe in the fall.

This is a wonderful story about a boy in a poor village who educated himself and build from scraps a windmill which helped with irrigation and with electricity.

This is one very powerful story and when we read it I intend to build a windmill and demonstrate how the power of the wind can be turned into motion and electricity.

 I read a Long Walk to River a year ago after seeing a documentary about the main character. I am overwhelmed by how much, unnecessary suffering takes place in the world because of lack of simple and cheap comoodities. This would be a great story to read along with the discussion on the importance and value of clean water.

With the approaching olympics, I looked for a book that can inspire my little people. I think I found it. It is a very good story about surviving difficult childhood and obstacles, learning to strive and believe in yourself and trek on. I am pretty certain that this will be our July reading.



Vacation-Next month!