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It sounds ridiculous, maybe, to talk about seasons in a tropical climate. But. There is a very distinct difference between the normal, good-natured warm of February-May and September-November and the ungodly, stifling, disgusting-ness that can be summer here.

It’s not heat so much as humidity in the summer – so staying out of the sun and under a fan only helps minimally. Most of our activity happens in the early morning and the evening to avoid over-exertion and swimming in pools of our own sweat. Alas. This post is about school, not the weather.

We don’t have a swimming pool – even though it’s on my “want” list for the roof I’m slowly grooming. I don’t want to buy one because my mom has one at her house for us; we just need to figure out how it’s getting here. Until then, though, we need water play. So, we take the old baby tubs up to the roof, fill them with water and a ton of toys and hide under the shade of some sheets hung over the clothes-lines (creativity is key in this heat!) I don’t have any pictures this week, but it is fun, I promise.

Samil has been working diligently on learning his shapes – especially triangles and squares. I traced some mini popsicle sticks (in an ABAB pattern) on a piece of paper and then let Samil match up the sticks with the shapes. After he did that, I pulled out the glue and let him stick them down.

I’ve been working on the kids’ bedroom since we moved in. I don’t have the luxury of kicking them out to paint it and we didn’t really want just a plain color anyway, so I’ve been stenciling some bright colored stars all over. Samil is in love with the stencils, so I pulled some out and let him have a go with water colors. I forgot that he uses way too much water and so the stencils only turned out half like the shapes they are. Once I get to the store to get some new poster paints, we’ll try again.

Samil is learning his letters, so we’ve been playing with all types of letters lately. His (and Amely’s) favorites are the letter magnets. We have metallic doors, so the magnets have moved from the fridge to the bedroom doors.

We had some visitors last Friday that we hope will be coming by weekly in the summer. They’re a little older than Samil, but they all play together well. We spent the afternoon chalking on the roof and “racing” different races (one-legged hop, elephant walk, rabbit jump, baby-crawl, etc…) and then we learned about Jonas and why we should obey God when he asks us to do something for him. We made a whale craft and called it a day. This week they came and we read Chicken Licken (in my hilarious last-minute translation into Spanish, ooops) and then we made construction paper chickens. You can definitely see the difference in level between the three!

What I learned this week: (I saw this on someone else’s tot-school and like the concept, but I completely don’t remember whose it was. If it’s yours, let me know so I can link to you!)
our new morning “schedule” has definitely improved my quality of life
I’m not a big fan of letting samil use glue by himself (the mess!)
Ceramic floors are great at keeping this cool, but horrible if you have kids because they get dirty so fast!