Jumpstart Your Kids to Get Ready For School

For our family, it's time to go back to school next week.  The kids are rusty with school skills after a summer of moving to a new home, swimming, playing and really, too much television.  I know I should be more parental and limit it more, but we've gotten so busy just trying to set up house that we forget to pull them from their veggie patches on the couch (they are vegetating - get it!)

The kids do enjoy their computers though, as much as they enjoy T.V.  We're getting out the cache of  educational software to break them back into the school mode.  Knowledge Adventure's Jumpstart Spanish has been a family favorite of my girls since preschool.  It still entertains them with the great songs and games.  Their Spanish has improved steadily over time.  Annie is going into fourth grade next week and needs more advanced language study and we're ready to move up to another one of their programs called Say It in Spanish.  It's good for learning Spanish up to high school level and, as of today, it's on sale for $9.99 with free shipping, so I'm getting it right now.

If you've already been a reader of my blog, you'll know that I have two very gifted children.  The regular curriculum in school doesn't begin to satisfy their needs.  I'm always looking for ways to supplement their education.  Luckily, they are very self-motivated learners.  I've been very pleased with the products I have used from Knowledge Adventure and I highly recommend them for anyone, but especially for parents who want to enrich their children's curriculum beyond the basics.  When you've got a first grader doing third grade work and a fourth grader doing high school work and you don't home school, you've got to do something in between.  Using their educational software really has helped us a lot to meet our goals with the girls.

Invasion

Last night we had an invasion of the aliens. Let me explain. Two days ago we had a really strong storm. It looked like a tropical storm hitting the house. We actually had tree limbs fall that were the size of actual trees. Scary.

The invaders came after that. When I was taking the dog out and looked down, there were millions of either a) termites or b) flying ants emerging from the ground and from under the patio of our rental home. Since the termite inspector had just been here last week, I have called them this morning and hopefully, they'll be back to see just what is emerging in droves from underground. They were varying sizes and some had wings and some didn't. It almost seemed like a pep rally for the insect nation with millions cheering the little fliers on.

Just as long as they are not in the house! But it also doesn't make it too fun to go out to catch fireflies. See a video of them here (the weird sound is just the video malfunctioning - it makes it sound like an alien invasion for real):



Oh, did I mention we have now officially relocated to Alabama? Yes, we are learning the ways of the land and the people.

The Land of a Million Flavors & Grapico

Well, we've entered the land of a million flavors - of soda! Alabamians love their fizzy drinks! I have been perusing the aisles of the grocery stores and have found that old soda pops didn't die out - they stayed alive and well in the old south.

I have been enjoying something called Diet Grapico this week - found at Walmart here and made in Birmingham. It's a very decent grape soda, something I really like and can never find in Florida. There was also Sundrop (similar to Mountain Dew) and the icky sounding Peach Nehi (where's the grape, people). There were at least four versions of fruit punch soda sold in cans. I always liked Tahitian Treat when I was a kid. Oh, and some weird version of Dr. Pepper, I think called Dr. Wham. I'll have to try that one next time - perhaps Diet Dr. Wham (does George Michael drink this?)

My paternal grandparents ran an old fashioned country store in rural North Carolina when I was growing up, so these soda flavors bring back memories of drinking a lot of them there. I haven't seen them since - until now.

Well, due to sugar issues, I can't indulge like I used to when I was small and thankfully, the children don't like soda (they've always said fizzy drinks were "spicy" since they were babies). But happily, the oddly-named Diet Grapico is on my shopping list now. The photo is an old advertisement for Grapico I found when searching for more info about it. It's one of those old, old brands of the south.