Around the end of September, Linnea started counting up to the 100th Day on a special chart. Every school day, she adds a mini popcicle stick to her 100 jar. At first she made bundles of five sticks, so soon she was counting by fives. Then once she got to 50, I had her switch the bundles to 10 sticks each and begin counting by tens.

And now finally, today is the 100th Day! This has been a long awaited day, as we were all supposed to go to the Minnesota Children’s Museum. Unfortunately, I found out last week that they are closed on Mondays. Urgh! We are also getting carpet in our basement today, so we have to be home all day while the carpet-layers are here. Bummer!

But we are making the most of it. We celebrated with special signs, playing a follow-the-numbers game, and eating 100 chocolate chips for snack. In lieu of the museum trip, Michael is taking the girls swimming at the community indoor poor later this afternoon. The girls are eager to show off all the tricks they have been learning at swimming lessons the past few weeks.

Our focus on wild animals continues. Last Friday we finished up our unit on penguins. We closely studied Emperor penguins because these penguin families are especially loving to one another. The father sacrifices eating for several months to keep the egg warm in the extreme weather while the mother penguin goes off 70 miles away to eat. Then the mother comes back to the daddy, feeds the newly hatched chick, and keeps it warm while the daddy goes off to eat. So cool! Our words to remember were: “I show love to everyone, especially my family.”

The highlights of our week included watching the March of the Penguins, making little icebergs for our toy penguins to play with in the sensory tub, making these fun penguins from balloons, and painting penguins on blue paper. (By the way, icy water and snow in the sensory tub make for icy fingers and soggy mittens!)

This week we jump on to kangaroos, remembering “I am safe in God,” just like the little joey is safe in his mother’s pocket. We’ve already measured that Linnea can jump 3.5 feet, and Laurel can jump 2.5 feet. Tomorrow they’ll find out that some kangaroos can jump up to 44 feet! Wow!