July 21- July 27

It was an interesting week.  Poor Rob had a stomach bug and ended up spending some time at home instead of going in to work.  The boys were so excited to have him around and that made it kind of hard for him to rest as much as he probably would have liked.  The boys aren't very interested in me when he is around.  There was a lot of wii played this week!

This week our family finally finished reading The Book of Mormon.  We started over three years ago.  Obviously, we didn't read much during our nightly readings.  With the boys taking turns reading it made things even slower.  We got through it though and Justin was excited to start the Doctrine & Covenants.  I was kind of leaning towards the New Testament, but we will get there eventually.

Rob was caught doing some logic problems on his iPad and the boys really wanted to help.  Their logic was a little bit interesting at times.  They decided to create their own logic problems for Rob to solve.  Justin's was very tricky.  Ryan's must have been a bit easier, as Rob was told that he finished it in expert time.

 

 

On Wednesday the boys and I went to the Magic Sand Center with the Embassy CLO group.  It was a very interesting place.  I think it would be neat to have some of their resources.  It was a nice outing, but I must say that it was an odd combination of unstructured yet overly directed. We started in a room that had light box tables with some fine sand on it.  The boys really enjoyed playing with the sand by letting it flow through their fingers and by moving it around on the surface.  Unfortunately, this was not the goal. A woman was up at the front with her own light box which was projected on a screen in front of the room.  She would draw something in her sand and instruct the children to draw what she was drawing.  Make a sun like this, draw clouds like this, etc. etc.  The boys were enjoying themselves, but the woman was looking tense as they were not doing what she was doing.  I took them downstairs to another area.  I knew it was there only because a younger girl had already gone down there because it was thought that the upstairs activity would be too difficult for her.  Well, yeah, the way it was run it would be.  Allowing her to explore the sand would have been fine though.

 

The small room downstairs had a large sand table.  It was like an elevated sandbox.  There were numerous toys in baskets on shelves that could be used in the table.  My boys quickly settled down and had a fun time playing in the sand.  They were hiding buried treasure to discover.  Another woman decided to try to direct the children's play another way.  She had a toy dolphin and tried to get the children to build it little paths to swim through.  Some of the children did, but Justin and Ryan just kind of looked at her like she was crazy.  They didn't want to build tall mountains with a small stream for her to swim through.



Justin and Ryan saw that some kids had been doing something else upstairs, so they went up to see what else there was.  They discovered their very favorite room.  It was full of stuffing and pillows.  It was like a pillow fight out of control.  They ran, jumped, hid, and had a great time.  The woman up there told them to be careful because the floor under the pillows was hard.  Sure, young boys are really concerned about the floor.  They jump off the top bunk bed and their floor is plenty hard.  She then tried to get the kids to relax and do a visualization exercise.  It was my kids and a three year old.  Guess what.  It didn't really work out so well for her.

Back downstairs one of the children was doing a cool painting activity.  Of course all of the children wanted to try it.  No problem, right?  Well, they only had one tray so only one child at a time could do it.  They had to wait for their turn.  The other areas were already cleaned up.  Hmmm, not the best planning.  They tried denying the three year old her turn saying she was too young.  The woman assisting was basically helping the younger children (including Justin) by controlling their project hand over hand.  Since we were running late, Justin and Ryan had to share a turn and a picture.  Once finished, we were told it took an hour to dry.  WHY wouldn't they start with that activity then?!?  Luckily, someone was able to pick ours up later.

I was glad that we went with the CLO group.  I never would have found the place on my own.  I wouldn't have had a clue what to do once I went in either.  There were plenty of employees, at least two spoke English, but they acted like tweens trying to run a summer camp without being given much guidance.  The boys had fun so we may go back, but we will be more assertive and say what we want to do and in what order.  We would also bring exact change.  It never ceases to amaze me how many businesses overseas don't have change. 

 

 

The Magic Sand Center claims to also be a therapy center.  I think that is one of the biggest joke.  I think they could do a lot to make it a great center for sensory activities that could be both fun and therapeutic, but for now it is a place to spend a pleasant hour IF you know what is available and plan your time accordingly. 

 

 

Another week of summer camp for the boys.  Justin actually did a couple of the crafts this week too.  We made a Mario and Luigi and did a couple of other things at home too.  I guess I need to look at what we have done over the past few months and update the entertaining my kids blog.