New Blog!

I'm starting a new blog for homeschooling: www.creatingsomethingbeautifulhs.blogspot.com. (There is a link to it on the left side of this blog.)

Why, oh, why would I do this? I have enough trouble regularly posting to one blog. How will I keep up with two blogs?

I have a few reasons for starting a separate homeschool blog. First, it makes a nice place to document our homeschool journey for my records. Pennsylvania is a pretty demanding state as far as reporting goes, so having a separate, organized place to write about our homeschool helps ME. It's like an online journal. This blog, to be honest, is quite unorganized since I didn't really know what I was doing when I started it, and I haven't been consistent about using labels and such. That makes it very difficult for me to find homeschooling posts if I want to. A fresh start for this will be good. Second, I know I have learned a lot about homeschooling by reading about the experiences of others online, so maybe I can help some others in this same way. I've had many others ask me questions about homeschooling over the years, so having a separate place to answer those questions will be good. Those people may not be interested in my general family posts, and some of those reading this blog may not be interested in reading about writing and math curricula :). Third, I've had this blog for almost six years, and I'm starting to run out of allotted storage space. So, if I start posting school-related photos there and reserve this blog for other things I can keep this one going longer.

All that doesn't answer how I'm going to keep up with two blogs when I'm not so good about posting regularly to one. So, we will just have to see how that goes. Only time will tell :). I won't be offended if you're secretly chuckling about this idea and placing bets about how long it will last!

A couple of house-keeping things. I have placed a link to the homeschool blog on this blog, but I will NOT be placing a link to this family blog on that one. As of right now, I have not created a list of favorite blogs over there, but if I do, I will only be linking homeschool-related blogs to it, so don't be offended if I don't link your blog over there. I'm trying to stay organized and keep that blog solely related to homeschool.

Another important addition...I have added a place to subscribe to both blogs via email. I know that I almost never read blogs unless I've subscribed to them and they come in my email or if I read them when they are posted in Facebook. So, maybe this will help some of you stay in touch with my blogs without having to remember to go check it.

Well, I hope you will enjoy the new format. I'm looking forward to it myself! If you're interested, head over to the new blog and tell me what you think!

 

New blog header

 

 

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Science Fair 2013

Over the past five weeks the kids have been preparing for their first science fair, and last Thursday, the day they had been working towards finally arrived! They spent those weeks reading, experimenting, solving problems, logging results, typing research, preparing their project boards, and practicing their presentations. It was a very worthwhile experience, and they are already talking about what they want to do next.

 

Here are some pictures from the evening...

Maria setting up

 

Matteo's Project

 

Cati's Project

 

Chiara's Project

 

Matteo presenting to the judges

 

Cati presenting to the judges

 

Maria presenting to the judges

Chiara presenting to the judges

There were awards given in each grade for best display, best use of the scientific method, and best overall. All kids were given nice participation medals. Chiara won best use of the scientific method for kindergarten, Cati won best overall for grades 4/5, and Maria won best use of the scientific method for grades 7-11. We were all very surprised! I was most pleased with Matteo who kept his spirits up despite being the only one in our family not to win an award.

Awarded for their hard work!

 

Chiara was so excited about her trophy

She kept it by her side the whole next day

 

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Creative Kiddos

The kids created some cute things this week...

 

Cati learned to crochet a little more than a month ago. She made one thing following a pattern. Now she's decided she doesn't need a pattern (anyone who really knows Cati will not find this surprising - she's always been a creative, independent, marches-to-the-beat-of-her-own-drummer kind of gal). She's been creating all kinds of little critters this week on her own. Here's a small sample.

Cati and her bee

 

Bee close-up

 

A dolphin with an artificial tail as in Dolphin Tale

 

A strawberry

Elena and Chiara drew some animal pictures while looking through a library book.

 

 

 

 

 

Elena made a face with kitchen items :)

 

 

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Always catching up :)

I had hoped to find time to do a "7 Quick Takes" post last Friday, but I was too busy preparing for weekend guests. We very much enjoyed having Maria and Chiara's Godparents here this past weekend. And not only did we have a wonderful weekend, but we have a nice, clean house left to enjoy after all our hard work getting it ready for our guests! It's nice to have the motivation of visitors to make you do some serious cleaning that is too easy to overlook on a day-to-day basis :)

So, here are a few of the things I was planning to post last Friday...

We completed our first full week of school after the holidays last week and it went really well. We slipped right back into our old routine pretty smoothly. The big school thing that we have going on right now is the upcoming Homeschool Science Fair. The kids started their experiments last week, and here are just a few glimpses. I'll do a full post on the science fair after it happens in early February.

Chiara is investigating puffy paint and what ingredients make the best home-made version. Here she is making a picture with her favorite recipe.

 

Elena enjoyed the puffy paint, too!

Matteo is modeling glaciers and their movement.

Cati is looking at the sugar content of different cookies.

 

Maria is trying to clean dirty water through filtering and evaporation. After a week, she managed to filter clean water and to still get clean water :). The kids learned last week that science projects don't work perfectly the first (second, third...) time through.

 

And, I learned about how metal corrosion last week! We keep our science equipment under our kitchen sink lock with baby-proof locks. Well, Maria had gone to get something out of the cabinet. When she came back, she nonchalantly said, "Oh, Mom, I bumped some pipe under sink and now some water is leaking." Of course, I run into the kitchen to see water pour across the kitchen floor. Then I ran my hand under the pipe, trying to figure out where the leak was coming from and I end up sticking my finger through the pipe! The pipe was very corroded and had worn thin. The good news is that we got to enjoy Steak 'n Shake for supper, using some gift cards we got at Christmas, and we found a good contractor who lives close by after calling our usual one who no longer accepts such small jobs as leaky sink pipes. When you live in old houses like ours (built in 1904), you need to have a good contractor around at all times!

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The little ones finally got their last Christmas present last week! We intentionally didn't bring this with us to GA because it was big and we didn't have enough space to bring it with us. When we got back, Dany got it out one night to put it together and realized that an important piece was missing. So, we had to contact the company, and we finally got the missing piece last week, and Dany and Maria were able to assemble it.

It is a toy kitchen. Giuseppe absolutely loves above all things pots, pans, and spoons. He pulls mine out of the kitchen cabinets daily. And, he begs me to hold him so he can watch me cook supper each evening. He has been loving this toy. The other kids have, too. It's been a real hit around here!!

 

Do you remember the NaNoWriMo challenge the kids participated in last November. Well, we FINALLY finished editing Matteo's book and he got the copies in the mail last week! He was very excited! He started writing the sequel this week :) :)

 

Stay warm, everyone! We're having our typical January week of single-digit weather and sub-zero wind chills this week!! Brrrrrrrrr! This southern gal refuses to come out of hibernation for at least a week!

 

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Our Writing Time, Part III

Today, I will tell you about the things Cati and Matteo do for writing.

I combine Cati and Matteo in writing. They are not at the same skill level, but the things they do during the week are easily adaptable for each.

On Mondays, we do a lesson from the book No More, I'm Done! This is a book about creative writing. Before this year, I did not include creative writing as part of our school day. The kids would occasionally write something in their free time, but I did not see it as important enough to take up school time. I think part of the reason for this was that I personally hated any kind of creative writing assignment in school. I found it to be torturous. In middle school, we had to write our own poem set to the music of a nursery rhyme and sing it for the class!!! And the teacher thought she made up for this outrage by putting a sticker at the top of my paper! In high school, my favorite teacher committed what I viewed as an unforgivable sin by inviting one of the English teachers up to the science building in an attempt to weave together science and creative writing. One day, we were told to write a poem about chemistry! I refused. In college, I was dumbfounded when a friend actually chose to take a Creative Writing course in college - voluntarily! You get the picture - I don't do creative writing. So, early in my homeschooling days, when reading from an "expert" that creative writing was unnecessary, I sighed a huge sigh of relief and never thought about it again. However, I had read that some homeschooling moms did include it in their days, and I noticed that my kids enjoyed creative writing on their own. I started to see some value to creative writing - it is an opportunity to teach some important things about writing that will one day be needed in academic writing (word choice, organization, sentence structure, sentence variety, etc.) while being "fun" for the kids.

Hearing good things about the book No More, I'm Done! and then reading it myself let me understand how to teach creative writing with all the benefits without making it a burden on the kids. Perhaps if I had been taught creative writing as it is taught in this book, then maybe I would have grown up enjoying it. On Mondays, we do a short lesson in this book, which usually includes looking at some element of writing in children's literature, and then Cati and Matteo are free to go write. They get to choose their topic. There's not a certain word count they are trying to achieve. They just get to enjoy their time playing with writing, and then we look at what they did together. Sometimes we will write a story together. It's a relaxed time and they really enjoy it - and I do, too!

On Tuesdays, Cati and Matteo write narrations from Writing with Ease. Matteo is in book 2 and Cati is in book 4. A narration is a retelling of what you have read. I believe it is important to be able to read something and then give a summary including the important parts of the story without getting bogged down in the details. They generally enjoy this because they have to read a snippet of a children's novel that piques their interest in finding out what happens next. They often decide to later read the whole book that the passage was taken from. Writing with Ease includes lessons on copywork and dictation, but we only do the narrations since we cover these other skills at other times.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the three of us together work through Fix-it Grammar by IEW. This program goes through one story over a year finding errors in punctuation and grammar and also looking for interesting sentence structure and word choice. Depending on how much time we have, we sometimes parse and diagram a sentence or two also. The stories for editing come as a PDF download, so we edit them together using the Notability app on my iPad. I'm impressed at how good Cati is at finding errors now, and Matteo is picking up on it, too. I try to let him find errors first so that he can catch the easier ones. I often give them correct copies of the sentences as copywork later in the day for handwriting practice.

A screenshot of some Fix-it Grammar work.

 

On Friday, Cati parses and diagrams a sentence from Analytical Grammar's Review and Reinforcement book. We do our most intense grammar work in the summers using Analytical Grammar. I love this program!! It's concise. It's to the point. There's no time wasted on cutesy stuff. This becomes their major work over the summer (about 45-60 min/day) and then they use the review book once a week during the school year. This frees up time during the school year for other things, like writing! Matteo doesn't use this yet. It is such as intense curriculum that its not recommended to start it before 4th grade. Matteo might work through the Jr. Analytical Grammar book next summer or next school year. I haven't decided yet. He has done some other grammar, but this school year he is just reviewing grammar through our discussions of Fix-it Grammar.

Well, that's a pretty good overview of what we've been doing in writing this school year. I'm very pleased with how it's all going. We're all really enjoying the variety and the time working together!

And, speaking of writing, I have been forgetting to post NaNoWriMo word count updates! The success they are having with this is truly amazing to me. It is a great example of how much they are enjoying writing this year! They have only 8 more writing days left before the end of the month.

Maria - 9970 / 12,000 words

Cati - 3718 / 5000 words

Matteo - 1080 / 1000 words Yes! Matteo made his word count!! And he's still writing!

 

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Our Writing Time, Part II

Ok, let's actually talk about writing!

After all my talk about how much better I've found it to be for us to to things together, I have to admit that Maria uses an independent writing curriculum. She is working through a book called Writing With Skill. It is written to the student and divided into 36 four-day weeks. Don't let that lay out fool you - several of these "weeks" have taken longer than an actual week. Not that I'm complaining. There's no busy work in this book. I've been very impressed with its content. It covers academic writing, narrative and descriptive, about history and science and literary analysis. It covers skills like sentence composition, word choice, outlining, organization and others 3 out of 4 days of each "week." Then there is one day each week when they put everything together and write a complete 200-500 word essay. There is a teacher's manual to go with it that tells me how to help Maria with each step of a lesson, as well as a rubric for each essay and often sample essays to compare Maria's writing against.

This program seems to be a great lead into academic writing Maria will soon need in high school level studies. She is only in book 1 out of a planned 4 books. I say "planned" because the author is still writing the series. Book 2 is in beta testing write now. But, even though this is the author's first book in this series intended for the middle grades 5-8, I've found book 1 to be plenty challenging for a seventh grader. In fact, I'm having a hard time picturing Cati using it next year in 5th grade. We will see.

Well, that covers Maria's writing plan for this year. Next time I'll talk about Matteo and Cati's writing plan.

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NaNoWriMo update:

Maria - 6384 words! Now that Maria has officially reached her word count goal of 6000 words, I'll start comparing her word count to her personal goal of 12,000 words. Today, I asked her if she is half way done with her story or if she thinks she will have trouble reaching 12,000 words. She said that she is not even close to being halfway done with her planned story, so she may write much more than 12,000 words! But, I'm not sure she will will get it it done by the end of the month. But, that doesn't matter. I'm really happy with how well. She is doing!

Cati - 2231/5000 words. I told Cati today that she's doing great and that she's almost halfway to her goal of 5,000 words! She was not encouraged by the news. Oops! She's worried that she has to write again the amount she has already written. But, each day she is doing very well, so I think as long as she takes it one day at a time, she will be fine. The big picture seems to be overwhelming, but when she works each day, she is excited and happy about the little part that she's working on.

Matteo - 839/1000 words. He's inching up on his goal! Yay, Matteo!

 

 

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More on literature

I started this series of posts with the intention of showing you some things we have been using for writing this year, but I can't seem to stop talking about literature! This should be the last post about this before REALLY moving on to writing!

As I mentioned before, Teaching the Classics is our spine for our method of studying literature, but it's not a step-by-step 36-week curriculum. It's a method for studying literature, which is great because it's a one-time purchase that can then guide us in literature from grades K-12. However, I have to decide which books for us to read and discuss. There are SO many great books that's it's hard to decide what to read!

This summer, I looked at many resources and compiled book lists for each grade. My main source was the Kolbe Academy Elementary and Junior High Literature program book lists that can be found on their web site. I also looked at the book lists on the Center for Lit site (which produces Teaching the Classics) and Memoria Press.

I put together lists for these sources and then chose 5-6 for each grade to be required books for us to read and study together. Yes, that means I read them, too, which makes about 15-18 books for me to read. These are really great books, many of which I somehow missed out on reading when I was in school, so I'm really enjoying reading them. I just finished discussing The Reluctant Dragon with Matteo. Maria and I are discussing Anne of Green Gables now, and Cati and I are studying Heidi. We talk about the books, the kids fill out a story chart outlining the plot, conflict, characters, setting, and themes, and then they write an essay to sum things up.

I have the kids choose one additional book per month from their list to read just for the sake of enjoying a new piece of good literature. If I don't force them to read something new, they will just stick to their old favorites we have around the house. Of course, once they start a new book from their list, they start talking about how good it is and start trying to convince their siblings to read it, too.

They keep a record of these additional books in their literature journal. It is just a composition book where they write down info about the book, the date they read it, and a rating of how they liked it. Here are a few samples:

Matteo (2nd grade) only included the title of the book, a picture we found on the Internet, and a short sentence reminding him what it was about.

Matteo's literature journal

Cati included the title, author, date read, a gold sticker to show how much she liked it, and a very short summary.

Cati's literature journal

Maria wrote the title, author, date read, and a bit longer summary. She also wrote a sentence explaining why she liked the book and some stickers rating it. (On the first page of their journals, they defined their rating systems.)

Maria's literature journal

I've been so happy with our lit studies this year! We're learning a lot and having fun reading a lot of new books together!!

 

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Some writing samples

Today, I thought I would post some samples of the kids' writing that are related to poetry and literature which I blogged about yesterday. I'm not posting them because they are so wonderfully brilliant. I'm mostly pleased with these samples because I can see that the kids have become excited about writing. I think that comes from their exposure to poetry, which we have not been good about including in our days until recently, and it comes from the excitement of us working on this together and sharing our thoughts. It's become more than just a subject to complete and move on from as soon as possible. It's truly something we're enjoying!

Earlier in the school year I posted this: Arcara Family: Maria's Spelling Assignment. It was a poem Maria wrote for a spelling assignment.

Here are two poems that Cati wrote recently:

I Don't Like Grapes

Grapes are mushy and smushy,

Grapes are yucky and mucky,

Grapes are as green

As my sister's chair is clean.

This one was written after the kids watched men cut down our neighbor's tree this week:

They Cut Down a Tree

They cut down a tree

Faster than a bee

They snipped it

And clipped it

They ground it

And bound it

Then they drove away

And came back another day.

Our literature studies also include a few written literary analysis assignments. The kids' favorite story that we read together in the first couple of months of school was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling. It eventually led to an interesting debate on the theme of the story. Cati argued that it was a story about good vs. evil. Matteo said that he thought it was a story about good vs. good. They both decided to write about their positions:

Rikki-Tikki Tavi: Good vs. Evil (by Cati)

The story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has the theme of good vs. evil. The two horrifying, murderous snakes in the story named Nag and Nagaina are evil because in the story they can think! Nag tries to kill the humans so Rikki will leave. Nagaina tries to murder the little boy because the boy's father shot Nag.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi also can think! Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, even though all mongeese eat snakes, protects the humans. Mongeese that can't think kill snakes to eat, not to protect humans!

In case you didn't get Cati's point, she's saying that you can consider the snakes evil and the mongoose good because they consciously chose their actions instead of just acting according to their natures, which is Matteo's reasoning in his analysis:

Rikki-Tikki Tavi: Good vs. Evil (by Matteo)

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling is a story about a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi defeating two cobras named Nag and Nagaina. This is not a story about good verses evil. It is a story about good vs. good. The tall snakes are alright. They are just doing what snakes do even though Nagaina tries to kill the humans after they killed Nag. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is good, too. He's just protecting the humans. Even though they are both good, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the snakes get in a lot of fights, but they are just doing what they do.

Again, these aren't brilliant writing samples, but you can see a bit of how our literature studies are giving the kids an opportunity to debate with each other and support their positions and then to express that in writing. They were so passionate about their points that they rather enjoyed writing these short essays.

NaNoWriMo has been a wonderful opportunity for the kids to take what they've learned about characters, setting, plot, conflicts, and themes and apply them. Hopefully, that will in turn make them even more aware of these elements in reading. And, that leads nicely into today's word count updates:

Maria - 4112 / 6000

Cati - 1461 / 5000

Matteo - 687 / 1000

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Our Writing Time, Part 1

I hesitate to write this post since I really want my blog to be about sharing the kids' days with family and friends that we see so rarely. However, some of these friends are homeschoolers like we are and I have had some ask me to share more about our homeschool days. I don't consider myself any kind of expert in education, and I don't want to seem like I'm giving advice to others as if I have this homeschooling thing totally figured out. We've changed things around plenty over the years. We've used things that I've thought were so wonderful for a while, just to decide later that they were definitely not for us. I've come to accept that this is just part of life. As our family changes, as we better definite our priorities, as I learn more about education and come to a better understanding about the necessary differences between brick-and-mortar schooling and homeschooling, I also change our school days look and how we will help our children achieve the goals we has for them and their own goals. While I don't want this to become a homeschool advice blog, I do realize that I have learned a lot from others who have generously shared a glimpse into their own homeschool, so I don't mind occasionally writing about our homeschool days if it is truly of interest to others.

After that much-too-long intro, I will write this post about what we are doing for writing this year. I've found that our most enjoyable and effective lessons in just about anything occur when we can work together and talk about things as opposed to simply doing an assignment alone. We do have some subjects that the kids pretty much do alone with me doing short one-on-one lessons and answering questions when needed, such as math and Latin. But this year, writing and literature (and religious studies) have become group activities here.

I mention literature even though I mainly want to talk about writing because I've found that they are so intertwined. We are constantly seeing how studying one helps us with the other.

So, what do we use and what does our schedule look like?

We (the 3 oldest kids, ages 7, 9, and 12) begin our days with literature. I am following Teaching the Classics (found on IEW's site) for this. We spent the first two months going through all the stories in the guide together. Now, discussing things like conflict and theme are pretty easy for us. We also learned about literary devices like alliteration and onomatopoeia, and it's still kind of funny to me when Matteo points these out to me when he sees them in his reading. He really got into it! But, learning about these things helps us realize that authors use them to make their writing interesting, so we can use them at times in our writing, too. After we finished all the stories in the guide, the kids moved on to books of my choosing appropriate to their reading level.

We have also added poetry once a week during our literature time. On Monday mornings, we make hot chocolate to go along with breakfast and extend our breakfast time through our literature time, so we can enjoy sipping on a yummy treat and reading poetry. That gives us something to look forward to on Monday mornings! I just choose poems from different children's anthologies. Lately, we've been reading The Dark Emperor and other Poems of the Night, which has a poem, a beautiful piece of artwork, and a non-fictional prose writing about a nocturnal animal or event on each 2-page spread. This has lead to fun discussions on different ways information can be expressed and why we may use one way instead of another. We also spend some of our poetry time reading through Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry which is a really fun book about how to write poetry with examples of poetry by the author. So, we read some more serious poetry and some fun, silly stuff, too.

The girls enjoying hot chocolate during poetry

 

Reading poetry regularly has inspired my kids to try writing some of their own. Studying poetry also emphasizes the importance of word choice when writing, which is necessary in prose writing, too, of course.

So, you can see how our literature studies tie into writing in our family.

This post has gotten much longer than I imagined, so I will continue it one another day!

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NaNoWriMo word count update:

Maria: 3621 / 6000

Cati: 1209 / 5000

Matteo: 635 / 1000

 

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Cati studying multiplication facts

"Now that I wrote these down, I actually have to memorize them!"

Giuseppe's Baptism (and the previous 2 weeks)

Giuseppe was Baptized yesterday! We had an absolutely beautiful weekend celebrating with friends. It was very touching to see so many people come together to celebrate the life of this little boy! We are truely blessed to have such great family and friends near and far!


Our long-time friends from Georgia came to stay with us this weekend. We were so happy that they were willing to drive so far to celebrate this special weekend with us.

Here is Maria with her Godbrother (her Godfather's son) :)

John Paul arrived and immediately noticed that the living room was too clean and decided to help us out.

Here are the 2 little ones, Mary Grace and our Elena, carefully guarding their baby dolls.

Chiara enjoyed bossing around...I'm mean playing with her Godmother :) I got several reports from different people of Chiara "teaching" them soccer, requesting bubble-blowing, and reassuring them that Cheetos was all she needed for a meal. After Mass, but before the Baptism on Sunday, Chiara turned to me and asked if it was time for cake yet. Four-year-olds are special :)

Our 3 families enjoyed spending time together on Saturday.

After Mass on Sunday, it was time for the Baptism! Many of our local friends joined us a church and then came to our home afterwards. It was a joy-filled day!

The Baptism...

Anointing with Holy Chrism...We're still enjoying it's sweet smell today!

Presenting of his Baptismal candle by his Godfather...

This is what Giuseppe thought of the experience :) The kids said he was sad that he had to wear a dress :) He had a tough morning, but a peaceful afternoon at home in the sling with Mommy.

Family picture...yes, there's something on Matteo's face. He and the kids decided it would be fun to play tag outside with their eyes closed...until he ran into the side of the house. They always seem to come up with these ideas when it's time for pictures.

Group picture of our kids and our friends' kids...

Back home after the Baptism...this was the only person who got to hold Giuseppe. He was so unhappy that he spent the rest of the afternoon snuggled with me in the sling.

Time to eat!

We wore out the babies...

It was a wonderful weekend! Thank you so much everyone for celebrating with us!!


Now onto the 2 weeks before this weekend...Obviously we had to spend several days getting ready for this event. Dany decided that the front of our house needed some attention...

He battled for 2 days, but managed to conquer the weeds and attempted to prevent their return with a covering and mulch.

Giuseppe was one-month-old last week. He went for a check-up on Thursday and here are the stats:

Birth weight = 10 lbs 4 oz (4.7kg)

1 month weight = 12 lbs 15 oz (5.9kg)

Birth length = 22.5" (57.2cm)

1 month length = 24.25" (61.6cm)

He's eating and growing well :)

He's been cooing a good bit and smiling occasionally. He's a pretty good sleeper, too!
And he still rolling front to back regularly.

We've completed 10 days of school so far. Here's a brief look of some of the things we've done.

The two little ones like spending time with sticker and stamps in the mornings while the others are working.

Here are Maria and Cati coloring and labeling cell sketches for science.

Here's a demonstration Matteo did about camouflage to begin his study of animals.

How many squares do you see?

Chiara is working on math...

...and handwriting...(she's also working on reading, but it's hard to take a picture of that. She's reading 3-letter short vowel words so far.)

Here's a handwriting sample from Cati.

Of course the kids have done many other things, but they don't always make for exciting pictures :)

Classes start back for Dany in 2 weeks and he'll be doing things to get ready for that during these two weeks. I've enjoyed having him around so much this summer. I guess it's time for us to really settle into a routine and get to work!

And here's a video that has nothing to do with anything else in the post except that it was taken in the past 2 weeks. It's a video of Elena dancing to music at the end of a movie. Dancing 2-year-olds are the cutest! Enjoy!