Chirping

The kids for years have been sleeping through the night the vast majority of the time. I am very grateful for this! Sometimes the boys get up earlier than I'd like them to, but lately that hasn't been an issue either In fact this morning they all got up later that usual. Nadia has generally been strict with herself about getting up at 7:00 on school days, but last night she told me she wasn't getting up until 7:30. I was fine with that. To me that's a perk of homeschooling - not having to wake the kids up in the morning. This morning, Nadia was flustered when she realized she had slept until 7:50, but she still was the first one done with her school work. Since the kids slept in later than usual this morning, you might assume I had a good night's sleep last night. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. A bit after 3AM I was awakened by a loud chirping sound. I thought it was an alarm of some sort. Paul said he thought it was the guinea pigs. I went down and sure enough they were the cause. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I gave them some hay and went back to bed. I *think* Buttercup was the culprit. Unfortunately I have a very hard time going back to sleep when I've been fully awakened. Paul left for work a little bit after this incident. I eventually fell back asleep. I had been asleep for less than an hour when it happened again. I again ran downstairs, and this time my guess is that Peppa was the one who was chirping. I checked their water bottles and gave them some of their other food (pellets) and went back to bed. Thankfully the second time it didn't take me as long to fall asleep or I wouldn't have gotten any more sleep as I typically get up sometime between 6-7am. I did research on it this morning and learned that if they chirp (it honestly sounded like a frightened bird was in our house), it's either to get your attention because they need water or food OR because they are scared. Their cage is near a window so maybe an animal was just outside the window and it scared them? I told the kids to be sure the guinea pigs have plenty of food and water before they go to bed tonight. I hope this doesn't become a frequent occurrence. If so, we might have to move their cage to the basement. Hopefully not! The rabbits woke us up on more than one occasion, but we've owned guinea pigs for almost 4 years and this hasn't been a problem with them. I have no idea how the kids slept through it. It was LOUD. It definitely jolted me awake both times. 

If any of you are trying to teach your kids another language, I have two tips. I don't know how many languages Alexa knows, but "she" definitely can respond to Spanish and speak in Spanish. I have our Echo dots set that English is our primary language and Spanish is the secondary one. Hopefully eventually our Spanish will be good enough that we can set the primary language to Spanish. If you have Disney Plus you can select what language you want for the audio and/or subtitles. They definitely have a variety of languages you can choose between. I told the kids that once they've finished all their other subjects, they can watch 15-20 minutes of a Disney movie in Spanish. They started watching Moana today using Spanish for the audio AND the subtitles. I asked them at the end to share a few words they learned through that experience. Naturally most of the dialogue went over their heads at this point, but again hopefully at some point in the future they'll be able to watch something in Spanish and actually comprehend the vast majority of what is said. We've been primarily focusing on phrases and words related to eating, but we've also been learning some other phrases that we commonly use. The next unit will focus on actions, rooms and games. The third will be on vocabulary related to the bathroom. The curriculum we're using has an app which we can use to hear a native speaker say the words and phrases we are learning. Alexa also comes in handy as throughout the day we'll say things like "Alexa how do you say oatmeal in Spanish?" and she almost always can answer those types of questions.