Friday Again

This week's big change was adding in some more math. Monkey's doing really well with it! Right now we're counting in all the new and creative ways that I can think of. These are pennies we counted out this morning. Monkey wanted to make stacks, so that's what we did: 5 plus some more, in the second row is what you're looking at, though it's hard to see. I made some flannel board pieces and he made me pictures of one and two pretty successfully. When we tried to show this to Daddy he wanted to do four, and that didn't go quite as well. So there's still some solidifying to be done on these number concepts, but it's coming along nicely.

We continued with the Happy Phonics games, as well as the file folder games, and he's definitely improving in his ability to discern between "b" and "d," though I've realized that we must be missing certain letters because he's got some that he really struggles with - V, W (he wants it to be an M), he mixes up the sounds for G and J, that sort of thing. I was a little surprised, but it should be easily remedied with some more games focused on those letters.

About midweek, Monkey discovered this book on our shelves. I found it at the thrift store a while back, and he periodically finds it and looks all though it. It's one of those cool ones with the see-through panels that shows all the different things going on in the body. The first organ they discuss is the skin, and we spent a good chunk of time this week talking about skin and fingerprints. We got out my scrapbook inks and made some fingerprint art. That was fun, so Monkey wanted to do it again a couple days later! When we took our trip to the library one of the books I grabbed was about the skin and I read just a little bit to him. It's a bit old for him and enough over his head that it didn't seem to be grabbing his attention very well, but we did look at some of the pictures and talked briefly about cells and microscopes that make things MUCH bigger, like his magnifying glass, only more. It was nice, but the "finger painting" was much more fun.







We're making good progress in our read-aloud right now as well: we're doing Little House on the Prairie, and Monkey asks for more each time I read it. Since we're doing it at naptime I seldom give it to him, though I'll probably read a second chapter this evening since he's a bit under the weather and in on the couch enjoying some Bob the Builder, looking a bit pathetic. You know a three year old isn't feeling quite right when they ask for a nap and then sleep for 3 hours!

Nature Study, we more or less skipped, though Monkey did come out and help one day with garden clean-up. But with him under the weather, I haven't felt like I could take him out in the cold rain we've had most of the week.

Mom's Ed:
Not as much this week (not that there's tons in any week), but I did spend some time studying a great article on unity and charity, as well as some re-reading of parts of The Well-Trained Mind.