Weekly Wrap-up

It's been a good week this week, though we did have a bit of a blizzard throw a monkey wrench into some of our plans. But it turned out fine.

Phonics: We got our "penny game" back out and practiced blending. It's been a while, and it showed at first, but Monkey was doing very well by the end of the game.

We used 6-sided dice this time (I couldn't put my hands on the 8), the better to practice counting & number recognition. It's become the "penny game" because we use coins for our pieces. We also read a whole slew of books this week! Sometimes, it seems like Monkey can't be bothered much with reading. But right now he's got a mess of favorites. Stop, Train, Stop! is one we have from the library right now, and we've all got it more or less memorized. Wise or not, I ordered that one this morning; it should be here in time to go under the tree.

Math: We're getting pretty good at our math routines, for the most part. Monkey knows what to do, and he is definitely getting better at counting. We'll bundle the straws we've been counting into our first group of 10 the next time we count, probably later tonight if everything goes well. I'm also finally getting organized enough to do begin working on lesson two in Math Expressions. I think we're going to end up spreading out the "lessons" over a couple of days because his attention span just isn't very big lately. That's OK. He's clearly getting better with the numbers. One of our more hands-on activities is he helped me count my stitches as I cast on to knit him a scarf. And I didn't have the yarn quite right, so I had to stop and do it again, so he counted to 30-something, then to 45. And then, because I always double-count my stitches, he counted to 45 with me again. Starting at 11, he needs help, and after 20, he needed me to count first so he could repeat it. But I was very impressed with all that counting!

Nature Study: That blizzard canceled our plans to head to the park, but Monkey got a chance to play in the snow a couple of times, which made him a very happy camper. Sadly, it's now dropped below zero (Fahrenheit), so we're not going out to play until it gets warmer. I simply don't have the gear for that, and I worry about those cute little pink cheeks! (After all, the scarf is only 8 inches long or so at this point, and still attached to the knitting needles, so it's not very useful yet.) We're supposed to get more snow next week, so there will be plenty more. I think it's fair to say that we're going to have a very white Christmas this year! The picture is my lilac bush. It doesn't really do justice to the heaps of snow we got.



Memory: We hadn't done much with this over the past couple of weeks, but when I asked Monkey to say his verses for me this week, he did very well. I think that Romans 8:16 has reached a point where we need only to do some maintenance, and 2 Timothy 1:7 is coming along very nicely.

Read Aloud: We're making slow progress in Through the Looking Glass. I don't think that this one is as much fun for Monkey, probably because he's just a bit young to pick up on all the very silly stuff going on. However, I am really enjoying it. We're getting to the point in the book where I need to start thinking about what I'm going to read next. Last time I was at Half-Price Books they had a number of Winnie-the-Pooh books that looked like they were probably beautifully illustrated. I may look into those. Monkey loves bears, and I think he'd really enjoy them. Plus, it'd nice to have Christopher Robin - a boy - be the main character. We've been reading a lot of stories about girls because it turns out that's what I'm familiar with!

Art: We worked on making some ornaments. I used Confessions's idea for snowman ornaments. Clearly, her kids are older than mine: look at how tidy their prints are! But we're having fun and the snowmen are turning out adorable. I'm trying to talk Monkey into gifting a few of his creations, but so far that's not been a winning idea.



Mom's Ed: I've been munching my way through a stack of baby books. The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth was a great read. I'm working on Birth Day right now, which deals with a lot of history, and being written by a pediatrician, is an interesting perspective on birth. Between attending that birth last week, and now finding out that I'm pregnant myself, yeah, I've got babies on the brain. It's a good thing. All other self-education projects are more or less on hold until I get this out of my system.


Here's a bit of gratuitous cuteness:


We took Monkey to visit Baby R. at the hospital, and he got to "hold" him. That is, Monkey sat on my lap, and I sat R's feet on Monkey's lap while Monkey wrapped his arms around the swaddled bundle of baby. It was terribly cute. Since then, he's made a habit of wrapping up his blankets and carefully holding them. They alternate: sometimes he's holding "R." and sometimes it's his "sister."