Signage

I picked up some John Holt books at the library and have been reading through them. They're very interesting and he brings up a lot of good points, though I don't agree with him on everything. It was a funny coincidence, though, when I read one afternoon about him making labels for objects around the house to encourage familiarity with written words, and the next day Colwyn came up to me and said, "We're going to sell our candy. We need signs that say we sell candy."

So I readily agreed and within a few minutes we were set up at the table with crayons and index cards. The candy selling was forgotten, but they did make several signs--Colwyn with lots of M's and hearts, and Lachlann with lots of 'changing colors.' For my part, I cut about five index cards in half and wrote words on them like, 'door,' 'window,' 'stove,' and 'bedroom.' I gave them one at a time to Colwyn with some tape and he had a blast taping them up where they should go. He also taped up his own signs, and Lachlann taped up some of his.





That was a few days ago and Colwyn is still having fun reading the signs. I'll see him running his finger along under the word and saying it aloud. Too cute.

Painting

The kids got an easel for Xmas, and they love it. Here's a quick pic of them painting:

Power Outtage

A few days ago we had a power outtage that lasted all frickin' day. We spent the morning at Bonkers and Target, but when we finally got home, here's what we did:



The pillows and blankets on the floor were meant to be a pirate ship, and the kids were my crew. They had lots of fun dodging sharks, alligators, and rolling around on the floor when big storms hit. We also had several David Shannon books on board that we read.

Later in the day, I made a fort for the kids and they camped out with some of their Cars toys.

Sick Days

The kids are sick today. Well, it's mostly Colwyn with a fever and lethargy, though Lachlann threw up this morning (and is now acting fine). We've been watching TV all day as I really want Colwyn to rest as much as possible (and he doesn't really seem all that willing to get off the couch).

So I decided to show the kids finger knitting. I remember my Amma teaching me this when I was really little, and despite extremely infrequent use, it's easy enough that I still know how. They each did a bit, though I more or less did it for Lachlann but on his hands. Lachlann really enjoyed the long multicolored 'snake' I made for him, too.

We've finally hit a part in the Singapore math workbooks that Colwyn doesn't intuitively know. It's mainly numeral recognition, but there's also some graphing that I had to explain to him. We were doing up to about 10 pages at a time until we hit this part, and now it's more like two or three before Colwyn says he's done. I always let him stop when he wants, and he's so far he's always been willing to come back to it.