Sounding it out

I haven't had high expectations for Alex for kindergarten. He won't turn five until June, and we're not big on formalized early education in our house, preferring instead to enjoy lots of books and follow our boys' interests. I figured if Alex got a good start on reading, covered some very basic math concepts, and had fun learning about the fascinating world we live in, we'd call that a very successful kindergarten year. And we wouldn't be starting him in school until next fall. Alex, apparently, has his own ideas about when he should learn what.

He surprised me by bringing me the book I had purchased to use to teach him to read, and requesting that we start NOW. He's known his letters and the sounds they make for quite a while, but he couldn't blend the sounds into words. So when we sat down with the book and he started sounding things out, I'm not sure who was more surprised ... Alex or me!


He loves reading, and requests that we practice nearly every day. We do most of our work on a small whiteboard, but he's also reading some little readers I got just for him. (Not everything should be a hand-me-down from big brother, right?) When he reads the little book by himself, he gets to put a sticker into his book. He loves that, and I love seeing another one of my boys becoming entranced with the wonderful world of reading!

Bubber

Before Christmas this year, I saw a box of really cool-looking Bubber on sale. I did a little research on the messy factor, and everything I read said it was cleaner than play dough. Since we use play-dough all the time and that's well within my tolerance for a mess, we went ahead and bought the boys some.

The reviews that said it was cleaner than play dough?

They LIED.



Do you see all those tiny little pieces that break off? Bubber is really an interesting sensory experience, but it crumbles. A lot.


It may not help that the boys think that they need animals, men, play dough tools, AND kitchen tools with which to experiment.


Maybe it's too harsh to say the reviews lied. Maybe my kids are just weird.


Huh. Yep, that might be it after all.

Mornings

There's nothing quite like snuggling in mom and dad's bed in the morning, reading Lego comics together.

Just because it made me laugh ...

Ah, spring!

When a {very} young man's thoughts turn to .... well, piracy.

And chasing your brothers while defending your "ship" ...

... and wearing helmets askew ...

... and utterly mischievous smiles, too.

Double Digits

Ten years ago today was a Tuesday. I went to work suspecting that I was going to have a baby before the end of the day. It's hard to believe that little bitty baby - he was only 6lbs 3 oz when he was born - is ten years old today!


Returning from the traditional doughnut run this morning

We celebrated with Grandma and Grandpa (and Uncle Joe, since he was up for the weekend) on Friday night. Ethan request sauteed chicken, brown-sugar glazed carrots, and french-cut green beans for dinner. We added in twice-baked potatoes to round things out a bit, and of course there was cake for dessert. A (Lego) man-eating shark cake!


I wasn't completely happy with how lumpy the shark is, but Ethan liked him.


Every good ocean cake has shells and starfish and sponges, right?


I liked the happy crab ...


... but Ethan coached me on the octopus so that he was somewhat more realistic-looking.

And of course, no party would be complete without presents!





Happy Birthday, Ethan! We love you and are proud of the young man you are becoming.

Preschool Week-in-Review, January 9-13

Last week's preschool theme was Robots! Again, we read lots of books, but one of their favorites was CookieBot by Katie Van Camp.

We had boys (and a mama) sick off and on throughout the week, so we're short on pictures. We did get most of our planned projects done, but we kind of limped through them. Ethan decided again that he'd like to participate in some of the activities and projects, so he made a toilet-paper tube robot with the boys.

We colored robot pictures together, and talked about what our robots would do, what they would be named, and how they would work. Unfortunately, I didn't write down their ideas and I don't remember what they said. (That was the day Mama was sick.)

Ben's picture:

Alex is really making progress with trying to color in his picture completely, and trying to stay in the lines.

Other activities included making edible robots out of graham crackers, m&ms, pretzels, and frosting, playing with finger puppet robots, and watching videos of people robot dancing.

We also do some slightly-more-academic activities just with Alex after Benny lays down for his nap. This week we used, in addition to our alphabet activities, the Robot Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations.

**Note** I'm having problems with uploading pictures to blogger, so I've been using Photobucket and just putting the code for the picture in my post. But the only options I can figure out for size are either so-big-they-get-cut-off or thumbnails. You can click on the picture to see it larger, though. I think. Hopefully I'll get it figured out soon, but any advice is welcome!

**Note about the Note** I think I have it figured out ... :-)