Day 1

Unprecedented is a word that has been thrown around so much the last three years, but it continues to apply. Day one of Official Social Distancing has been calm so far. I decided to make up a loose schedule for the kids to preserve both continuity and sanity. I think we did pretty well.

We started off later than I had planned. Luke came into my room at 3:30 in the morning to say that his tummy hurt. I was prepared for the worst and nervous about him being on the new bed. I decided it was probably acid re-flux from post nasal drip and gave him a tums, which he said was spicy. I do not know. Anyway, so I slept in a bit because I was up with Luke for a while on top of my anxious insomnia.

The first thing we did this morning was math, reading, and writing workbooks.
Luke practiced his name and address.

I used a trick from my old job, magic stones.  Each time the kids did something helpful or a good job, they got a stone in their jar. Every time they had to be redirected, I got to take one back. The stakes are high. Whoever has the most stones by Saturday afternoon gets to choose our evening movie! I'm really pulling for Doug here honestly, because I CANNOT watch 'Planes Fire & Rescue' again.

These Star Wars workbooks are great. I don't have any action shots of Doug working because he did most of his work independently.

Counting and a number line! We're working on counting to thirty.

We had a bit of a break and did a puzzle. I swept and mopped the kitchen floor last week for this very reason. Luke was pretty excited. He did have to be redirected a few times back to the puzzle, so I see where the ADHD might be.

We had a nice family lunch together since Jeff is home now too. After lunch, Doug and I began to work again on his 'God & Family' cub scout badge. I think it might take us into next week if we break each section into halves. He is learning a lot though and it is fun to actually teach him about the bible. He asks very good questions.

 After lunch we did PE/recess/get the hell out of the house. Today I set up an obstacle course. The kids each had three turns and ran it timed. Luke flew through the tunnel, which Doug had to basically pull on and off like a dress (it was HYSTERICAL) but lost time over all because his legs are so short.

 Then we got their bike and scooter out and they rode around for a bit. We were outside for an hour overall, with the goal in mind of wearing them out. I think I over achieved there, because Luke was just so DONE by bed time.

We came back inside for some arts and crafts. Luke used markers to color a wood craft from  Michael's that has a battery operated candle in it. Doug opted to start something on canvas.

Our science experiment today was brief. We put pepper in water to simulate germs and then soap on their fingers to simulate how soap repels germs. I think they got it and it seemed super timely. 

We did some yoga on you tube, kid's cosmic yoga. They picked a Pokemon themed one tonight. They did pretty well. They got a bit rowdy towards the end, but after how stressed we've all been, I can't really blame them.

Overall, I think I managed to strike the right balance between work and leisure and fun today. They didn't spend the day in front of screens (absolutely NO judgement here, you do you) and they didn't try to kill each other and I didn't have an urge to force choke anyone. This is going to be our structure until we hear otherwise now. I don't imagine this will stop soon. Be safe and well!

Skit Skat Skoodle Doot

I've been wanting to make something for one of Doug's favorite books for a long time. By Thursday afternoon I'd already been to the gym, the house was clean, I was caught up on my bible study, Doug was down for a nap and the banana bread was in the oven baking (believe me, I'm not nearly this organized with life) and I found myself with some time on my hands. Break out the craft box!

Doug loves the book 'Chicka Chicka Boom Boom' by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault. He can recite long bits of it with you. Frequently when I'm trying to corral him into the car because we're running late (so normal) I'll say to him "Skit skat skoodle doot!" to which he'll reply "Flip flop flee, everybody running to the coconut tree, mamas and papas, uncles and aunts, hug their little dears and dust their pants!".

Anyway, I've been wanting to use it to help introduce lower case letters to him, as the book is very familiar.

So I cut out a strip of brown felt for the trunk of the coconut tree. I cut it diagonally to maximize the amount of felt I had to work with. The pointy, Washington Monument-y end of it is also a great place to attach the   palm fronds.

 

Then I took two different shades of green felt to make the fronds, I made five fronds in all: 

Next I took some fabric glue and glued them all to the trunk: 

Next I cut out three brown circles for coconuts and glued them to the tree: 

While I let that sit and dry, I got to work on the letters. I used Times New Roman for most of the letters, except 'a' and 'g' because I wanted them to look more like they do when you write them. I used 200 point font for them. Each upper and lower case pair are the same color. I printed them out on cardstock: 

Yes, it's been a long time since I've had a manicure.

Then I fired up my trusty laminator and laminated all the sheets. After they were laminated, I cut them out and applied some sticky back velcro to their backs. The squares I had were on the larger side, so I cut each square into quarters. 

That was probably the most tedious part of the project.

The finished product: 

I made a felt board a while ago by taking some felt and stretching it over a thick craft board and stapling it on. Actually, Jeff did the stapling, you need some serious muscle to do it.

Doug was elated. He made sure some letters were falling out of the tree.

Time to flip flip flee!

Tasty Alphabet

I was trying to think of a way to make Doug's lunch more appealing today. This week we have sliced turkey for lunch, and while Doug will eat turkey Lunchables until the cows come home, he won't eat the deli turkey we get. I started out by thinking I might just cut the turkey into little circles for him (like the Lunchable) but then I thought if I was going to go to the trouble that I'd do our letter of the week.

I was a bit doubtful of using plastic cookie cutters on the meat but it worked out quite well. I also did a few slices of American cheese. Doug was absolutely delighted. My only regret is that I didn't think of this sooner! I am definitely going to incorporate this on the rest of our letters!

Making it Count

I was struggling trying to figure out how and when to introduce the concept of zero to Doug. I thought that if I introduced zero first and he got a number surprise box full of nothing that it would seriously piss Doug off and put him off the number surprise box. I thought that if I delayed its introduction too long, that Doug wouldn't understand that it goes before all the other numbers he knows and not after and that it is indeed less.

 Then one afternoon, it hit me. A number line! I thought about how I wanted to construct it and then I fired up my trusty ole laminator. I used card stock and printed up numbers 0-20 using a rainbow of colors. After I laminated them, I cut them out and attached some velcro using the sides of the laminated pages as tabs:

A bit hard to see due to the camera flash, but nap time seems like its going to be cut short, so I don't have time to re-shoot. There are two tabs on the front side and two on the back side. They all fit very nicely together. I started with the 0-20, but we can add more, all the way up to 100, as we learn along.

Evidently the 20 is just off to the side of the frame, but you get the idea.

Doug loves playing with it. It becomes a roller coaster, a parking lot or train tracks depending on what he wants to drive over it. 

I like to play a number game with it. I put out the number line and we count up and touch each of the numbers as we assemble it, taking special care to point out our number of the week. Once it's all together I ask Doug to bring me the week's number in certain objects.

For example, I asked him to bring me eight cars:

And then eight fish:

And then we ran out of Disney/Pixar toys, but you get the idea. We never put anything on the 0 obviously, but we talk about how it's a place holder. I know that Doug doesn't grasp that concept quite yet, but I've begun to plant the seed. I plan to cover the number zero after we do the number ten.
Happy counting!

Beta Bet

 Meet our new resident monster, Beta Bet! He just arrived this morning from Monster Land (Amazon). He really has an appetite for letters, but he likes to know what he's eating, so you need to tell him the name of the letter you're feeding him first.

This is Beta Bet's older brother, Alpha Bet. Alpha Bet is being sent back to Monster Land because his mommy misses him. It has nothing to do with the fact that he's made out of mere paper and may not be long for this world. Doug loves feeding him so much that I couldn't just stop the game, and I really didn't want to have to make a new monster every few months. My knowledge of the Greek alphabet is quite limited.

 

 Doug loves Beta Bet now too. We'll probably use the cardboard box he came in to build him a nice cave to sleep in.

In case you're curious, Beta Bet is a Melissa & Doug product called 'Make Your Own Monster Puppet'. All the pieces are velcro, and much like Mr. Potato head, you can mix and match them. The only potential drawback I see so far is that it's designed for a child. My hand is a bit cramped working its mouth. I wonder how well Jeff will be able to use the puppet. Other than that, I love it so far.

That is all I plan to accomplish today. I have a monstrous cold and am going to climb back onto the couch! Ttfn!

The 'A-B-Cindys'

The literacy project is coming along. We took a break for the month of December. We had started the letter 'F' when my in-laws came to visit, but then we got busy doing fun things with them, so I put 'F' on the shelf for a while. I decided to wait until the holidays were over to re-do 'F'. I probably could have moved on if it was another letter, but Doug was still confusing it with 'E'.  Doug is doing pretty well with the alphabet song too. He now only occasionally sings "A-B-Cin-Dee".  My God-Mother's name is Cindy, and Doug adores her. If you sing "A-B-C-D-E" it does sort of sound like you're singing "Cindy", so I can't blame him there. I once heard a small child sing the middle of the alphabet "EL UH MENTO PEE!". Doug does fairly well with that part too now.


Here's our new and improved surprise box:

Doug gets excited on Mondays when he sees it. I have a large foam letter 'F' from our alphabet mat in there as well as a picture to color with the letter and a fire truck. I also include about 5 things that start with the letter of the week. On the second day of the week, we watch a Sesame Street video on the computer about the letter. I also give him a laminated letter that looks like a  Highway that he can drive his cars on. Usually on Wednesday I give Doug an envelope with 'Letter' mail. It has a felt letter and objects that begin with the week's letter either made out of felt or laminated with a Velcro back. I usually do a worksheet on Wednesday too. I make them myself. I put about 12 letters, all capital letters, on a sheet and he has to circle the ones that are the letter of the week. On Fridays, I cut about 12 letters out, all the same, and stick them to the walls with tape and Doug has to hunt for them. When he's gotten them all, he has to feed them to 'Alpha Bet', the puppet I made. Alpha Bet needs Doug to tell him the name of the letter Doug's feeding him, because Alpha Bet is a picky eater. We also do a foam letter project, in which we create something that starts with the letter of the week using that letter:

I usually try to do one special activity a week with the letter. For the letter 'B' I blew up a bunch of balloons and wrote a large 'B' on them. For 'C' week we made cookies shaped like the letter 'C':

 I think Cookie Monster would approve!

 This was our special activity the first time we did the letter 'F':

I found some clip art of fish and then I enlarged the fish and put a large capital letter 'F' on each one. I then printed them out and laminated them. After that, I took some sticky back magnetic strips and put them on the backs. To make the fishing 'hook', I took a binder clip and put some very small, crazy strong magnets in them so they'd be able to pull up the fish. Because of the very small magnets, we never let Doug play with this unsupervised. Doug absolutely loved this activity! I think I'm going to try to come up with a new activity this time we do 'F'.

We've also started working with numbers. I have a different box that I bring out in the middle of the week to talk about numbers. It has a coloring page with the number on it and a corresponding number of things on the page. It also has a large foam number in the box as well as the amount of corresponding legos. I also give him a number worksheet that I make. It has the number printed at the top and three columns below it. Doug has to pick the column that has the number of objects in it that match the number of the week. I'm thinking of also integrating a video from Sesame Street into this activity too.

Just looking at all the various activities we do is exhausting. No wonder we took a break!

You'll Thank Me When You're Literate

I've been debating for a while about when I should more formally introduce the alphabet to Doug. In my b.c. life (before children) I used to teach children to read.  Additionally, I love to read myself, so literacy is something that is near and dear to me. I put it off for a while to get potty training off the ground (still very much a work in progress). But Doug is now very interested in letters and mostly can sing the ABC song.*

Last week I was inspired by Jeff's cousin's blog. Alli is doing a theme every month and starting the theme with a box with items in that theme. That really sounded like fun and got my creative juices flowing. I decided that I would introduce a letter by putting items that began with that letter in a box, along with a coloring page, courtesy of  Sesame Street printables and a large foam letter (left over from our large alphabet mat. What a pain in the butt that was).

I have various other actives and crafts planned to go along with this. After we looked in the 'A' box this morning, there was a letter 'A' hunt. I had printed out twelve large and differently colored 'A's and stuck them around the basement for Doug to hunt for. When he came down the stairs and saw the first one, he proclaimed, "That's letter A!" (thanks you, Sesame Street). I thought each day we'd do a 15-20 minute activity involving the letter and spend a week or two on each letter. He's grasped 'A' rather quickly, so I think we may only spend one week on it. In addition to learning the symbol (I'm only showing him the capital letter right now) we're also learning the short vowel sound for the vowels. If he only comes out of this with a knowledge of the letter names, however, I'll be happy. I mean, he's only two and a half. So far so good with the short 'A' sound though. I've also decided to use Sesame Street videos about various letter skits (today it's 'A's Anatomy'). It's actually letter 'A' week on their website!

Here's some pics of learning in action:

I decided, just for the first time, I'd gift wrap the box (I'm awful at wrapping. If you get something from us that's nicely wrapped, Jeff did it.). Initially, I thought Doug would be mighty pissed off unwrapping a box of his own toys, but he was quite excited.

 And yes, we're still totally in our pjs. It's a rainy Tuesday morning.

Here Doug is examining the contents of his 'A' box.

Doug has found his first letter 'A' on his 'A' hunt! He totally loved this activity. 

So far so good :)



*As an educator, one of my biggest pet peeves is when an adult proclaims a child "knows their ABCs", when what they actually know is the song, not the sound to symbol relationship, which is far, far more important.  End of rant.