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"A baby needs not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to the world."
- G. K. Chesterton
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What We Did, October 2007-January 2008
What we did was begin working on production of D3, which monopolized my energy almost entirely. However, the older ducklings have not entirely been neglected (although sometimes it came pretty close.)
Bible: The Christmas Story, illustrated with pictures in a beautiful book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
We also may have gotten to the story of Elijah before I was unable to read stories entirely.
Hymn: They picked up a few more Christmas ones, I think.
Memory: Nothing, but we kept up the Lord's Prayer, and D2 can recite it easily now, too.
Books: There have not been many of these until the arrival of my sister a few weeks ago. I hope seven weeks without books read aloud will not scar them for life. It is unlikely to be repeated.
The Listening Walk: Fun and inspiring for an activity to do while walking or any quiet time.
Tractor Day: A little out of season, since it's spring plowing, but there's lots to look at on the pages. They are getting to really enjoy hunting for details.
Snow Music: They loved this one. I'm not sure why. The illustrations are charming, and the different noises are fun to make.
Swan Harbor: Beautiful counting book set in Maine.
The Relatives Came: A fun (and rather silly) book useful to read when the house is full of relatives.
Owl Moon: I got this with other moon books a few months ago and no one was that interested, but D1 has asked for it more than once this time. Her attention span seems to be growing. (We got Moon Plane again and its popularity is undying.)
Kamishibai Man: This one has left me scratching my head. I think it's a charming, evocative story, but I'm not sure what has made it such a favorite with the ducklings that they clamor for it several times a day and both know how to pronounce the Japanese title. The themes of cultural change and aging hardly seem standard preschool fare. Anyway, they love it. We have had some conversations about Japan, too.
Activities: (Generally with someone besides me)
Visited Mound City
Saw a museum of early West Virginian life. (Mostly they liked the model trains.)
Climbed on an old steam engine.
Visited the Blenko Glass Factory and watched glass blowing.
Hiked in a new forest.
Made creatures out of gourds.
Built a snowman.
Made a gingerbread house.
Made borax snowflakes (very cool!)
Played in the mud.
Painted caterpillars.
Played the Very Hungry Caterpillar game. (They love this game, and for the first time they are actually paying attention to following rules in a game.)
Observations:
They have grown quite a bit in independence. D1 can handle most of her own dressing and toilet needs. D2 can climb where he needs to go much more easily. Their creativity at coming up with things to play seldom flags, and they are learning to get along and play together better.
D1 is still getting her head around how sounds go together to make up words. We have been doing some games, such as me saying the sounds in the word and her guessing what the word is. She still has a lot of trouble with this. A fun game for both of them is to write letters on the ground and have them run to different letters--D2 can just run to the sound, while for D1 it can be embedded in a word to make it trickier.
D2 is showing a much better understanding of one-to-one correspondence in counting and can usually come up with the right amount for quantities up to five. He knows "c" and "a" and is starting to learn "m" and "p".
Montessori
We haven't done anything formal, and I consider it a guilty pleasure to peek into the Montessori classroom upstairs at our church. But they are developing different skills in less formal ways. When they were playing in the mud I watched them carefully balancing toy frying pans full of rocks so as not to spill them. Today they played with glass gems (from the glass factory), spooning them into and out of bowls. D1 arranged a large, precise rectangle of the gems. |
Posted: 12:08 PM, Jan. 14, 2008 |
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You've been tagged...
...love reading you blog, I enjoy seeing what others are doing, so I like the way you've set it out.
I was tagged earlier so just passing it on. you can post 7 random or weird things about yourself and then tag 7 others to do the same.
Turina |
Posted by Sherena at 6:51 AM, Jan. 29, 2008 |
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