September 4, 2013

Can I just start out by saying that I am STUNNED that Luke turns one year old a week from tomorrow?????

Super busy but fun day today.  Our friend Eli came this morning for a couple hours.  I told his mom ahead of time to have him bring his wheelbarrow and shovel, I had a little project for him and Levi to do. He brought TWO wheelbarrows and a shovel - and I took advantage of two strong, dirt-loving little boys to help me spread compost in the garden beds!!! Is that bad?  They totally nailed the job and I was pretty surprised that they stuck with it until it was finished. I thought for sure that it would lose its luster after a few shovels full.  They moved it, helped me rake and spread it, and then I pulled out some containers and they picked tomatoes for me.  Levi LOVES working "on the farm" as he calls it, and Eli was a very eager worker too.  It was a great way to kill an hour and get a project done!

Luke supervised.

After Eli left, Levi wanted to do projects. Which really surprised me...when I started this two months ago he was NOT interested in project time or anything related to it. I had to be creative in getting him involved with new things.  When he found out that Josiah had been painting this morning, he wanted to paint. I wasn't planning on painting, but quickly reformulated the plan, busted out some worksheets and paints, and he went to TOWN.  Not too long ago, 'painting' meant one swipe of the brush across the sheet, and then he was ready to move on.  This morning he was super involved, and kept asking for more.  He painted several sheets...

....then wanted to dot paint, so I gave him this apple sheet and told him to ka-blam the big A's with one color, and the little a's with another color. He nailed it without my help. I about fell over.

He wanted to do more, so I went out on a limb and gave him a basic line tracing sheet, which he has never done before.  I challenged him to take his marker and draw on the dotted line from the big A's to the little A's. This basically gives him the concept of writing from left to right.

Boom.

He also wanted to do a sheet with shapes on it, so without my direction, he colored each one and called out what shape each one was.  I heard him say, "Crescent....star...." and I was like, "......what did you say?"

And then we were done!!!  Holy cow, I was not ready to do all that but it sure was fun!!!  (I painted the red A there on the right.)

I'm not telling you all this to be all, "Look!!  My kid's a genius!"  I'm just more amazed that they DO soak up what we tell them as we read and play, and then whammo!  When they're ready to display it, they're ready.

And honestly, we have Leapfrog's videos  Letter Factory and Numbers Ahoy, and between those and Starfall.com, he has some excellent tools that he loves to learn from.  I'm just facilitating.

Then he wanted to watch some songs on Starfall, so I set him up while I cleaned up.  Luke got up from his nap around then and was excited to watch as well. In his dress. (That's what we call his sleep sack, LOL).

Work tomorrow, and the boys get to go to Aunt Mary's. :)