Highways

Peter is currently obsessed with highways.  Any time we are driving around he bombards me with questions.  Are we on a highway?  Is that a highway under the bridge?  Is that the ramp to get onto the highway?  Where does that highway go?

To help him understand the difference between highways and surface streets I made a road network for him today out of masking tape.

I

I is for In A Blue Room

Our book for this unit is In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck.

To tie into the color theme we made a color wheel.  Peter is right on the verge of consistently remembering how to mix primary colors to make secondary colors.

Peter's easy reader for the unit is called In The Basket.

Elliot looked at animal flash cards.  According to him, an inordinate number of them say moo.

I've been reading about strategies to help young children become better life-long learners.  One idea was to incorporate self evaluation of work from an early age.  The theory is that throughout life we need to decide for ourselves if we made mistakes in our work, if it is neat enough to fulfill its purpose, which of our efforts produced the best results and how to replicate that, etc.

For the youngest children, the recommendations were to offer concrete ways for them to evaluate their efforts and to encourage them to think critically about which of their efforts produced the "best" work in their opinion.

Peter cut out his proverb which is a skill he is still developing.  The thick (1/2") black lines gave him a way of assessing if he was cutting straight.  As he gets better at cutting across a page I will make the lines more narrow.  When he taped the  proverb together it gave him a chance to practice using tape and to puzzle out the correct order for the words.

He also practiced writing the letter I.  After he wrote his line of I's I had him circle the one that best matched the models.  I think he made an accurate assessment.

Waiting For Daddy

Peter rode his scooter for 10ish seconds.

Elliot wanted to ride the trike and realized that he could use his toes to inch it slowly backwards.

The boys played in a sensory tub of wood shavings.

Elliot decided he was going on a bike ride and tried to climb into the trailer on his own.

After dinner we all went for a walk to visit Peter's favorite rock.  It is the mossy boulder on the far right of the picture about half way up from the bottom.

Various I and Fall Activities

The last couple weeks have been busy.  We are getting ready to have the house roofed, I've been trying to get Peter's speech therapy started, Elliot had to go the allergist, I've been working on Peter's new room, and on and on.

Here are a variety of things the boys have been up to.

Elliot playing at the table during learning time.

Peter in his shirt with insects for I week.

A Halloween/fall/insect sensory tub played with in the igloo.

Charlie Brown in his zebra crib.

Peter ready to hunt insects in the TV room.

A "first letter" activity that was too easy for Peter - he cruised right through quickly putting the clothes pins on the correct letters.

Making i-i-imprints in home made green play dough.

Playing in our new thrifted costumes.

Adding words to the sight word caterpillar.

Stringing a Halloween necklace.

Using his sight word vocabulary to write and read sentences.

Punching pipe cleaners through egg carton cups to make a cute insect.

Three Year Old Neediness

Peter and I haven't been seeing eye to eye lately.  He just seems to NEED so much of me and I feel like he is already getting much more time and attention than his fair share and that Elliot and Doug and the house and my other responsibilities are getting short changed.

This morning I asked what he wanted to do while we waited for the roofer.

He wanted to paint.  Sure.
He wanted all the colors of paint.  Sure, I squeezed all 10 colors onto his palette.
He wanted 5 different colors of paper.  Sure, I counted out the 5 colors he chose.
He wanted two big and one little paint brushes.  Sure, I guess I can wash three instead of one.

That whole process took about 15 minutes during which time Elliot was tired and unhappy in the office - but he played and waited until it was his turn.

Once Peter was all set up, I told him I had to take Elliot up for his nap and that I would be back in two minutes.  That is truly how long it takes to put Elliot down - Peter lasted about 15 seconds.  I heard the first "Mom" before I had even gotten half way up the stairs.  I heard the 10th as I was walking into Elliot's room.  I heard the 20th screamed as I put Elliot in his crib.  By the time I walked back to the table Peter was screaming and sobbing my name like I had abandoned him at that table for a month.

What on Earth was the problem?  He needed more blue paint.  He had not touched the blue paint that he had - in fact, he had not touched any of the paints -  but he desperately, screamingly needed more of it.

Yesterday, he dumped almost every toy in the basement because I left to talk to the insurance adjuster for a few minutes.  If I leave him eating breakfast he "spills" half of his dry cereal all over the floor in the time it takes me to throw a load of laundry in the washer.

Yeah, he and I aren't seeing eye to eye.

Words that Start with Short I

This post is mostly for my own use.

I had to really think about what Peter was going to do for his I unit because there aren't a huge number of I words to work with.  I further limited the choices because I am only introducing words that start with a short I - his first concern needs to be sounding out words like sit and him where the I always says "ih".

This post is to save future me time when I start planning an I unit for Elliot...

Short I Words:

Insect
Igloo
Infant
Intersect(ion)
Inflate
Iguana
Imprint
Inch Worm
Illusion
Illinois
Indiana
Invention
Inventor
Instrument
Impressive
Incredible
Inject
Ink

Introducing Proverbs

When I was planning Peter's preschool units I decided to include in each one a proverb (of the secular variety) that included that unit's letter and that would be meaningful and useful to Peter.  For our first three units, I did not introduce the proverbs.  Peter had enough on his plate with a letter, a book and a sight word.  This unit, however, I was ready to add the proverb in; I felt Peter was familiar enough with the routine and this proverb was particularly important in Peter's life right now.  So for the last few days I have been waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

Yesterday afternoon Peter and I were planning to make another batch of play dough.  He was eagerly anticipating this and had been talking about it all day.  When the time came, I told him we would be ready as soon as we cleaned up the play room.  He began "cleaning" like a madman.  Toys were randomly thrown in tubs, books got "put away" in the hat bin, hats and play food got stepped on and crushed.  I watched for a bit and then printed out the proverb and got ready to introduce it.

When Peter said he was done I said we could make play dough as soon as we checked that everything was clean.  As we perused the area, Peter sheepishly admitted that many things were amiss and he spent the next 15 minutes re-cleaning.  I pulled out the proverb.

We discussed how he had not done his clean up job well and then he had to redo it which took a long time.  What would happen if we were so eager to play with the play dough that we didn't do a good job making it?  If we didn't take the time to do a good measuring job then the ingredients wouldn't make play dough, they would just make a mess.  Or, what about if I didn't do a good job cleaning Peter's zoo keeper shirt that he had gotten marker on earlier?  It wouldn't get clean and Peter would not be able to wear it anymore.  

I am pleased with how Peter seemed to grasp the concept of a proverb and the difference between a good job and a sloppy job.  We are going to hang up our proverb with our other preschool things.  We will revisit it the next time we do learning drawers and hopefully Peter will be able to give me an example of a time when it is important to do a good job. 

I is for Igloo

Today we started a new preschool unit - the letter I.  I got out the Ikea igloo tent for the boys to play in.

Peter put stickers on his capital I and then we played a game of coloring igloos in various shapes.  I'm having a hard time describing a rectangle to Peter.  It has four sides (like a square) and four corners (like a square) and it stands up straight (like a square [as opposed to leaning over like a rhombus, trapezoid or diamond]) but it isn't a square.  I can easily guide him to a particular rectangle by telling him it is tall and skinny or short and long, but I don't think he is understanding how those could both be rectangles.  He did, however, immediately understand octagons after we talked about octopuses and their legs.

At first Elliot was content coloring with us, but soon he had a melt down and was whisked upstairs for a nap.

For the grand finale we made an igloo out of home made snow play dough.  Peter had to follow a picture recipe and measure ingredients to make the play dough.  We added silver glitter to make it shine like snow.

It was actually very hard to make an igloo out of play dough, especially soft, home made play dough that was still a bit warm and saggy.  But, we persevered until we had a suitable abode for our little Eskimo (race car driver) man.  Then Peter went wild.  When I got back from switching the laundry he announced there had been a blizzard that covered his penguin with snow.  He found that concept hilarious and he continued to play in the "snow" for 45 more minutes.