Just doing their thing…

We finished up our week of learning about Abraham and God’s promises to Abraham, though I will detail this more after we finish our week learning about Isaac.

 

In the meantime, here are some random pictures of JayBird and JellyBean doing what they do best…playing! And of course, learning through that play!

Window Art

 

Puzzles

JayBird has always amazed me with his puzzles skills. He is definitely better and faster than me! This Noah’s Ark puzzle is a big circle, so no edges and corners, and there are no outlines to help know where to put the pieces in the circle. He also has this Melissa & Doug puzzle of the United States. It does have outlines on it but nonetheless, I would think it would be more difficult for him, yet he completes it in no time at all, maybe only getting frustrated when something isn’t fitting because he may have mixed up North and South Dakota.

 

Reading some beginner reading books online with Mom.

 

JellyBean playing her very own computer game for the very first time! She enjoyed playing this game from Fisher-Price. She simply had to touch any key on the keyboard and a new letter would appear along with a voice saying the letter name. At the end, you see and hear the entire alphabet. She loved it!

 

  

Building the alphabet together

 

Finished….and acting crazy for the camera as usual.

 

And here’s JellyBean copying what JayBird was doing with his “crazy arms” in the above picture.

And here is the final product of the ABC tower, along with song!

 

Story Time

JellyBean (20mos) has never been fond of reading. Whereas JayBird has loved to sit and read since he was an infant, JellyBean screams and tries to take the book out of my hands if I am reading to her or her brother. It has made it quite difficult to read and enjoy stories together.

I recently heard about a mom that used carpet squares for her wiggly kids during circle time. I thought that was a great idea! The next day I happened to be at a community garage sale and was able to purchase some carpet squares for 25 cents each! Perfect! I thought carpet squares would also work well for my active JayBird. What I didn't realize is how wonderful it would actually be for JellyBean!

As much as it can be nice to cuddle up on the couch with your kids to read a story, I have found that it just doesn't work for us...well, at least not for JellyBean. One afternoon I decided to use our carpet squares for a story time. The kids sat on the floor on their carpet squares while I sat on the couch. It definitely had the feel of a library story time and felt a little odd to be like that in my home since I was "above" the kids reading a story and not sitting cozily right next to them. But...it worked! I sang a little story time song and we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Having JellyBean on a carpet square below me kept her far enough away from the book that she didn't try to tear it out of my hands. And she really loves her carpet square! If she did stand up and wouldn't sit back down, I would just sing a sit down song and she would immediately sit down. She really responded to my instruction through song! And The Very Hungry Caterpillar was coincidentally the perfect book to read because there were several words that we could all say in sign language, many of which JellyBean had just learned that week! So it was very fun for us!

And now...JellyBean LOVES to read! The carpet squares were like magic in regards JellyBean and reading! She even brings books to me now and signs "book" and says "re...re". Gone are the days of her screaming and closing the book on us. She is requesting I read to her. And she happily goes to get her carpet square for story time. I'm sure one day she will like to cuddle up to read with me, but for now, having our more formal, library-like story time is what works for our family so that we ALL enjoy reading together!

Into my readers' hearts:
~ What have you done to encourage a love of reading with your little ones?

We have some exciting news for you!!

JayBird is sharing with everyone that "We have some exciting news for you!! I was reading Hop on Pop!" That's right...JayBird is reading!! We have been going through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons the past two weeks. We were just going through lesson 7 and quickly combined some lessons through to the end of lesson 11. Then I asked him to get the Hop on Pop book and sure enough, he could read from it! Truly amazing since we have only been practicing our reading for two weeks! (I promise he was also excited, despite the looks of his picture here.)

JayBird has been interested in learning to read and would do very well with our lessons until the last few minutes of each lesson, even though the lessons are very short. On average, they are suppose to take 15 minutes, but could take as long as 20 minutes or as little as 10 minutes. Ours generally take 10-15 minutes depending on if we do everything within each task and how squirmy JayBird is. Each lesson is broken into 6-8 tasks. Examples of the various tasks are learning new sounds, saying things fast and slow, and rhyming. Even in just the first two lessons I could see a difference in how he would sound words out. Instead of pausing in between sounds and saying "pih-ih-guh...pihihguh?? What's that?" he learned to instead smoothly sound out "piiig...pig!"

JayBird would do great on each day's lesson until the last couple of tasks when he would then be ready to be done. But together we persevered and would finish the lesson. When doing lesson 7, some sounds were put together for the first time to form words. This was very exciting for JayBird! He wanted to go on and do more and read more words, which prompted us to combine lessons 7 through 11, which had a lot of repetition that we skimmed over (too much repetition and review for his desire) and just a few new things, like putting already learned sounds together to form new words.

It is so wonderful to see this progress so soon. Exciting for me as a mom and encouraging for JayBird as an early reader! So Hop on Pop goes down as his first book, which interestingly, is the first book his Dad ever read as an early reader too. Like father like son.

 

Into my readers’ hearts:

~ What was your child’s “first book”?

~ What (very) early reader books, such as Bob books, have you loved? Share your links and resources, especially if you know any free online resources!