Goodbye B/Hello L!! - 4/7/11

After a few days off it was good to get back into our routine. We took a couple of days off to look for a new van. It was NOT fun. Finding a car in our price-range was difficult. We typically saw some pretty crummy cars. But on the last day we saw one that was our exact van,same year and make, only much nicer and cleaner, nothing broken, except it needed a brake job. They were asking too much, well, more than we had.  We offered quite a bit less. They said no. Somehow we were able to meet in the middle, and today we agreed on a price and made a verbal agreement on a sale :) Scout is very pleased that we're getting the same van back. It's just what her little OCD heart ordered :)  We also got some great news that our homeowners insurance is going to pay for a new a/c unit and roof and window screens on the back of the house, so that is a huge relief! Finally something good happened!

SO, it was back to school for us today. We started the day with some Lego building, babies, and color sorting.

It is interesting how Flossie can sit and play babies for EVER until you tell her it's time to stop. Also how she will kind of hang back and watch the others playing Legos and then later when they leave, she'll go over and build with them on her own. She does that with lots of things I've noticed. An observer :)

For school today we did some review of patterns with Frogs and Logs and then more practice with Montessori number tiles and bug erasers for counters. Flossie used all butterflies :)  Freddie still used the cards, the counters, and his fingers to keep track. Funny boy!

I found a great site last night that has some fun, free online preschool games that teach computer skills too. Freddie had fun doing that for awhile. J spent some time working on his insect project by learning about bees on the computer too.

After that, drum roll please . . . . it was time to say goodbye to letter B for awhile. Freddie was able to tell me a lot of things that start with B and both kids were able to do the "Find the Bs" worksheet with no problem.  I picked letter B to start kind of by accident. We were reading about Brown Bear and "B" just kind of naturally came up, but I think from hear on, I am going to do a combination of following the letters as laid out by the Tot School website and my own training. I like the thought process she has of teaching the letter that are easiest to write first, but I also know it is good to first teach the letters that make the most sense phonetically too. So for instance W is easy to write, but does not make sense phonetically because "Duh, duh, duble you" does not make the sound that starts the word "whale." So we'll follow Tot school when it makes sense to do so, and jump ship when I think we need to. For now, our next letter is L.  This one could be phonetically confusing, but since it ends with the correct sound, we can emphasize that part when we say it. We'll see how it goes. It is also super easy to write. So I introduced it today and we worked on writing it a little bit. Freddie said it's like his friend L.J.!

 

So after all this hard work it was time to head to lunch with Gramps. Fun was had by all once again.  Before that we had to drop Bella at work. After lunch, we had to pick her up, and then bring her to her doctors appointment. While she was there, we decided to go to a park nearby to make the wait a bit easier. 

When we got home everyone agreed it was time for some waffles and milk and then naps for the littles. Scout worked on vocabulary words for her Minn of the Mississippi lapbook and Jem drew and awesome bee for his insect lapbook and worked on copying a poem about bees. He also put some insect stickers in his lapbook.

Busy day. Good to bee back :)