2nd Month, Eighth Day

Every time I passed this sign today, I laughed. I couldn't take the fact that Bubs randomly decided to color the eye of the bottom girl purple, making it look like she has a black eye. Juxtaposed with the quote, it's just hysterical.

Anyway, in Math today we continued with sets, concentrating on sets with the same number. I set out three rows with different items. Next to each row, I had items that were to complete the corresponding set. I asked Babe to use these items to finish the sets, creating complete sets and no incomplete sets.

Tada! Amazing. She is really picking up on new things very well. I get giddy trying to think of new ways to challenge her, but she is pretty good at Math!

She blew through her worksheets today and was ready for Reading earlier than usual.

Just like yesterday, I let her read the lesson's book all by herself. It was, of course, another adorable one. "I Went Walking" by Sue Williams is a good book for reading cue practice. On each page, there is a little part of the next animal showing, so I stopped Babe after she read each page so she could tell me which animal she thought was next. She got them all right except for the dog, which she thought was a tiger (only the tail and back legs were showing). She really did enjoy this book, especially the last page, because of "the parade."

Next, we had a discussion about who the "I" was in the book. Babe understood that it was the girl, not any of the animals. So I told her how "I" is not only a letter, but a word too. It took her a bit of time to come off the fact that "I" wasn't the "eye" on the face, but once she realized that I always refers to a person, she was pretty good to go. To be sure though, we did a little exercise that I made up on the spot.

I sat Bubs and Z down at the table with us and asked Babe some questions.

"Who is the I in this sentence? 'I am wearing a red shirt.'"

"Z. Z is wearing a red shirt."

"Yep! Who is the I in this sentence? 'I am holding a green marker.'"

"Bubs! Bubs would say that sentence!"

"Good!"

Then I made it a bit harder.

"Who is the I in this sentence? 'I teach blind and deaf children.'"

"Aunt Dani!"

"Good job!"

So I gave her one more.

"I can't smell."

"Grampa!"

She really got the hang of it, and it was so cute when she was trying to do it with me.

"OK, I want to try. This time I'm going to pretend I'm dad. 'I'm at work.'"

"Your dad."

"Yes!"

It was really cute that she told me who the I was, I think unknowingly.

After that exercise, we all went for a walk, but I had Babe bring her camera. I told her I wanted her to see and try to remember five things on our walk, like the little girl.

She picked unique enough things that what I plan on doing tomorrow will be really awesome. I'm excited. And I think she'll really like it.

When we got back from our walk, it was nearly lunch time. So after lunch, we did some Science. I told Babe about muscles, and how they help us move our different body parts. I showed her something that a science teacher of mine showed me, where you relax all the fingers in your hand, and squeeze up and down that arm with your other hand. She saw how the fingers moved and I told her that when we squeeze our arm, we are moving the muscles around and causing our fingers to move! She was so excited to learn that and she ran over to Bubs to try it on her. Bubs was less than thrilled with being the subject of Babe's experiment.

After learning the very basics about muscles, I discussed the difference between fine and gross motor skills. I was very surprised at how quickly she picked that up. I gave Babe and Bubs some activities to practice their fine motor skills.

I gave them each a small pile of colored rice and a pair of tweezers. I explained to Babe that because she was only using two fingers, and not her whole arm or body, that this was a fine motor skill. She completely understood, and by the time she was finished sorting the rice into color piles, she was sweating and tired.

"Isn't it funny that you weren't even running around or anything, but you still got sweaty and tired?"

"Yeah, it's like I'm really exercising!"

I explained to her that she was, in fact, exercising. She had a hard time believing me but I reminded her that there were muscles in her fingers, hand and arm that were helping her use the tweezers. I think with how tired she was, she finally understood that it was "real exercise."

I had her do one more fine motor skill activity for the day. I handed her a print out I made of four shapes and asked her to show me how she would color the shapes with gross motor skills. Without even reminding her what that meant, she moved her whole arm up and down. That's just amazing. I then asked her to color the shapes using fine motor skills, which means very carefully and trying to stay inside the lines.

Yeah, she did very well with this activity, too. I forgot to get an after photo, but just know I was impressed.

The last lesson of the day was a discussion on the color red, to start the series on color, but Babe knows all her colors, so this was more for Bubs and Z. Babe enjoyed participating though.

We all filled a large tupperware container with everything red we could find. A toy firefighter hat, blocks, shapes, boxes of food, blankets, stuff animals, etc. Then I placed each kid in with the toys. I took a picture of each kid, and while they cleaned and organized all the toys, I printed the pictures. I then gave each one a red sheet of paper, their picture, and a pile of glueable items (for Z's pile, I made it all red, but for Bubs and Babe, I gave them multi-colored stuff that they had to sort through to only pick red). This craft is only part one of a large craft that I have in mind with the colors, so we will be continuing this activity every day for the remainder of the color series.

Whew! We did a lot today. And now I'm all caught up, blog-wise. Woohoo!

Here's to another busy tomorrow!