Chinese Stuff, Rainbows, Christian Heroes, and Geography

I picked a project out of his Social Studies Grade 1 book--eating Chinese food with chopsticks. SO, we had Chinese noodles (from the natural food market, and it even came in biodegradable plastic) and ate with chopsticks (see pics above). Will really doesn't do much worse with them than I do. He figured it out well enough to eat. :-) Oh, and look! He even drank out of a glass with Chinese decor. ;-) (That was coincidence. We've owned those glasses for awhile.) I told him a few new things about China that he didn't already know. And then I thought it would be fun to look up how his name (William) would be written in Chinese (pictured above). And he tried his best to copy it.

We're now in Nehemiah in the bible, still reading Proverbs every day. And he can just about recite the Ten Commandments in its entirety by himself.

We're still working in the Rocket Readers Learn-to-Read bible. And, we're working on a Rocket Readers book nearly every day. We're almost finished with all the level 2 books we have, and then we'll move on to level 3. The neat thing with these last several books we've gone through is that it tells a little about Christians from the past--missionaries, orphanage operators, etc. People have included Corrie ten Boom, Samuel Morris, and Gladys Ahwahl. I'd like to take some time in the near future and read to him more about some of these people, b/c I've read about some of them in the past and really enjoyed it.

He's completed lesson 1 in Unit 3 of Complete Curriculum for Grade 1 for the Reading section. Of course, this includes practice on his writing, not just his reading, b/c he has to write answers to questions. He's also worked some in that in the math section. He worked on "more" and "fewer" today.

We've finished Unit 2 in Our Christian Heritage. We were able to work somewhat quickly through some of it, since it was mostly review for William--oceans, continents, etc. Unit 3 will discuss our flag, the Declaration of Independence, etc. We'll start that soon.

I bought one of those mini-notebooks that open from the top, and we're going to use that for recording things about our plant(s) that we'll soon be planting. Well, it/they will start as seed(s).

We talked about rainbows and, "What color is light?" We started a rainbow project, but things weren't working out as planned, so I'm going to try it a different way. My plan is to make a rainbow. Today, I just made a big mess. :-0

He learned for music: treble clef, bass clef, quarter note, half note, whole note, the rests, and a few others, and I discussed briefly what they meant and demonstrated. I will continue to go over the same things several times before we move on to more.

He's done art freely. He's painted some pictures. That's about it here lately, as far as art goes. Maybe we will do some art history soon.

And of course, this doesn't include whatever else has come up each day, as he's always full of questions.

As far as Trusten goes, he's saying more and more words. He's a little parrot. He says a few sentences, though probably not everybody would understand them. He says, "What are you doing," "Where did he/they go," "What is that?" Stuff like that. He's done that for awhile. I have hope that maybe he won't have the speech problems like Will has had. BUT, almost every day is a challenge with Trust. He's getting to be more fun, and I can't be more thrilled about that. He's also more snuggly. He's always kind of hated to be touched. Until not too long ago, I had to nurse him lying down and keep my hands off of him, or else he'd throw a fit. I've been able to hold him now, and yesterday he came up to me and laid his head in my lap and just wanted to snuggle. I've been getting more of that. :-) I'm glad, b/c I'm the type who thrives on that. He's also doing better about potty needs. I never had to potty train Will, really. He was used to going to the potty from the age of 2 months. At 17.5 months he'd both sign and say "potty" and then head off to the toilet and would climb it himself, when he needed to poop. He was doing all his peeing by his 2nd birthday. Trust will be 2 in late May. I hope he's trained by then. Ironically, he does better going to the potty to PEE than poop, which is really odd. It's usually the other way around. But, anyway, I'm thrilled that he's catching on, and I hope he finishes it soon. I'll be glad to be finished with diapers....for awhile, anyway.

Trust still doesn't like books much, but he's showing more on an interest.

Well, that's it for this post.