"Store," Book Work, and Circles

Week of February 17 thru 23, 2013:

Store
I played "Store" with Jaden William.  This time we played with a fruit and chocolate stand. We all also tried raw cacao nibs for the first time (besides having them in dark chocolate bars that have some sugar).  WOW, they are pretty bitter!  For sure I've got to have some sugar with my cacao, though I love the 70-something percent cacao.

 

Fruit stand and cash drawer

Jaden often goes into a couple different stores by himself for me and has done so for maybe close to a year.  He likes to do so, too, because he's able to buy himself a treat as a reward for his help.  He still loves to play "Store," and it gives him further practice counting money.

I've introduced Trusten to counting money and will be working with him on doing so for the next few weeks on math day.  He can count to 100 by 1s and 10s, and I'll soon go over 5s.

Workbooks and Miscellaneous

One day the boys started working on their workbooks before Elizabeth and I were even finished with our breakfast, and Olivia decided she wanted to draw circles on pink paper. Normally we do a quick clean-up after breakfast and do reading, whereas workbooks usually come later in the day.

Jaden did some mapping in history after we read about the prophets Jonah and Amos.

Liv loves to carry around either one of her babies (one life-size and heavy and one very tiny and light) and give them "milk and cuddles" (which is what I've always called nursing my babies).  Pictured below is her big baby "Pink" (her smaller baby dressed in green is named "Agliss," and she has an older-age girl doll named "Green", though it has not a bit of green).

Jaden with his history book coloring and labeling a map in East Asia; writing in "Language Lessons"

Olivia drawing circles and nursing her baby "Pink" right after her own lunch

Trusten working in his Phonics A book

 Trusten recently started working in a book called Phonics A, which is a book (among many others) that my mil gave to us.  He's already done 89 pages (as of 3/6/13) of the 270-page book.  He's already gotten to where he's almost entirely self-directed on it, too.  He's doing so well.  He is also doing Language Lessons, still reading through the Learn-to-Read Bible, and he'll be doing math in lieu of the writing book work on math day.

I don't have ANY trouble with getting him to do his work.  He is always asking me whether he can do his work, and I guess that—combined with my changing things up—has helped Jaden become enthusiastic again about his work. 

Once Trusten is finished with Phonics A I'll order him all the Explode the Code books he needs, and he'll go through all of those like Jaden did.  I have no doubt he'll be able to work on them by himself like Jaden did, with just the occasional question.  I'm impressed by all his work, and he quickly caught on that he was running some letters of one word with those of another in his sentences.  The last few times he's written sentences the words are perfectly spaced, together as they should be, and his handwriting is pretty neat.

The kids also did some painting, and Trusten and Liv worked on their cutting skills.  Liv plays all sorts of games on one of the old iPhones, including a game where she traces letters of the alphabet and words.  She does a great job!

Elizabeth

Elizabeth is always busy, but always sweet.  She likes to pull the cat's tail and hair, but that is so petty compared to what Olivia did to the cat when she was younger.  I always thought she was going to end up killing poor Sylvester.  She would get totally on top of him and also after she was walking, she would pick him up around his neck.  It was horrible.

Elizabeth is actively pointing now.  That is good.  Yeah, that's a delay, but I feel pretty good about her.  I've started using more ASL signs with her.  She first signed "milk" back a few months ago, but she doesn't use it a lot (she doesn't need to, because she just comes up to me and pulls on my shirt).  I guess she'd been signing "more" for quite some time, too, but I wasn't sure, because her version (until recently) was to use just one hand and tap her fingers on the table (but in the proper formation for that sign).  She more recently started doing it properly with both hands brought together.  She has only been introduced to a few more signs more recently and so isn't regularly using others, yet.

Elizabeth at her "looking window" after I fixed her hair

Elizabeth making her rounds

 
Until next time...