Lots of Games

Rachel spent over an hour straight this afternoon playing "games" with me.  We repeated some of the games that she liked from earlier in the week.  Then, we did a couple of new ones.

We played a matching game of bears to habitats.  She LOVED correcting me when I made a mistake and put the polar bear in a bamboo forest.

We took pictures from the Bear Hunt story and put them in order, retelling the story.

She figured out, by sound, what the first letters were of about half the images.

She did some new tracing pages based on a suggestion from her teacher, Patti.  And she traced all her uppercase letters.

Then she wanted to hide a bear under a cave.  She was getting pretty tired, so we just did the first 12 numbers.  I actually tried to get her to just go play with her toys, but she was insistent.

Then we pulled out the Cuisenaire blocks.  She made a train out of some.  I played next to her comparing blocks sizes.  At one point I tried to figure out which block was the same length as three of the "1" size blocks.  She helped with that.  I really need to buy the workbook.

 

We also read a new book today that had nothing to do with bears. She chose it at the library this week.  The Prairie Train was a bit beyond her, so the first reading I just chose one or two sentences per page to tell the story.  After three readings, she seems to be handling almost all the sentences now.  I find that introducing harder books in passes, helps.

David and I talked about all these "games".  Part of the draw for her is that she and I are actively engaged.  It's not that I don't play with her in other ways, but David is much better at freeplay than I am.  I've never enjoyed it....even as a child.  David hates structured play.  It's a good balance.