Emotions and Demonstration

Emotions

One of the things I wanted to work on this week with Rachel is interpreting body language.  How do we tell what someone is feeling if they don't use words to tell us.  This morning, while sitting on the couch reading and drinking our morning cocoa/coffee, the topic came up naturally.

Rachel brought over the book "Not a Box".  At one point, she commented on one of the illustration saying, "He's thinking." 

I asked her how she knew that, which prompted a lot of discussion.  Then, David started demonstrating other emotions for us.  

It was fun.

Then, later in the day, we went to the tile store where our tile order got totally and completely messed up.  I was exhausted and my patience was gone.  Later in the day, Rachel told Daddy that "we had fun, then Mommy got mad at the tile."

Ahem.  Great.  I will win no awards for parenting today.

Language Arts and Storytelling

Yesterday, while riding in the car, we passed the water tower near our house.  Rachel laughed and said the monkeys hadn't stolen it.  I asked her "Why?"  (The cheeky monkeys have been stealing the water tower for quite some time.)  She explained they couldn't steal it so they went home.  

"Home?  Where is that?"

Rachel replied, "In the jungle."

Mom, "Oh, what do you think they eat there?"

Rachel said, "Plants".

"Not bananas?"

Rachel, using that tone of voice that clearly says her mother is just old and daft, said, "No, they eat plants."

We then went through questions about how many monkeys there were (9), how big they were (pretty big, only 7 would fit int he car), when they were coming back (7 months), who stopped them from taking the water tower (cars).  We did a whole story, which is exactly what I want to encourage her to do.

Science (well, sort of, in the loosest sense of the word)

As we have been talking about seasons, I brought in the concept of months.  They cover this at playschool, so I thought it would work for us at home as well. We put up a big calendar on the door to the laundry room and every day she has moved a star to the date for the day.  The first time we moved the star, I was surprised, and chagrined, that she didn't know which direction to go for the next day. Duh.  I wasn't thinking.  So, I explained how things work.  Today, she did better, but what really stunned me was she counted to 30 with minimal help.

Resources

I also picked up some of the early Kumon workbooks on tracing patterns, letters and beginning to tell time.

"New Games!"

I honestly thought I was making waaay too many learning activities up for Rachel.  This was supposed to be about providing merely supplemental material to her play activities.  However, yesterday afternoon I said, "Rachel, mommy put some new games in your game drawer.  Shall we play one?"

"YAY! NEW GAMES!"  She dashed over to the little plastic storage bin I'm using for her art supplies and "games" and we took out the game I had made in which she pulls out a little slip of paper with an image on it and then finds it in the book Goodnight Moon.  Well, this was popular.  We did six or seven of them, and then I suggested we save some for the next day.  "Ok, ...'nuther new game?" she said as she started rummaging around in the drawer.

She pulled out the little clock I made (with only the hour hand on it) and started turning the little arrow-hand and shouting out the numbers.  I slowed her down a bit and asked questions like, "What do we do at 7:00 in the morning?"  (wake up)  etc.  We went through a dozen questions like that and then got interrupted by something.

When David got home from the office in the late afternoon, he and she went downstairs to play.  However, she immediately suggested they play new games and said, "Be right back..."  and went up two flights of stairs, retrieved all the new games we had played, and brought them down for David to see.

David asked her to teach him how to play.  So, she dumped out all the little slips of paper with images on them and explained that we sort them.  Eh?  Ok, she started combining games we had played to create a new one.  David told me later she sorted them by color and by art style.  She would put all the clip art that was of a certain style together.  THEN, David suggested they play a new game.  He dealt the slips into two piles and then started a story by drawing one from his pile.  They proceeded to tell a story by adding slips of paper with clipart on them.  This is EXACTLY what I had envisioned happening with these activities.  They are merely a starting place and transform based on her leading and interest.

However, I am going to be challenged to come up with enough material. :)

I had planned to teach her "Hey Diddle, Diddle" this week.  She learned it yesterday....in addition to picking up half of a longer poem that was an accident.  Then, she sang Hot Cross Buns to me after only having heard it in the car two or three times last week.  (WTF??)

Yeah, public school is going to work so well for her.  (Please note sarcasm.)