Letters and Maps

School these days is all about letters and maps, maps and letters. We have now done 13 of the 40 sounds, or about a third. I'm really impressed with DJ's memory for sounds. And I'm beginning to catch him outside of school time exploring words on his own such as h-h-hat. And we haven't even done /h/ yet!

DJ's First Selfie

For his 3rd birthday, DJ received a camera, and not just any camera... a Nikon Coolpix S32.  The key features of this camera when purchased for a 3 year old?  Waterproof to 33ft, Shockproof to 5ft and only a few, large, easy-to-use buttons.  And he loves it!  In the three months since he has had this camera, he hasn't taken any masterpiece photography, but he has captured some interesting shots.  Well, some may only be interesting to him, but here is a brief view into the world through a child's eyes:

DJ's very first selfie!

Baking Bread

I had to work on Saturday and when I came home in the afternoon, I was greeted by DJ screaming "Webakedbread! Webakedbread!" He was SO excited. And the best part? My husband took pictures!

So this is how to bake bread with dad while mom's at work:


Measure ingredients


Whisk


Add yeast


Stir


Pound


Pound


Pound


Bake in pan


Enjoy!

More Letters - up to 7

We continued our sandpaper letter work this week. The Keys of the World albums I use suggest that once you start, all the letters should be completed rather quickly in just a few weeks. We started with three (a, c & m), then added two more (d & t) and today added two more (s & p).

North America map!

Who would have ever thought doing Geography with a 3 year old could be so much fun?! DJ has been working with the World Map puzzle for awhile and can now name all the continents, although he usually calls Asia "the big one". Hah.

Starting the Sandpaper Letters

DJ and I have been working on letter sound games for about 9 months now. It had been mostly a struggle to get DJ to even hear me at first. He just didn't seem to understand why I wanted him to learn the sounds. A little while ago I started telling him the sound games were the first step to learning to read and that helped to get him to at least listen if not participate. Using I Spy Phonics Fun books helped a lot to keep his attention.

Map Work!

DJ has been doing a lot of new continent work the past couple of weeks. He received the Montessori Map Work book for Christmas (thank you, Grandpa). I have been collecting Safari Toobs for awhile now so I had most of the miniature animals included in the book and I had a few animal cards that matched too.

Metal Insets!

Starting the new year off right, I presented the Metal Insets to DJ today. He's been doing a lot of writing lately which is different from drawing because instead of sweeping circular movements, he's trying to mimic my handwriting by doing small rows of curves and lines. DJ saw the insets in storage yesterday and started yelling excitedly, "I'm ready for those! I'm ready for those!" Heh. He didn't know what they were for yet nor did he know that I had been prepping all week to put them on the shelves.

New Rhyming Cards on the Language Shelves

We haven't been doing regular school for a couple of weeks through the holidays but that certainly didn't stop DJ from learning. He actually asked me one day, "Mommy, are you my teacher?" It's clear that he's becoming more and more aware that we're not just playing.

The break also didn't stop me from looking for resources and I found these amazing Rhyming Cards on the Measured Mom's website. Typically when I find ideas like this I tend to re-create them to either remove the words or type them in cursive. But these cards are so adorable and there are so many of them, I never could have made them myself so well.

I had a little time to myself just after Christmas so I took the chance to prepare these cards which means: print, cut, laminate and cut again. There are 48 cards, which is A LOT so I separated them into two piles, one that I'm sure DJ would recognize all of the pictures and a second where the pictures are new to DJ or where we use a different name for them. That left me with 24 cards. I've set the second pile aside for now.

I wasn't thinking very clearly when I decided to put the new cards out on the shelf. The moment DJ entered the room, he noticed the new change right away and started begging me to show them to him. I was trying to put him off when he says, "but Mommy, you HAVE to teach me!" Hah. So much for my winter break!

It's MY job!

DJ has been helping with the fireplace a lot these days. Dad starts a fire nearly every evening and he's been teaching DJ not only how to start a fire but how to be safe around fire.

DJ's favorite job is scooping the old ash out and he insists on doing it every time, even when it's not really necessary. After using the shovel to scoop the ash out, he gets a dustpan and brush to sweep up any that spilled. Tonight when he ran to get the dustpan I heard him yell out, "I'm going to do it 'cuz it's MY job!!" I love his confidence.