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.