Yesterday wrapped up the end of “T Week”.

Adam was slightly more interested in practicing writing this week.

One of his favorite activities was doing Tangrams (pretty impressive “T” word, no?). He actually just called it his “shapes puzzles”. I will point out though, that five of the seven shapes used in Tangrams are triangles, and so that totally works.

The other two shapes are a square and the “tricky” parallelogram (Adam refers to it that way because sometimes he would have to flip it over to make it fit the way he needed it to).

Adam also did a color-by-number picture for the first time this week. I colored the key on the bottom of the page, so that he knew which color went with which number, before I gave it to him.

I think he did an awesome job. Having the numbers as guides made him try to stay inside the lines more the he normally does. If he did cross over in to another number’s area by mistake though, he was quick to apologize “sorry number five!”

Then there was a turtle counting activity where he had to match the number on a card to the number of turtles on a separate sheet. This was fun to watch. I had the turtles all out of order to make it a little harder for him. He would pick a number, then count the turtles on the cards until he found the right one. It was especially funny when he would realize there were more turtles than the number in his hand. He would get so excited counting up to the number, thinking it might be the right one, then when he realized he had counted to his goal and there were still more turtles left, he’d give a very exasperated sigh before moving on to the next card and counting again.

When I brought out the cards the next day though, he took a different approach. Instead of counting each set of turtles to see if they matched the number in his hand, he would count the turtles, then sort through the numbers to find the right one – much more efficient (and he came up with it all on his own).

Adam also did some work with patterns and sorting. I had him sort these turtles and teddy bears, by animal and color. Then I made up some patterns with them and had him complete them.

The next day we worked with a set of just teddy bears. Adam told me he wanted to make a rainbow pattern with them, so I let him.

If you noticed that Adam’s rainbow has two purples – he’ll be quick to tell you it is not a mistake. The rainbow goes, “red, ornange, lellow, green, blue, in-a-go, and violet too”, and since we didn’t have indigo and violet bears, he just made do with double purple.

Once his rainbow pattern was complete he used the bears to do some more counting.

Adam woke up each day asking if he could do school and I loved seeing how excited he got about it each of the activities. In addition to what I have pictures of, we also talked about the life cycle of a turtle (“Turtles come from eggs, but Luke came from the hospitable”), did some tiger and turkey projects, and learned another bible verse (“Thou shall not steal, that means don’t take things that aren’t yours”), among other things.

One of the worksheets he did had rows of trees that were different heights. I asked him to find the tallest tree in each row (it was “T” week after all). He asked me if he could find the shortest tree in each row instead, “I really like short trees, to why I am short!”.

There was also an art failure involving an unattended three-year-old and a stamp pad of ink. Adam ended up with very, very blue hands. Thankfully it was washable and came off easily in the bath. That didn’t stop Adam from giving me a reproachful look and saying, “I need to tell Mabel and Papa about this”.

Thanks for ratting me out little dude.

Poor Luke woke up not feeling well this morning. He has a stuffy/runny nose. It’s bad enough not being able to breath out of your nose, but when Luke is tired or doesn’t feel well all he wants is his pacifier. Stuffy noses and pacifiers don’t go well together.

He’s been extra cuddly today and even took a morning nap (further proof he’s not feeling well). He did have enough energy for some mischief though – I caught him dipping Adam’s toothbrush in the toilet before bath time this morning.

The other night Adam told me and Dave that he is a pack rat. I asked him why he was a pack rat and he said, “to why I don’t throw my old stuff away”. The things he comes up with sometimes are just too much.

Like last week, when I mentioned to Adam that story time would be starting up at the library again soon he told me that he didn’t want to go. He told me, “I not sit down nice. I run around and be loud”.

I guess I’ve been warned right?

Luke is a great helper. Whenever he hears the printer start going he drops whatever he is doing, runs over to stand in front of it, waits for the paper to come out, and then bring it to me (slightly crumpled most of the time).

He’s also getting really good at following simple directions, like if I tell him to close a cabinet, take something to Dave, or put something in the garbage can. I’m most excited about the “taking things to Dave”, it’s like having our own little carrier pigeon.

Sometimes he goes rogue though and plans his own course.

I know I shouldn’t encourage this activity by taking pictures of them, because it’s only a matter of time before one of them (my money’s on Luke) gets their head stuck, but they were so cute last night that I couldn’t resist.

Adam: I want to lay down and watch baseball with you Daddy.

Dave: This is football buddy.

Adam: Okay, but we can still call it baseball.

So yes, bedtime is on hold while Daddy bonds with his boys watching some football.

We finished up the Letter L, and now it’s on to the Letter T for this week. I learned a lot last week about what does and doesn’t work for Adam (both in terms of his abilities and his attention span).

Last Friday I got out some dot markers (think bingo daubers for kids) and let him test them out. He picked the green one of course (“to why green is my favorite color mama”). After he got the feel of actually using the dot markers, we worked on counting with them.

I had printed out some pictures of spot-less ladybugs and let him decide how many spots each one should have (I did veto his suggestion of 100 though). Once he told me the numbers I wrote them below each ladybug and then it was up to him to make the correct number of spots with the dot markers.

Once properly spotted, he had me add legs to the ladybugs. Apparently, the lack of appendages really bothered him. When I first showed him the printouts and asked him what the ladybugs were missing (expecting him to say “spots”), he told me feet and arms. Once that was taken care of, he got out the crayons to color them. He is big in to the rainbow order lately and will sing the order of the colors as he is drawing (“red, orn-ange, lellow, green, blue, in-a-go, and violet too!”).

Luke has been a busy kid lately too. Last week helped me load the dishwasher. Unfortunately I didn’t see his contribution until the dishes (and his jar of food) had been cleaned.

Today after a few desktop activities we moved in to the kitchen and made play dough.

Now I know the store bought stuff (play “doh” if you will) is non-toxic, but I felt better making it from ingredients found in my kitchen (since I was pretty sure Luke would eat it). Plus, this gave Adam and me a chance to do some “baking” together.  He helped me measure and poured all the ingredients into the sauce pan and then I had him go play while I turned the stove on and did the actual cooking.

We used lemon flavored jello as one of our ingredients – making it suitable for “L” week and slightly better smelling than store bought play-doh. Once it had cooled I got out a few cookie cutters and the rolling pin and we had a ball. Adam liked making snowmen and at one point made a sculpture of Papa skiing (sorry Dad, I didn’t get a picture of it before he demolished it).

Tired, morning-nap-less Luke liked it too.

Well, he liked playing with it at least – he wasn’t crazy about the taste. I’ve heard that it was pretty salty (apparently Dave confused “safe to eat” with “good to eat”).

Yesterday I caught Adam, Luke, and Pillow snuggling together while they watched cartoons.

Luke has been boycotting his morning naps lately. As a result, by the time lunch rolls around we have a very sleepy little man on our hands. You can see how tired his eyes look in this next picture.

Thankfully both boys still take afternoon naps. Adam has been fighting me on the word “nap” though, so I have to remember to call it “rest”. I show him the clock, tell him what time he can get out of bed, and leave him there with his cd player on and a few books. He generally falls asleep not long after laying down and will “rest” for two hours.

It will be a sad day when he really does outgrow that nap.

Adam and I started school yesterday. My goal is for us to do preschool activities at home each day. We’ll be focusing on a different letter and number each week. This week is brought to you by the letter “L” and the number “1”.

I think Adam was most excited about having his own desk to work at (thank you again Aunt Cathy!). We started with a bible verse, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16). And then moved on to words that start with “L”.

Then we sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and did an “L” craft.

We ended school with several “L” stories (“Llama Llama Red Pajama”, “Llama Llama Mad at Mama”, and an ABC book. We also looked at pictures of a lamb online, showing how it grew from 4 hours old to 12 weeks old.

All in all, I would say we are off to a good start. There are a couple of different websites I am gathering lesson plans and ideas from (thanks Becky for the suggestions). Today, in addition to repeating some of what we did yesterday, Adam worked on identifying upper and lower case Ls in a story I printed out for him, we practiced writing the letter “L”, and we did a lamb craft (his request).

I don’t think I’m going to push the writing too much though. He is still pretty young and we don’t know for sure if Adam is right or left-handed (he still switches hands frequently when coloring and eating). I don’t want to confuse him or force him in to one hand or the other.

I don’t plan on homeschooling for real (I have to help keep all those public school teachers in my family employed). But for now, I am having fun being Adam’s teacher, Adam is having fun playing school, and it’s what works for our family.

When we talked about other art projects we could do with “L” words he told me he wants to make a Luke out of poofy things (cotton balls I think?). Not sure where we’ll go with that one. I’m making sure to keep the glue well out of reach when Luke is around though, just in case his big brother gets any ideas.