2/26/2012 Sunday

Today we went to church.  Before church I read the boys 2 short books, both were “ I can Read books” one was a Little Critter book about the aquarium, the other was a Bernstein Bears book about spring cleaning.  I attempted to introduce place value using golden beads to R but he wasn’t interested.

After Church we took naps.  After naps I tried the place value lesson again.  It was a bit more successful.  I showed R a number card, such as 4 and he had to count out 4 one beads.  Once he  understood what I was asking him, I showed him the ten bars, and the ten’s cards.  I showed him a ten’s card, such as 50 and he had to count out 5 ten bars.  Once he got good at that I gave him a 10 card and a unit card together and showed how you could combine them.  I don’t think he has the concept quite yet but he is getting it. 

After that we went to the South Side.  R learned how to start his bike by himself.  They also found a couple of old masonry blades that G was telling them about.

On the way home G gave everyone a Monkey Mint.  R poled us to find out who had chewed them and who was sucking on them.  He declared that two people had mints left, and two did not, and that 2+2=4 since there were 4 mints total.  G gave us each another mint.  I asked R how many mints had now been eaten.  He did not know.  G held up eight finger to count, and I showed him that he could get the same answer by counting by 2’s.    After counting by two’s T pipes in with “Good counting Mommy, good counting.”

At home we read a few more books.  Including 2 chapters of “All About Sam”.  T chose an eye spy book and another picture number counting book.  I gave T pictures to look for in the Eye Spy book, and we discussed the colors in the other book, counted objects, and talked about the letters in each of the color words. 

Again for a day that didn’t seem to be overly educational, we did a surprising amount.