School Time

As many of you may already know, Blake and I decided not to enroll Dalton in any formal preschool program again this year.  Instead, we opted to keep him home his last year before Kinder and I would just continue to work with him on a daily basis.  I do have to take a minute to brag and say he is doing wonderful.  He mastered all his letters and sounds almost a year ago, so this year we have been focusing more on reading and basic math skills.  Here are a few of the things he has mastered:

1.  Recognition of upper and lower case letters

2.  Sounds of all letters including long and short vowels

3.  Counting to 100 by one’s and ten’s

4. Number recognition from 0-10 without any help, 11-100 with little assistance

5.  Knows his phone number

6.  Knows his address

7.  Know days of the week/months of the  year/seasons

8.  Can read/interpret a calendar to figure out what today is, tomorrow will be, yesterday was, etc

9.  Understands weather concepts and can graph types of weather from day to day

10.  Understands basic graphing skills such as, which has the most, least, who has more, how many more, etc.

11.  Can read 50+ sight words such as the, big, can, what, see, run, to, pretty, little, play, etc.

12.  Can read simple “Sound it out readers” with little assistance and complete comprehension of the story being told

13.  Understands concept of addition and subtraction and can solve written problems of each using pictures or counters

14.  Can sort objects in multiple ways such as by shape, color, size, pattern ,texture, etc

15.  Can complete a pattern using objects

16.  Mastered using scissors (which was  big deal since he is such a perfectionist when it comes to cutting things out)

17.  Understands rhyming words

18.  Has very neat handwriting for a four year old boy

19.  Enjoys trying to sound out and spell almost any word

20.  Is beginning to understand sentence structure such as capitalization and punctuation

21.  Understands title, author and illustrator of books

22.  Enjoys having chapter books read aloud to him, one chapter per day and can retell the main ideas of the story from day to day

23.  Can recognize some coins and is starting to understand the different values assigned to each

He doesn’t really enjoy coloring, but painting is always a big hit.    We touched on shoe tying a little here and there, but his current shoes have straps and have put a hold on that skill.  I don’t think he minded that one being put on hold, something about too many bunny ears going through too many logs for little hands to keep up with.  He enjoys “Fun Day Fridays” during school time where he gets to pick the activities and games we play that day.  It usually involves  him beating me in Candy Land, Tic Tac Toe, Memory, Checkers or one of many other games he selects.    All in all, Dalton and I have enjoyed our hour and a half we spend together each day playing fun learning games while Addie naps.  I’ve been very impressed with how hard he works and how much he looks forward to school time each day.  I’m pretty sure I’ll have teaching withdraws when he goes to school next year.  I’m sure Addie and I will pick up and doing some sort of activities, but it’s been fun to see how much Dalton has learned over the past few years even before he started in a formal school setting.  Here are some pictures of Dalton finishing up his math activities one afternoon.  Addie woke up early from her nap and just had to help.

Bows

Addie is showing off her feminine side more and more every day.  The other day she brought her bucket of bows to Crystal and just had to have all of them in her hair. 

If you notice, she’s also playing in her shoes again.  She loves her shoes.

Spicy

Dalton has been on a kick lately that everything he eats is "spicy." The other night he was eating strawberries and was saying they were too spicy. I asked him if he wanted to learn what spicy was and he said "Sure!"

So...I got a tablespoon from the cabinet and filled it up with Tabasco sauce. He just grabbed it and shoved it in his mouth. It took about half a second for him to jump up from the table screaming that he was on fire! He did a couple of spins around the kitchen and then made a bee-line toward the fridge. I could have sworn he was about to shove his mouth under the water spout on the freezer door. Instead, he missed the fridge and ran straight into the wall. I got him a glass of water and it took him a minute or two but he finally calmed down. I have to say he took it like a little man and never shed a tear.

He's never said anything is spicy since then.

Update: I guess I should specify that Dalton was laughing and having fun during this.  He said I was silly.

Addie’s New Bed (sorta)

We recently took the front panel off of Addie’s crib to make her bed into a day bed.  She was very excited that she can get out of bed anytime she wants now. 

She’s done a pretty good job so far of staying in her bed at night.  During nap time however, we can hear over the monitor that she has gotten out of her bed, though she never comes out of her room.  Every time we sneek in, she’s in her closet playing with her favorite obsession: shoes.  Typical woman. 

Here is Addie after her first night in her “new” bed.  

The Rock

Back in February I had a day off so we decided to make a day trip to Enchanted Rock near Fredericksburg.   It has been a long time since we went hiking and thought the kids would enjoy a good view of the Texas Hill Country.  In case you’ve never been there, Enchanted Rock is a series of huge domes make entirely of solid pink granite.  It’s pretty cool.  It’s a good hike to the top.

 

After a hike like that, there is nothing better than cold Blue Bell Ice Cream in downtown Fredericksburg!

Let’s go fly a kite!

One of the weekends we were in Angelo over the holidays turned out to be perfect kite flying weather.  Macca had given Dalton a beautiful parrot kite for his 4th birthday and luckily we had remembered to bring it with us that weekend. 

Getting ready for the launch.

 

Watching it soar!

Rusty has a new home

 

Rusty has a new home tonight.  He has gone to live with a new owner who has another dog that Rusty can interact with. 

Through his almost two years of time with us, Rusty never could quite get over his past life and abuse.  He was scared every time someone entered the backyard and would cower behind the shed.  Numerous dog trainers said it was the first time they had seen this behavior.  He was never aggressive and sure wasn’t a bad dog, but we are hoping to get a puppy that the kids can interact with.  After we get the yard put back together we’ll see about getting a new dog. 

For now, we wish Rusty a good night and good life at his new home! 

Merry Christmas

This year was filled with lots of family, food and of course way too many new toys for the kids.  We had lots of fun, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.