Photos and Phonics

Had a little surprise get-together for my Dad Sunday evening in honor of his birthday. The four of us were waiting at my parents' house with fast food cheeseburgers and a birthday cake when they got home from church.

Of course, Gramps saw our car in the driveway, but I still wanted to catch the look on his face when he discovered the cake (with lit candles!) waiting for him: Oops. That's my photography skills for ya.


He was nice enough to pose. And Mimi said "surprise" just for effect:

We go all out for a party. ;)


Skip ahead to today...
Thanks to a link my mom sent me, I decided to have Dale spell some words with beans. Except instead of beans we used those toddler "puffs" because we have lahhhhts of them.

Dale's were for spelling, Alan's were for counting.

More accurately, Alan's were for "playing along" with school.

Okay, so Alan's were more for eating than anything.

Dale did pretty well. I tried this method because while Dale is an excellent reader, he isn't really big into writing.

And I'm ok with that, for now. He's 5! But I don't want to wait on phonics and spelling until his writing skills (and mostly his patience for writing) catches up with his ability.

So we are working on ways to spell and practice phonics other than just writing. I'm sure we'll do this one again.

Here is one of our words for today.... "and". Ok, so it says "anb". About every 4th time he encounters one, he will switch a lower case d or b. Again... I'm not worried.

After "and" we did this:

And I had Dale choose a letter to put in front of it to make a word. By this time, he had help:

In spite of his help he managed to choose and create 'h' for "hat" -

After this we moved on to a Christmas craft project we've been gathering supplies for for a while now. (how could i have said that to avoid the double 'for'?)
Anyway.... finally got all our supplies bought and together, and found out super glue was NOT what we needed. We'll have to try again when I have my hot glue gun. Yes, there will be a post on this little project when it is completed. :)

Dale was disappointed, but recovered well after some time outside. There was a short window of sunshine today between the rain leaving and the cold arriving!

Sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch. That is when I got the following video to show you.
First, be assured, I do not usually feed Alan. He's been feeding himself for a long while. But come on.... tomato soup? I didn't mind helping him out.

Anyway, please do notice the slurping. Who taught him that!?

And yes, Dale said, "what if we got all our food from ebay?"
(he also seemed to be doing his fair share of slurping. Where Alan learned it perhaps...? hmmm)

It's never dull around here. Yesterday Dale asked me: "Who do we know that is older than dirt? How old is dirt?"

How do you answer a question like that!? Thankfully, he didn't really seem to want an answer to that one. I think sometimes he just asks to hear himself talk. Like "what if we got all our food from ebay?"

Don't think for a minute he wasn't aware of that camera pointed at his little brother! :)