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! :)

Seeking the Prince of Peace

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. " Isaiah 9:6

Couldn't decide what to post tonight... decided to share something pretty instead.

Around here we are trying to put a little Christmas into every day, to enjoy the journey instead of constantly preparing for and counting down to a big event. Jesus is the Prince of Peace... what a shame for that to get lost in a lot of unnecessary stress and hurry.

I know I am not alone in these thoughts. You hear it some every year, but slowing down and cutting back seems to be especially prevalent this year. I'm glad. I think Christmas is a perfect example of a time when less really is more.

Is your Christmas going to be "more" this year?

Eating carbs and decorating the yard.

Dale: Why did you take a picture of your breakfast?

Mama: Because it was fun.This is actually of my second breakfast. The first was a banana muffin left over from yesterday.

And then, there was a third. Greg came home with leftover donuts. "The best donuts ever."

So of course, I had to try them.

They were pretty good. I don't know about best ever, but we ate them all.


Today was a date I have had marked on my calendar for quite some time. (unrelated to the donuts)

It was the 21st annual Christmas parade benefiting our Children's hospital. And it was on tv!

This is the first year we have heard of it, and we definitely wanted to watch.

We all loved it!

It is amazing the fondness we feel for that place. It was great to see it getting the publicity it got today!

Then it was time to do a little of our own Christmas-ing. We've been meaning to get to the lights for several days, but weather hasn't cooperated. Weather and Alan's extra trip to get bloodwork, but that's neither here nor there, right?

Anyway... Greg is in charge of lights around here.

He likes these:

The boys and I were underfoot nearby, ready to help.

Dale was pretty excited.

He got almost as excited afterward about going to the bank with his Daddy.

I guess life is just exciting when you are 5.

Alan stayed home with me and had his lunch. I loved his crossed ankles:

How did you spend your first Saturday of December?

Thinking outside the box

Dale and I studied 3-d shapes recently.

Or Geometric Solids, as our poster says. :)

Whatever you want to call it, we were learning how a square you can hold is a cube, and a circle you can hold is a sphere ('sa-fear' by Dale's pronunciation).
I gathered a few examples from around the house, and as Dale got the idea, I sent him to find his own.

After he went in search of a cube, I kept hearing a ka-clunk, ka-clunk, bump, thunk making it's way slowly down the hall back towards me.

Want to guess what Dale came back with for his cube?

A whole table! (The blue one pictured below)

Made sense to me, how 'bout you?

Hard at work, hard at play

(I DO have a tree skirt. The train just came first. Priorities, ya know?)

Learning Christmas Songs

I decided a week or two ago that I am going to help Dale learn some Christmas carols this season.

I am sure this idea was partly influenced by our interest in the Charlotte Mason method of schooling; studying hymns was a regular part of Charlotte Mason's schools. It is suggested that a child learn several hymns throughout the year, including the story behind them when possible.

Christmas hymns seemed like as good a place as any to start.

This is our second week on Away in a Manger. I'm planning on teaching all 3 verses. Dale is solid on the first stanza and pretty much has the second under his belt also. If we can get to the third one this week and work on the melody some, he'll have Away in a Manger.

I figure that leaves us time for multiple verses of one more song or the first verse only of two more before Christmas. I'm thinking we'll start Silent Night next and go from there.

Of course, we're singing lots of the traditional Christmas hymns, but only working on memorizing one at a time.

One way we've done this is to type up the lyrics in a large font, print them, and cut them into phrases. Then Dale can arrange them in the correct order. Or we deal them out to each other and play the next phrase out of our hand. Or scramble them up for each other and let the other person put it back in order.
He loves these games! First we did each of the first 2 verses separately, and then today we mixed them together. It amazes me how much Dale loves playing with those. And it works!

You've got to be kidding me

I came across this news article the other day. It's about a group of parents and child psychiatrists (there's a clue right there) that are trying to persuade toy companies to stop advertising to children.

Because in these hard times their advertising is making kids want toys that parents can't afford and they don't want to (or won't) tell their kids 'no'.

Excuse me?

Are the toy companies going to feel sorry for parents and change their entire advertising scheme? Umm... no.

One toy industry consultant was quoted in the article saying that toy companies advertise to kids because it works.

Of course it does!

I have an idea: Turn off the tv. Or just tell your kids 'no'. *gasp!*

Yes, it's hard sometimes. But they'll be better for it.