Merry CHristmas Eve……

Today should be pretty laid back….hubby is driving to Blaine to pick up his brother to spend the holidays with us.  

I received the nicest gift today!   I slept in!  I didn’t wake up until aftr 10:00.  WOW….Tommy has slept through the night for the past two nights….trust me that is a real gift!

Hubby is so amazed by Tommy….last night he came upstairs and said, “that boy is scary smart!”    He might give us a run for our money, but I am glad he is so smart.   Last night he really amazed us at the table.  We were eating supper and he had both a spoon and a fork and he was eating with them on top of each other.   He said “look Mom it’s a Spork”.   HOw in the world would he learn that word?   I thought maybe Josh taught him….but I think he came up with it on his own because he was using the two together….another scary smart moment!    He is amazing…….

As some of you know I am a developmental social worker.   I work with about 60 children and see alot of school programs and attend more IEP’s that you  could imagine.   I was observing in a early childhood classroom and this teacher had the most fabulous idea.   It is going to be one of my projects on my vacation.   I have always done additional homeschooling type activities with my children in the summer and evenings.   We have a bin and Tommy will go grab it and say “let’s play school!”  One of his favorite things to do.   I will admit I could never homeschool and I praise all you that do.  You are amazing.  But I do my part to be active in teaching my children, especially in the early years.  It is so very important, we have story time, puzzle time and try to work on using a pencil, but Tommy doesn’t like that much.   Anyways…on to the great idea!!   

This year I am goign to work on introducing Tommy to the lettters of the alphabet.  He can sort of say his alphabet, but only ids a few letters.   I am going to make Letter Buckets.   I am going to use clear gladware containers and put the Letter of the Week on the lid.   Then I will collect little toys from around the house that start with that letter and put in the bucket.   Tommy really loves games so once we have finished a bucket we will use two buckets and dump the contents on the table and sort them which bucket the object goes in based on the lettr sound.   Each bucket will only have 3 to 4 things in them.  While on vacation and decluttering the toy boxes I a will collect some toys to make the buckets.  Should be fun. 

My favorite Store is LakeShore Learning…they have these beads I want to get.  Great learning store, but expensive.  We have one very near our house.   Lakeshore learning has the buckets I explained above, but WAY out of my price range.  But take a look at them…they are way cool.  These are the ones the teacher had…but she had a higher budget than me. 

I am getting way more projects on my list than I will get to on vacation….but I will have fun tryin!