A Fun Exercise and A Fun Book

Aaron is slowly starting to want to be more and more a part of school.  I will admit this has probably been the hardest thing about homeschooling, trying to figure out how to incorporate all the kids, especially when it comes to Aaron and Alyssa.  It's a bit easier with Alyssa, we just try to do school when she is sleeping.  But Aaron pretty much has the same sleep schedule as Seth now so it's a bit harder.  Sometimes he is happy just playing with his toys while we do school, but sometimes he wants to be included.

This morning was one of those mornings.  But thankfully I had a new idea :-)  We were at my parents' house this weekend and were able to pick up the Christmas presents that we left down there at Christmas time.  One of those gifts that we left were giant Toy Story coloring books for both of the boys.  I saw those sitting in the kitchen this morning and thought of a cool idea (at least I thought it was cool)

I thought we could have a lesson on following instructions.  I set out the books for the boys and opened them to a picture of Rex the T. Rex (Aaron's favorite character of the movie).  I told them they were going to color the page by following my directions.  I would say such things as "Ok color the crayons at the top of the page blue".  This helped both boys work on their following instruction skills (which Seth is actually having a problem with right now so this was a good exercise for him).  It also helped Aaron work on identifying his colors, which I figured out through this exercise that we have finally accomplished this task!  :-)  The boys seemed to enjoy this simple activity and I am planning on using it again in the future.   I need to think of ways to do it on their different levels so that it can be a bit more challenging for Seth.

 Alyssa happened to wake up a bit earlier today so she joined in on the coloring.  Thankfully she was happy to just color on a notebook I gave her.

I also want to share something else today.  We read one of our literary selections for our MFW curriculum today.  It is a book that we have read before but love it every time we read it!  It is "Animals Should Definately Not Wear Clothing" by Judi Barrett.

We spent time discussing why it would be silly for each of the animals in the book to wear clothing.  We then, according to MFW instructions, discussed other animals that were not in the book and why it would not be a good idea for them to wear clothing.  Well, one of the boys favorite shows right now is Wild Kratts on PBS so they had LOTS of animals they thought of, remembering episodes from that show.  We could have written a whole other book about why animals should not wear clothing!  I was amazed at the number of animals that the boys came up with and the creativity in Seth as to why it would be silly for them to wear clothing.

A couple of my favorites were the dog.  Seth said that a dog should not wear clothing because he would make the clothes stink as bad as he does after running around outside (referring to our dog of course).  Another one I liked was the octopus.  Seth said that the octopus had 8 arms and that shirts only have a place for two so he would have to wear more than one shirt and it would look silly!"

I know I have said this before but I have really enjoyed how this curriculum works to foster and develop creativity in your child!  I am beginning to believe that Seth is going to be a story writer.  I can't wait to start reading stories that he writes!!

Oh - and I don't think I have put an update on our handwriting situation.  We did in fact order additional handwriting curriculum "Handwriting Without Tears".  I have seen quite an improvement in Seth's handwriting after starting this curriculum.  He seems to enjoy it too.  It is not as much of a chore anymore getting him to practice his letters!  So I give this curriculum big kudos!!!