Play dough, Van Gogh, and Reading Rainbow

4/30/08

We started off the day with the usual Starfall. They absolutely love Starfall.com. It’s the best website I have found that shows kids the letters (both upper and lower case) along with the sound the letter makes. Before they were two, they would pester me each morning to go to the beginning level screen that would go through the letters. Well, we usually don’t go to that screen now since they both know all letters and sounds for a while now (Alexa since 18 months and Jared for the past two months.) Now they love to go to the books. Each page of the book will be on the screen with a simple sentence. When you click on each word, a voice will read the word, sounding out the word first. Anyway, they watch/read these books every morning for about twenty minutes.

The morning filled up quickly with play dough creations. We bought them a Playdough pack for their birthday. They really love to play with play dough, although at this point I think they love stabbing at it with a knife, tearing it apart and combing two different colors, or hiding it in little pieces all over the house. The pack came with pre formed cutters, which I would rather they not use. The rolling pin was fine, but I want them to form their own creations. Using a mold doesn’t take much creativity and thought. Susan Striker in her book, Young at Art, really does a good job of explaining the thought behind not usually the moldings. While they played, I put on the CD titled Classical Emotions Ecstasy. It’s a great compilation of arrangements by Handel, Schubert, Mozart, and Strauss among others.

Before their nap, we always have a reading time. Many times it lasts 20-30 minutes. They really have an amazing ability to concentrate on books for a long time. Some favorites today were: Fox in Socks, Monet and Van Gogh books, Go, Dog, Go!

After their nap, they watched an episode from Reading Rainbow on how milk and cheese is made. During their snack, we looked at the Numbers and Colors book from Your Baby Can Learn series. It’s a flip up book where on the front flap you with find the numeral (say 1) and then the word of the picture that is underneath (say a hot air balloon). When you flip up the flap, you see one hot air balloon and the word one. They fight each other on who will be first to touch the pictures on each page.