(Lack of) Cozy Book Corner

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I have been tyring to find some special "reading nook" in our house since my kids were born. You know, a secret little cozy corner with cute kid-sized chairs and a bakset of books. Somehow, it just never works out and my kids always end up here in this oversized chair that gets moved all over the house because it doesn't really fit anywhere. It is pretty cozy!

My favorite part of reading in our house is our "nonfiction" section. All (okay, almost all) of the books are labeled and the kids are always taking (and putting back) books off of these shelves. This system has saved so much of the "Well, I know we have a book about that somewhere.....", proceeded by tearing apart all the bookshelves to find that one book!

Draw IT!

This is a fun little reading game that both boys can play together!

I wrote several words on index cards, Dylan reads them silently and then draws the word. Nathan gets to guess what he is drawing. I am excited to try out all the variations of this game!

The Reading Tree

Dylan is excited about The Reading Tree we made last week so I thought I would share. It really has him motivated to read independently! I told him when he read 30 books and put 30 apples on the tree we could go visit "the RAT," also known as Chuck E Cheese. (I'm excited about the reading....not so thrilled about the rat.)

READING!!!!

We had an EXPLOSION of reading in our house this week! Dylan has been pretty good at reading CVC and spelling things phonetically since just before his 4th birthday; but we have had some bumps, namely his frustration that not all words follow the "rules." Also, I have been holding him back a bit with my Suzuki mentality, you know that "mastering of small steps" thing. I hid of his all of our ETC materials because he was having a hard time hearing blends and I wanted to master that before we moved on. He could read them just fine, but if you asked him to spell FLAT he would spell FAT. We have made more "blend" games than I can count.


HE GOT IT THIS WEEK!!!!

Not only did he get it, he gets all of the other rules that I have been pointing out to him along the way. It just clicked. The child can READ!!!
Of course, we still have a lot more things to learn, but it is nice to be off the plateau.
He has been reading everything he can get his hands on! Awesome.

Matching Mittens

The cold weather (and I mean well below zero) has inspired our reading games this week. D's current favorite is Matching Mittens. He has done it everyday that I had it out.

He even likes the version I made for N.

A Snowy Day Game

It has nothing to do with snow other than we decided not to go out because of snow, but I pulled out one of our old reading games today and DMan loved it. This was so easy to make, I am definitely going to have to take the time to make some more games like this.

In other news, DMan found a book he can read (mostly)by himself. Well, he could read the BOB books, but I think he was pretty insulted by them..or something.

A Routine, So Refreshing!

Don't get me wrong, I love the hustle and bustle of the holidays, but it is so nice to be back to the life we live the other 11 months of the year. So back to the norm for us. I set out activities and the boys do them at their leisure. Both boys were so excited when they saw all of the activities set up downstairs.

In keeping with out fish theme, we played a new fish reading game today. DMan chooses a fish with a word on it and then puts him in the fish bowl with the coresponding picture. I use this game with my violin students all of the time, except I use a bucket and fishing rod and let them actually fish, but that just doesn't work with a curious baby around. I think DMan will get a kick out of that. I'll have to give the fishing pole version a try when Logan is napping.

DMan was helping Nathan "read" the fish. Too cute. (He also demonstrated pooping on the potty to NatMan. I am really hoping that NatMan catches on to that lesson.)

Also I placed out the Unifix cubes, but only had one black, two burgundy, three orange, etc. I set out all of the cubes in a pile, not stacked. I was sort of curious to see what DMan would do with them. Turns out, he used them the same way he does the cuisenaire rods, first he stacked them and then placed them from zero to nine. He wanted the cubes to stand up, so he went and found some blocks to support his "steps". It is so nice that he works through problems on his own now instead of throwing himself on the ground out of frustration like he would have done a couple months ago. Okay, he still throws himself on the ground, but it has gotten much better.

Then he ran off with the cubes and used them as part of a tower.

And a road, with bridges and slides and traps....

I have debated starting some letter of the week program with NatMan, but I think I am going to hold off for now. Perhaps we'll start after his birthday. I think him not knowing his letters is an issue is best solved with time. So we'll see how things are going then. Right now he is just happy to do all of the activities with DMan.

Sentance Strips

Itty Bitty Love has some AWESOME idesa and I borrowed this from her. Basically, it is a take on those cool little "Build a Sentence" refrigerator magnets. Underneath is a control strip of colors, tan should go with tan, red with red....get the idea? Well, Dylan didn't. I should have known better than to try something so controlled with him. He did three the right way (as in my way) and then got frustrated that he couldn't find the words he wanted. I think I am going to try this again, but just write word on index cards so he can put them in any order he wants and we can add to them easily.

So in the end, we had to imagine that certain words were there. "The frog sat on the dog" is what we ended up with. I think he would like this if he could be a bit more creative. Live and learn.

I was really impressed that he knew all of the words, I was certain he would have some trouble with them, but he did great!