05/1/09 Can I get a (another) woot-woot for starfall.com!

Ryan loves to play on the computer now. So, any time we are NEAR the computer, he comes running from wherever he's playing yelling "star-dot-com!!! star-dot-com!!!". So, I let him play for a few minutes a day. Well, before we started doing starfall.com, Ryan knew all his capital letters. This isn't really something we have focused on, he just seemed to pick them up here and there. I did point out a few in the beginning and when he grasped the concept, he started asking about others and just sort of ran with it. I figured we wouldn't even bother with the lowercase letters until later - I didn't want to focus so much on letters right now. In fact, I toyed with teaching him the lowercase letters by sound instead of "this is an 'a'" type thing. Anyway...

Well, Eric and I were watching him last week while he was on starfall.com and he was playing a matching game (he gets on there and navigates wherever he would like to go). He knew every single lowercase letter they were showing him and could match it to the uppercase letter. Without even pausing between them. Wow. Go starfall! Actually, we have no idea how many or which ones he knows - so it could be a select few or all of them. I just know I was amazed at how fast he was doing them and without any teaching from me/us.

So, part of me felt guilty for "holding him back" and not teaching him myself - later, I started wondering if I was 'relying' on the computer to teach him. But, I had to stop with that line of thinking b/c it doesn't matter where/how he learns as long as he's doing it while having fun and doing what he wants.

He def keeps me on my toes...

4-5-09 Nail Board and Alphabet poster

(posted 8/20/09) My dear friend gave us a couple of 'tools' that she had left over from her teaching days and we promptly put them to use. These are just a ton of fun and so many things you can do with the ABC poster. I'd love to hear other ideas you would use this poster for - please comment!



Rubber band shapes on the nail board - great for fine motor development and shape/color recognition. He's grasping the concept you can use shapes to create other things - like a house, or two squares can make a rectangle or two triangles can make a square, etc. This board comes out about once every two weeks. Then, I spend the next couple of days chasing rogue rubber bands...

03-22-09 The Green G

The Letter G - for GREEN GRASS. This one was a lot of fun and Ryan did enjoy playing with the grass in a non-conventional way. I can't take credit for this idea, but I can't find where I first saw it - I will edit this post with that link once I track it down...

Here it is (the link):
The Green Grass G

Color:

Glue:

Play like crazy man with grass:


Sit back and admire:

03-19-09 More St Patrick's day activities

We decided to finish Ryan's shamrocks with some stickers and make our letters to mail to Nana and Grandmom. He loves going to the mail box and putting his mail in. Right now, he assumes our mail lady takes the letters directly to the grandparents and thinks that she knows them personally. So sweet.



When we went to the library on St Patrick's day, we barely missed a craft time (I didn't know about it). But, the librarian was so nice - she saw Ryan and gave us some of the leftover crafts to do at home! So, we made the big, big shamrock (glue time, cutting time) and some drawing on a black card that has colors underneath.





A little letter recognition...



We also did a lot of coloring today. He is all about the coloring lately. We took it outside for a little while, but other things drew his attention (like running with his big, red truck across this the lawn). We spent quite a bit of time outside.