Learning is fun: Letter O

I'm not sure when her love affair with the olive began, but I am certain it was her dad's fault. Today, she eats olives like a pro, carefully sucking the pimentos out of the pitted ones or chewing around the pits of the giant Kalamatas. She loves all kinds, from the Spanish olives in a jar to the black olives on a pizza. So our letter O craft was kind of a no-brainer.

I introduced her to water colors this week, and can't believe it's taken me this long to do so. She loved every part of painting her big green O and her tiny red pimento. (When I asked her later what we made, she said "big O, and piment-O." I quizzed her later, and it seems most other letters in the alphabet still come in uppercase and lowercase forms. But O's are officially either big, or "piment.") I'm continuing to stress the importance of holding eating and crafting utensils properly, and Abby seemed pleased with how much more control she had over her paintbrush when she held it the right way. Although slopping paint on with a big toddler fist was fun, too.

Water color painting was so much fun, in fact, that my little artist refused to acknowledge that craft time was over. She watched patiently as I cleaned up our mess and then helped me put our supplies away. I left to go get her brother up from his nap, and when I returned, I found she had retrieved her paintbrush from where I had left it to dry on the counter and was using it to "teach this duck how to paint a letter O."