Back in the swing of things

After much pleading on Abby's part, the School of Mommy is back in session. She was relieved to finally see the word "school" reappear on her bulletin board as the day's activity on Tuesday and Thursday this week.

It was letter h week, so we practiced writing the letter h (a straight line down, and then a rainbow, as she says), talked about ways to honor our parents, and made some cute little horses (an idea I stole from Curious George Learns the Alphabet). Later, we made some incomplete words very happy by adding the h they were missing at the beginning. (Simply asking her to practice the letter h on a worksheet isn't enough. Abby needs a reason, and it needs to be more compelling than "Because I said so." So when I told her the words were sad because they were missing their first letters, she was more than willing to fill in the missing h for them.)

My top priority for preschool this week was to review the sight words we've been away from for so long. Abby had been making terrific progress in recognizing simple words from our flashcards and in many of her books before the break, so I spent as much time as she could tolerate reviewing the words and trying to see which ones she still knew. To my delight, she correctly identified 15 of the 20 words she has worked on this year, and quickly picked up on the two new ones we added this week. She loathes anything that hints of me trying to assess her knowledge, so it took some ingenuity to get her to try to read some simple sentences using the words she knows. I learned marshmallows and bribery are the perfect blend of motivation for my headstrong three-year-old, and she was delighted to pop a marshmallow into her mouth every time she was able to figure out all the words and read a sentence on her own from the worksheet I made for her.

We added more pages to Abby's Bible notebook, and spent some time reviewing her memory verses and talking about the stories that were represented by the different crafts and worksheets in it. Caleb's obviously been soaking in knowledge for a while, and now that he's able to communicate he's starting to spit some of it back for me. I was impressed to find that he's familiar with the memory verses their classes have been working on in Community Bible Study this year, as well as a lot of the hymns and Christmas carols we've been singing over and over again. His favorite verse to recite right now is "Do not worry about tomorrow" (Matthew 6:34) which he sings anytime he hears us making plans for the next day.

We introduced the first question of the children's catechism this week with a story from the book Big Truths for Little Kids (Susan Hunt & Richie Hunt) and a song from Who What Why How Where When (Eric Gilbert) that sets the catechism questions and answers to music. When I told the kids I wanted to teach them a song and turned the music on, Abby stopped in her tracks and asked, "Is it music time?" (It still amazes me how she treats our preschool days like she's actually at preschool, instead of just hanging out at home with mom.) The book is our first experience with a chapter book, and Abby seems to enjoy it. We read it before naptime each day, and she's really following along well with the story that's unfolding for the main characters. The CD has been a huge hit with both kids, and is currently our driving-around-town soundtrack. Both Caleb and Abby can now enthusiastically answer "God did!" when asked "Who made you?" They also love to make a game of the question, asking it back to Justin and I, and quizzing each other (loudly) as they sit in the buggy at the grocery store.

We also did more of the same. We colored pictures for daddy's office, we played with play dough and their shape game, we counted animal crackers and trucks and we read more than our fair share of books. We took a break to hang up our awesome letter craft, and I realized that the School of Mommy is going to need a bigger craft wall one of these days.
Christmas break was nice, but it feels good to be back in the swing of things.