Cutting in

Preschool Lite is moving right along for our little Abby. Beginning reading skills? Check. Following directions? Check? Coloring in the lines? Check. And this week, much to her delight, we added cutting with real scissors to our list of Skills That Are Necessary When Your Coat Closet Doubles as a Craft Closet.

Abby and Caleb worked on a little sharing collage that I found online that went with our letter M verse for the week from 1 John 3:18 ("My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.") After reading the story that went with the verse from My ABC Bible Verses, we did a lot of talking about the difference in saying and doing, about motives and having a right heart to back up our actions. Sharing, for instance, is all well and good, unless you're throwing toys at your brother because you're mad that mommy told you not to be selfish. For the craft, they cut out pictures of toys and then "shared" them with each other as they glued them to their collage. Our sharing eventually turned into more of a bartering activity, and I'll admit I was surprised when they each ended up with the same number of pictures on their respective collages. (Although Abby did end up with more dolls, and Caleb ended up with more trucks.)

Abby did great at her first attempt with big kid scissors. (I kind of hate those safety scissors we all had to use in preschool. Real blades cut so much better.) Ever the perfectionist, she seemed a little frustrated that she wasn't able to cut exactly on the lines like she wanted to. But with some encouragement from mom on the sidelines, she kept at it and eventually managed to cut out all of her little pictures. It's a two-handed process for now, with the right hand doing the gripping and the cutting, and her left hand swooping in to assist with reopening the scissors after each cut.

I pulled our trusty old letter magnet game out of storage for Caleb in an effort to manifest some sort of interest in learning letters. Caleb didn't really care for it, except to repeatedly press the button that makes it sing the ABC song. And Abby kept taking the letters from him to spell things. So we did some quick reorganization of the chain of command, and I made Abby the teacher and Caleb the student. Her job, I told Abby, was to teach Caleb his letters, show him how to put them in the magnet to make it sing each sound, and quiz him on what sounds the letters made. His job, I told Caleb, was to find a letter and ask Abby what it was and what sound it made. This worked for about four minutes, during which time Abby taught him all the letters in her name. She was about to get started on teaching him the letters in his own name when a squirrel ran across the deck distracted him. Ah, two year olds.
Abby has been finding more and more words that she recognizes in her books, and her interest in learning more words really started to pique this week. She had more patience for taking her time in trying to recall a word, she sat for longer periods of time than usual and worked with me on her word flash cards, and even sounded out a word all by herself (map) that we'd never looked at before. We invented a few new games to use in reviewing her words, including building a word train that she can add words to after she correctly reads them.
It's been a while since we pulled the paintbrushes out, so for our letter craft this week we painted "cheese" onto a macaroni and cheese letter m after gluing on the last of the macaroni from the pantry. I think the lower case letter m might be Abby's favorite letter yet, and she had lots of fun when we practiced writing it: "Mommy! The m makes two rainbows!"
We did a lot of coloring this week, and Caleb totally surprised me by actually attempting to color inside the lines. I gave him a big blank letter M to color, and told him that he could have his truck coloring book if he colored his M first. He grumbled for a second, then when he realized I was serious, he sat down with a blue crayon and scribbled some messy little lines up, down, up and down again inside the picture. Then, for good measure, he turned the paper over and did the same thing on the back of the page. I was so shocked by how well he did (for a two-year-old, that is) that I forgot my end of the bargain until he reminded me. "I have my truck book now?" he asked, bringing me his M as if he were handing in his homework.

We continued our work on the children's catechism, and both kids are still just as enthusiastic as ever when they answer questions one and two. They're particularly cute when they ask them back and forth to each other:

Abby: Who made you, Caleb?

Caleb: God did...what else God make?

Abby: God made all things!