Today we started out with our routine (prayer, weather, calendar). Since we started a new Bible story this week after having wrapped up the days of creation last week, I decided to read from Oliver's storybook Bible for this week's story. We sat and read about Adam and Eve eating of the tree that God told them not too.
{Also on a side note, yes Oliver DOES have a shiner. How? you may ask, well not by any kind of rough housing during play, but more lack of grace on his part. He was up in his room supposedly sleeping at night, but not really, and was messing around on his bed, playing with his stuffed animal friends. He somehow managed to trip into the side of his bed. The next morning I asked him what happened, and this is the result, his first shiner. Poor guy.)
Following along with the story we worked on paint dotting the fruit that Adam and Eve ate. Oliver really likes taking the caps off and on :) He does really well with it now too!
We then moved onto the number 2 and the letter Aa. I let Oliver create the number 2 using felt pom poms to form the number. He did well with that. I then let him practice writing Aa with a dry erase marker, as well as writing more practice sheets with circles and lines. I love using these with Oliver even if they seem tedious. I'm realizing repetition is great for him, even if it feels boring to me at times (and sometimes him too). It takes multiple times to start getting technique correct, in which he'll one day start writing on his own.
It was about this time that his brother woke up from naptime, and we had to head out for some groceries. So after shopping, lunch, and naptime we came back for a new Aa activity together. I was ambitious during the boys nap after lunch and made a felt board for Oliver. I will try to post about it soon so I can share how easy it was to make. Using felt pieces to form letters is a great tactile way to teach letters not only visually (what they look like) but how they are built. I say this like I know what I'm talking about. Ha! I did not go to college for teaching, so I don't know how the brain learns to read, but I do know seeing letters and being very hands on in several ways helps him learn it. He does GREAT at puzzles and I thought he'd enjoy figuring out this puzzle. It was frustrating for him immediately as he didn't understand/remember how the parts to big A went. I pulled out a print out of what Aa looks like for him to look at while he used the felt board and that helped him a lot. We'll keep practicing this one and I'll add letters as we add them each week in our ABCJLM curriculum.
