Materials

We went geocaching as a family on Saturday. The cache Erik looked up for us to find was great for us. It took us to a beautiful park and playground about 15 minutes away. We went several meters down a gravel path and arrived at the GPS location of the cache. I was able to find it in one of the wooden blocks supporting the edge of the path. Xander found a bird's feather.

I showed Nick a huge acorn cap that had been flattened, and he said, "Hmm," and put it in his mouth. No, Nick. That's not what I meant to happen.

Then we played on the playground for about a half hour. It had a few nice playground set-ups plus a house with an actual stairway and windows plus swings plus a picnic table plus a ball field. Next to this area was the pool, which has been closed for the season. Next to that is a set-up meant to model a homestead, complete with a pioneer wagon. Very cool.

Today we got up, ate, got dressed, did a chore or two, played a computer game (Xander), and went to preschool. At preschool, Nick:

• "signed" in
• went straight for the shell tables - a light table and a preschool table with four colored trays that each had their own supply of shells, magnifying glass, and popcorn fork
• played with different colors of Moon Sand
• painted a painting that he later told Xander was an apple - I doubt it, because Nick just happened to be eating an apple as he said that, but it was made with lots of red paint and then some yellow :)
• played a magnet sorting activity
• introduced himself to someone's grandma to whom he took a liking
• played with shells a ton more
• played with Moon Sand some more
• looked at The Very Hungry Caterpillar instead of participating for part of group time
• participated in part of group time, but was also resistant for half of it, and was acting and looking so.very.sleepy

It was just so cool to be in this place with all these quality materials and games.  The teacher/coordinator came by and asked what our goals were for Nick (to give him practice at a structured group environment and to give him one-on-one attention). She assured us we would meet those goals. Other people that I overheard had goals like having their child know and say their full name or to speak more clearly the "y" sound or something having to do with writing, etc. I would love for Nick to learn how to make the "s" sound instead of this nasal-"h"-plus-lispy-"s" sound that he has made since babyhood, and I would love for him to grip a pencil or paint brush the right way, and I would love for him to participate fully in group time...but I don't think those are really my goals for this situation. I know he will learn new things at preschool and that's great with me. Do I sound like the mother of a second child or what? My attitude was a little different when it was just Xander.

Here's our journal page from today:

 Our homework for next week is to have Nick talk about his time at preschool today and to have him draw about it in his journal. I already had him tell his favorite thing to Xander, but I'll try again tomorrow or the next day so we can use terms like "yesterday." Right now he uses "tomorrow" and "this afternoon" and "right now" pretty much interchangeably.

Xander decided to listen to six sections of The Story of the World today. He colored, cut out, and pasted relevant pictures to put on our timeline. He began the part about ancient Egypt, and by coincidence, this month's online Lego class was about Egyptian pyramids, so he watched that as well.

I decided he can finally play with his knights from Hobby Lobby this week after his surgery. We are having a Grace Week instead of school because of his surgery and recovery. I'll be showing Xander where on his wall timeline the knights would fall so at least he has an idea of how far in the "future" it is compared to his studies.

The kids have been playing Duplos together. I was interested to see what kind of creations Nick made. He hasn't played with the Duplos in a while, and in the meantime, he has become more sophisticated at imagining play scenarios.

I've been spending the day preparing for the surgery tomorrow, and calling the insurance company again.

Ha ha! Just found a great acorn cap craft on Pinterest. I showed Xander and asked if he thought we had any acorn caps in our yard. He said, "Come on, Nick!" and ran right outside to look and see.