Saturday, April 9, 2011

Y and Z Week

This week Charlie and Lily learned about the letters Y and Z. I can't believe we're through the entire alphabet! I'm not sure what I'll do next. Colors? Numbers? Go through the alphabet again? Any other suggestions are more than welcome! But anyway, this week was Y and Z. We read Good Night Gorilla, and as you can see from the previous post, our song for the week was Zippedy Doo Da (and, as you can see, I spell it different every time I write it and am too lazy too look up the correct spelling). Crackers bought Charlie and Lily the Fisher Price Little People zoo for Easter, but gave it to the them early so they could enjoy it during Z week. They love all the animal sounds that the zoo makes, and there are lots of cool animals like a giraffe and zebra for them to play with. For art we made zebra striped Zs. Hmmm...Y kind of got the shaft this week. I still may make yogurt pops though, so that will make up for it.
We were lucky to have a few nice days this week (weather in NJ is so unpredictable this time of year - 38 degrees one day, 65 the next). Whenever it's nice enough we get outside (or as Charlie says, "owwssiiii!") and play at the playground or in the yard. After a long day of tackling the slide and swings, Charlie and Lily enjoy relaxing with Daddy and an episode of Bubble Guppies.
On Friday mornings I clean the downstairs. It's not my favorite thing to do, but luckily I have two helpers who really lighten my work load.
Look at Lily! She finally has enough hair for a little ponytail! (And ignore the scratch on her nose. She fell into the wall before nap the other day. She loses all coordination when she's tired.)
And I just like this picture! Charlie is very cooperative with my self-portraits.

5 comments:

Lauren said...

Don't lie. We all know how much you love cleaning. ;)

Tracey's Life said...

Too cute.....I would do numbers next and do 1 through 10 and then go back to the alphabet. They are going to need to go through the alphabet several times before they truly learn their letters anyway. I think the counting comes easier to them anyway. Looks like you are doing a fantastic job - are you sure you were never a Preschool Teacher??

The only downside to teaching them all of this at such an early age is the struggle that you will have when they enter school reading. The teachers don't know what to do with them and then you really have to advocate for them. My Robert read Harry Potter in Kindergarten and they were blown away. He ended up being on his own for reading through much of Elementary School because the lessons were so beneath him. But I wouldn't let that stop you and I am not sorry that my kids were reading so advanced at such a young age. They still love to read and reading has and still is part of their pre-sleep routine. You will raise very intelligent children with all that you are teaching them - Good Job Mom!!

Alison said...

Good job to your alphabet graduates, Charlie and Lily! At first I thought I'd recommend teaching shapes, because then you could also increase their vocabulary by teaching them objects by shape (kite/diamond, pizza slice/triangle, etc.) But then I thought it would be cute to do monthly themes. You could spend a month on weather, and focus on a different type each week. The next month could be community helpers, with one week on police officers and so forth. The possibilities are endless! I'm sure whatever you choose will be wonderful!!

Brooke said...

Thank you for the suggestions, Alison and Tracey! I'd like to keep alternating weeks between a running lesson, like letters or numbers, with theme weeks. I think I may work with numbers next, but this week I'm going to use Alison's weather suggestion! I hadn't thought of that one before :) And since the weather here is so unpredictable right now it's quite possible that we may see sun, snow and rain all this week!

Anonymous said...

XOXOOOXOXOXXOXOXO :)