Homeschooling Leftovers

Being the Easter Bunny

Today (Friday) was Leftovers Day. It's leftovers on the meal plan and leftovers in our school week. Gilgamesh warmed over the previous day's bear discussions and made a meal out of it: brought me a picture of a bear going into his cave, surrounded by snow. He explained that it was winter and the bear was going inside to sleep. Who needs testing when he volunteers to show me how much he's retained of yesterday's lesson?

We read The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss together. I realized today that he has the first several pages pretty much memorized. But I also watched him sound out a few tough words. He noted every comma (pause) and period (full stop) on the page. He looked for apostrophes, but we didn't find any in that book. There are a lot of "it is" and "cannot" long forms in there. He also practiced writing earlier in the day, including asking me how to spell computer. He's doing this more and more, asking how words are spelled. It's amazing how much he retains, too.

He chose to watch Leapfrog's Math Adventure to the Moon, which is great for introducing patterns, shapes, and counting, all of which he has already mastered. But it does have counting to 100 by tens, and that was good practice. Later, on a family drive, he counted the red cars we passed. Always learning and practicing!

He went camping in his tent and helped me a lot with his little brother, Alastor. While Alastor was down for a nap, Gilgamesh put on a Berenstain Bears movie about Spring, the Easter bunny, and baseball season. He asked me to help him make bunny ears. I did so on the condition that he clean up his building blocks which were all over the floor (he'd been making a baseball field out of them). Once he had his ears in place, he asked for a carrot. Cutest Easter Bunny I've ever seen (see picture above).

The thing I love about the movie he was watching is that it teaches so many concepts, like the seasons, what would happen if they stopped, and how animals often have babies in the Spring (Brother gets a new little Sister in the film). I took the moment to talk about being a good big brother, and I told him I was proud of how he took care of Alastor. Sometimes he tries to take too much care of him, like when it wasn't lunch time and Gilgamesh got out two bowls and the leftover spaghetti for them to share. He even got a small fork for Alastor, which I thought was very thoughtful. We put it all away anyway. :)

The making-change board game I ordered from amazon, Buy it Right, arrived today! We'll play it as a family tomorrow. Gilgamesh wanted to play it immediately, but Daddy came home from work early and wanted to take us out to dinner (so much for leftovers [not that I'm complaining!]). So we ended up at Chili's, where Gilgamesh circled the things he wanted (one from each colored box on the kid's menu) and then tried to share his pizza with everyone.

Alastor loved it when we did a repeat of Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, the action song that had us jumping and touching our toes, pretending to climb stairs, etc. He's been copying his older brother a lot lately, including trying to write with crayons. He'll even say letter names while he scribbles just like Gilgamesh does when he's sounding out a word to write. Of course, Alastor's are limited to, "T, A, T, B, A, T." But it's still adorable. He's started stringing words together, like "Bye, bye, Daddy," and "No, it's mine," or "There it is!" Alastor also likes pretending to read. While Daddy read Wocket in my Pocket to Gilgamesh, Alastor sat on a nearby chair and read Goodnight Moon to himself.

We spent some time in a sporting goods store stocking up for an upcoming camp trip. The fire starting striker set we bought made for a great pre-bedtime sparks show on the concrete outside (it was pitch dark which made it even cooler). We talked about fire safety and the proper place for a fire.

So tomorrow we'll go to the park to play baseball and also play Buy it Right. Looking forward to a chill day with the family. I hope you have a great weekend, too!


Any plans?