We did almost no school this week. I spent most of the week sick and uninterested in being a responsible homeschool teacher. So this is going to be a shorter post than usual.

We did enjoy our annual trip to the fire station with our homeschool group. This is the third year that DJ has attended and he loved it as usual. He did not want to leave when it was over. This particular fire station is an educational center so it is geared entirely to young children.

My plan to write 4 letters per day for 10 days fell apart after Tuesday when DJ had lost interest in the prescribed work and I was too sick to encourage him. But the 7 days that he did complete were really great. I especially like the letter g he wrote. He is definitely gaining confidence in his ability to write and is finally connecting the motion of tracing sandpaper letters to the movement needed to the write that letter with chalk. But he still really dislikes sandpaper letters. They seemed like such an amazing tool when I first learned of them but my target audience did not agree.

DJ also hasn’t shown much interest in the movable alphabet but he does often play little sound games with himself, either thinking of a word and identifying the starting sound or thinking of a starting sound and naming a bunch of words. I really think I need to work with him more on ending and middle sounds. Although he gets it when we’ve done that work he always only focuses on beginning sound when he works alone which may be what is stalling him from moving on to the movable alphabet.

DJ did not do much independent work this week but I did catch him working with the cards & counters at one point. If you can make it out, he has laid each cut-out wooden number on top of its corresponding number card. Then he started to lay the counters next to each number but he lost steam after #5. He did however remember that 3 is odd and 4 is even. I know this because he talks to himself while he works.

Other independent work that he did this week was introducing the large number cards to his dad. I was asleep so I only heard about it after but apparently he read every number 1-9, 10-90, 100-900, 1000-9000 to his dad.

Finally DJ joined children across the country in celebrating the annual candy-grab holiday known as Halloween. DJ absolutely loves everything about this holiday from the pumpkins to the costumes to the trick or treating and the eating of candy. Oh so much candy.

Happy Halloween, everyone and welcome to the Holiday Season.