We’re still slowly getting back into our school rhythm so we didn’t do a lot and haven’t added anything new recently.

This was Valentine’s Week, so DJ exchanged homemade cards with his three best friends. As I’m not feeling too creative, I used a Pinterest design of a dog made with heart shapes. DJ did make it his own though by adding googly eyes, his own scribbles on the ears and a lower-case “d” as his signature in the lower right. I almost forgot to take a picture but was able to snap this one as he was putting the last card in an envelope.

Continuing on with his “unschooling” pattern, DJ made up his own linear counting activity when he discovered the page numbers in this 700+ page catalog. I caught him thumbing through it saying “this one is 102, and this is 103, this one is 104” on and on. And you can tell it is winter time because you can see his trampoline taking up previous floor space in the dining room.

I helped him set up the hundred chain again with the labels 1-9, 10-90 & 100. Then he practiced skip counting by 10’s. I also showed him how to skip count backward from 100 down. At first he wasn’t interested but I said I’d take a video, which he loves. Then he surprised me in the video by skip counting all the way up and back down again. I really wish I could show the video but he wasn’t wearing any pants (just underwear) and stuck his butt up to the camera at one point as he tried to shift to the higher number labels. Lol. Maybe I’ll save that video for future girlfriends.

At some point that day DJ had been playing with a tape measure pretending to measure things. I got the idea to make an impromptu worksheet to both teach him how to measure and get him to practice writing numbers. I drew 9 lines on a paper in random order from 1 to 9 inches long. I showed DJ how to line up the start of the ruler with the left end of the line and then read the length at the other end. He LOVED this work. I’ll definitely have to do it again. He’s pretty good at writing most of his numbers but his 4 is backwards (you can see it in the top of the first photo) and he really struggles with 8.

It’s not really part of “school” but DJ gets the Highlights High Five magazine subscription from his great-grandma Phyllis. It often includes simple cut-out board games like this one. DJ is *really* good with scissors. And he loved the game so much he played it through 3 times.

And this is another thing he is loving a lot these days – Tae Kwon Do. He goes 2 times each week and his focus in class and attention to the instructors has improved immensely. I was truly impressed with this picture because the teacher had set up the floor for an exercise but class had not started yet. The kids were just too excited to wait and dove right in! DJ is on the left here, jumping over the red bags.

On the practical life front, DJ has been doing his own laundry lately. We switched from using liquid detergent to “pods” which are easy for him to drop in the washer without me worrying about him getting it on his hands, spilling it everywhere or measuring the wrong amount, although I still always stay right with him when he’s using cleaning supplies. He’s pretty funny though. I really should be helping him get the clothes out of the washer because it is a top-loader and he can’t reach without practically climbing into the bin himself, but he loves the challenge! In the photos above you can see him folding his underwear and towels.

And that’s all for this week!