It seems as if my family has not had a regular week since Christmas break began. We have had snow, snow, snow for about 2 months now. Delays and of course school closings have been in abundance.
Wouldn't you know it, on top of missing so much school due to the weather, Roo was ill and he missed several of the days he could have attended in January.
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| The scene in our backyard |
We received blizzard bags from school as we have exceeded our calamity days. Roo blew through them in a few days.
To make a long story short, I was growing concerned that he was going to start losing skills he has acquired, so we took a more intentional approach to learning at home.
One day we took a plastic cup and added some water to it after breakfast. We placed it on the deck and went about our business. Later I asked Roo to check on it. He was quite pleased to see a cup of solid ice awaiting him.
We then sat the cup on the counter in the kitchen. It was 3 pm. We timed it to see how long it would take to melt. When I went to bed that night at 11, only a touch of ice remained. The next morning, my son was thrilled to see it was all melted back into water. He then proceeded to insist on having a bath... he carefully carried the cup of melted ice water to the tub. He climbed in and poured it over his head and laughed... Boys, I tell ya, they are funny creatures!
We practiced writing daily. We worked on shapes daily too. Write your name, write abc, make a cross, make a square, etc. He is pretty good at shapes. His handwriting is messy, but if you let him write really small his letters are great, if you can read them.
We read a lot of books! We discovered the fun of Pete the Cat and the Don't Let Pigeon... titles. We spent minutes (he is only 4 after all...) pouring over look and find books at different times in the days of never ending winter...We delighted in old favorites such as The Little Pumpkin Book, all of his Dinosaur Train books and Several from the Little Critter series.
We went to a pet store and looked at different animals. We talked about how birds come from eggs and what they eat. We oohed over guinea pigs, and pleaded with Daddy to get a bunny.
We observed footprints in the snow from a cat and a bird, then we checked out our own tracks and tried to write our names with footprints. Roo marveled at the cat prints. He thought they were "really cute".
It is funny, but initially I worried that winter would have negative effects on my son and his education, but I found the opposite was true. I found that the things he was not doing at school, he could actually do with just a little one on one attention. I will even admit, for about 9 minutes I indulged the homeschool fantasy. Then both kids were crying, the dog was barking and I said a silent prayer for good weather and I gave thanks for his preschool teacher.
