Tuesday

Today was a snow day so we were in the house all day. We did some workbook pages this morning and practiced drawing curved and slanted lines. Alex needed encouragement, but once she realized she could do it she was very proud. She can say her ABC's just fine (although sometimes she goes straight from M to O), but letter recognition is something we are working on. We are also learning how letters can be uppercase or lowercase and what sound each letter makes. She loves doing this. Tonight we went through a Brainy Baby book and said each letter, the sound it makes, and a word that starts with that letter. We also did 3 other Brainy Baby books... numbers, animals, and shapes & colors. She counts great and I'm always impressed that she can start counting in the middle of a group of items, come full circle and come up with the right number. She doesn't go in what I would think would be the logical order, but she gets it right anyway. After counting the number of items on each page we looked at the number, said it, and traced it with our fingers. I'm hoping this will help with number recognition and later with writing them. The animals book was mainly for Emma, as she loves animals and making all the noises. The shapes and colors book was good for both the girls. Alex knows all her shapes quite well and is doing pretty good with colors. I'm so glad for that because she struggled for a long time. If she is tired or not focusing now she will still say 'purple', but when she is paying attention the only ones that she sometimes has trouble with are green & blue. I'm not sure yet if she just doesn't know the names as well or if she can't tell the difference. Emma knows the circle very well and sometimes will name other shapes, but we are working on that. Also, Emma's answer to, "What color is this?" is almost always, "yellow". We are working on that, too.
Our fun activity for the day was making cookies. The girls sat on the step stool in the kitchen and we learned about recipes, measuring & counting. I also let them taste and/or feel most of the ingredients as we went. That was good since Alex recently learned about her senses.
During bath time I broke out some new foam soap for them to play with. It is like shaving cream, only it smells like strawberries. The foam is supposed to be good sensory stimulation.