Malia’s Latest Excuse for Reading in Her Bed Even When She Isn’t Supposed To

“I don’t have enough energy to sleep!”

Following in His Mother’s Footsteps

Matthew likes school. He hates homework, but he likes school. Over the last month his class has been reading "Charlotte’s Web" with all the fun activities to go with it. Several weeks ago he was home sick and was just crushed because they had finished the book and he was going to miss the movie. Luckily for us, our local library had a copy on hand and he was able to watch it anyway. And just so you know, although there is a newer live-action version, they still watch the old cartoon that everyone in my generation saw as well. He watched it twice that morning and a couple more times before we returned it.

The last couple of days, he has been playing school. He sets up his white board, gets a stool for the “teacher chair,” lays out his blankie for the reading rug and lines up his stuffed animals on the stool in place of their desks. Then he proceeds to present a lesson on “Charlotte’s Web.”

He even has a pointer.

I’m not sure that he is destined to teach school, but loving his own school experience is one of those things that can morph into a desire to become a teacher. I’m not sure how I feel about that as my own teaching experiences were so stressful…

I Think This Might Be One of My New Favorite Pictures

The Building Blocks of Literacy

Matthew is in his second year of preschool which means that not only is he learning his letters, but he is beginning to learn the sounds the letters make.  So when he pulled out his magnet board and the alphabet magnets this morning,  I decided to take the opportunity to reinforce his literacy skills.  So I made a chunk (at) and we started placing different letters in front of the chunk to make words.  Since he is just learning sounds and doesn't know all that many yet, I would help him.  "What does 'c' say?  It says 'kuh' like cat."  And so on. 

After awhile we worked our way around to 'm'.  Matthew knows 'm' well.  He can identify it every time and he knows what sound it makes because his name starts with 'm'.  So when I asked him what 'm' says, he responded with the following:  "M says mmmmmmm, like 'Yum! Pie!'"