Miscellaneous Monday

I am loving the new aspects of having three children older than the baby: I made breakfast at leisure while the children cared for the baby in the adjoining den: Mary said she made Joseph as "palace" and was reading to him.

Older sister gives a "flower hat" to the baby boy

At four months old, Joseph graduated to the bouncy seat!

Before formally homeschooling, I used to read and read and read to John and Mary. However, I have noticed since John began Kindergarten that my reading of literature dropped off because I was using all my focus-on-the-children time to do Official Schooling. In order to remedy this problem, I began picking a selection of books on Sunday when I do my school planning, placing them in a basket, and reading one or two of them to the children each day. This has been working well.

Mary often copies words within her field of vision, so she will hand me pictures like this one, which is of a castle labelled:
"GRACO Pack Play."

As I was teaching school on Monday, I glanced over at Margaret, who had obtained paper and the bag of crayons all by herself. She had settled herself in a desk and was diligently working on something--I thought drawing a picture--for at least 15 minutes. The concentration on her face! I thought to myself, 'Ah, little Margaret is increasing her attention span! She's turning a corner! Think of what preschool activities she'll be able to do next school year!' Of course, I saw the reality when I approached the desk and saw she hadn't been drawing but assiduously shredding all the paper off the crayons. At least she was working on fine motor skills, right?

Speaking of Margaret (26 months), she has recently written a little ditty that she sings throughout the house, which I think epitomizes her age:

"I want my own,
I want my own,
not Mary's . . ."


Bonus Reading: "Four Things We Should Never Say"