shred it: We're back!

Whew. Sorry for the absence. We've had a crazy couple of days. Three days ago Jon said, "Hey- I think we need to call the plumber to snake the drain." You see, every fall the drain in the basement backs up and floods our basement. When we moved in 7 years ago, the plumber said he's done this house every fall for the last 20 years and that it just needs to be done the same time each year. We've totally flooded the basement three times since we've lived here. This year we thought we'd get it done before the flood but Jon didn't call the darn plumber that night and sure enough the next day- flood! So we spent an evening at the laundromat washing all of the laundry I had sitting on the floor in the basement (hey- I never claimed that keeping up with laundry was a specialty of mine!!). Then we had to videotape a big audition for the boys which took an entire day because I got into a fight of epic proportions with file sharing program we use. Then Matthew attempted to ingest a half a tube of fluoride toothpaste while I THOUGHT he was sleeping- turns out he was quiet not because he was sleeping but because he had snuck himself in the bathroom, closed the door, climbed the toilet to the counter and was enjoying a nice little snack of yup- fluoride toothpaste! So I got to have a nice little chat with the lady at the poison control hot line. Nice lady. Then the computer crashed. Well, we thought it crashed but it was just confused. Then, last but not least, our world got turned upside down once again with a discussion about relocating our family. I'm still not standing totally rightside up after that one. Everything else is back in order. But that last one has left me feeling a bit tipsy still. Each time its harder for me to recover. Oh- and we did hear back from the casting director today about the video audition we sent in... the director will be booking tomorrow for a shoot in Mexico on Tuesday- so if that falls in place, things could get quite hairy around here again being that none of us have passports and Tuesday is only four days after Friday. Needless to say,we haven't done any preschool in the last two days!!!

But we're back!!! This morning I actually delayed our preschool time because the boys were engaging in the most wonderful imaginative play I have ever seen. They were pretending that the laundry basket was their bathtub and the entire basket full of socks (see above!) was the water. They got all the balls out of their ball bin to be their bubbles, and their dolls were mommy and daddy watching then in the tub. They talked back and forth sharing ideas- sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing- but always building on their fun! It was truly amazing. I just sat there with my coffee while petting Rigby and watched. For nearly an hour. The tub then turned into a zoo and we moved into their bedroom where there were more "animals". I refilled my coffee and silently thanked God for these amazingly creative, verbal, wonderful little boys.

Then we got started on school! We started learning the days of the week- because the boys ask each morning where Daddy is and what days he will be home from work. We sand and practiced a song about the days of the week- catchy little tune is still stuck my head. Then we took out days of the week cards and traced the letters while we talked about weekdays vs. weekend days. Then I let the boys dig into their tub of letters and match the letters to help with recognition of the days of the week.

Next we started on some sight words. Is. It. In. We used flash cards and our sight word sticks to match. Then we used the little sight word board I found on Pinterest where the boys had to pick a card, spell the word with magnet letters, then write it with a dry-erase marker. HUGE hit! The boys practiced each of the 3 words multiple times before they got bored. Then we read three little books that are part of this awesome box set called Sight Word Readers by Scholastic. Each book has two sight words and they are really simple reads- the boys LOVED them! So we did the books with is, it, and in. Three times each. Matthew was really getting the hang of it. Caleb was getting it too, but he was getting lost in the pictures (which isn't a bad thing- its how he helps himself "read" and figure out the story!). Then we reviewed our flash cards and sticks and both of them were able to remember and "read" all three words!

Lastly, for math we played a very fun numbers game. I made a "Domino's Parking Lot" worksheet and the boys had to take domino's and "park" them in the correct parking spot based on how many dots were on each piece. By this point we had been sitting for almost 45 minutes. Matthew parked 4 domino's and wandered off, but Caleb parked 11! He was quite upset that he couldn't finish- but I couldn't for the life of me find the domino that has 11 dots!!! Oh well!!!

Caleb tracing the letters in "Monday" with his finger.