look who is skipping.

Road Block - Best Reading Game Ever

For all of you who have kids learning their letters or are getting ready to read, this is a great game I play with my kids.

GAME: ROAD BLOCK

All you do is get a big piece of paper and draw a curly path on it. Then draw lines (like if you were drawing a game board) Put a start and finish and pick a toy car to "race" I usually pick about 5 letters and draw one in each space and repeat them as many times as there are spaces. Have your little driver "start his engines" and say go. As he drives over each space he says the letter out loud. If he gets it right he can move on to the next space, if he gets it wrong the road block comes down right in front of the car stopping him on that letter. I used to have a car barrier thing I used but now I just use my hand with a loud crashing breaking noise. We talk about the letter, say a couple rhymes about the letter, jump up and down saying the letter, shape our bodies in the shape of the letter and them let him try again. When he gets it right he can continue on to the next space. When they finish, if they get all the letters right, they get to chose a prize from the prize box (cheap toys and candy). If they don't get them all right then they can try again until they do. Usually the prize box is enough motivation to start over and sometimes we just try again the next day.

After they have master all upper case and lower case letters you move to sounds. When they know all the sounds, start spelling short words by putting only one letter in each space so as they drive over the letter saying the sounds they are actually blending the sounds together to make the word. Then obviously you can make it harder the better they get. N now does a short sentence or joke writing a word in each space with the spelling or sight words from school.

For some reason the fluidity of driving the car carries over into blending the sounds. Even when N reads sentences, it comes out as a much more fluid sentence than when he reads a book one word at a time.

The possibilites are endless. If you have girls it could be a my little pony race, or barbie in her barbie car (except that would require much bigger paper).

Have fun!

Happy Easter

We made resurrection rolls for breakfast this morning and the kids loved it. They openend their rolls fully expecting to find the marshmallow still inside. This was followed by much oooing and aahhing at the empty roll. We had a good talk about the resurrection to which N had just one question.

"How did the marshmallow get to heaven so fast?"

He made it!

T had his well check finally because he is actually well. He only had one shot, his ear is healing well and (drum roll please). . . . his weight is in the 2% ! He made it, he is actually on the chart, with out eating meat (he is not a fan).

Congrats Mr. T

Its Official

So I am not much of a cry-er. I didn't cry through child birth and I didn't cry sending N to Kindergarten, but this one I am having a hard time with. Nathan lost his first tooth on Friday. Its the last piece of baby he has left in him. After this its all over. I remember being so excited to see that little tooth pop out when he was 4 months old, and now the tooth fairy has taken it away. Well not exactly, we think he swallowed it, because we couldn't find it anywhere. Luckily the tooth fairy was gracious enough to except a note of explanation.

Sigh, my little boy is growing up. Here I go tearing up again. . .

DOES ANY ONE KNOW WHAT THE TOOTH FAIRIES GOING RATE IS?

Masterpiece Theatre

So I have gotten to the point where I consider Masterpiece theatre to be one of the shows that I watch. I check PBS every Sunday night to see what they are playing and see if its worth staying up until 11pm for. Right now they are running through Charles Dickens books and we love them. (not so much David Copperfield, more so Little Dorrit and I hope they do A Tale of Two Cities since that is my favorite book) . . .(yes we, C watches them with me and in my opinion like them just as much). Some of them are not good, but when they are it either sparks a good conversation, or good laugh (quirky British actors, bad teeth, what ever lame freebie PBS is pushing with for you to donate money)

My only fear with this hobby is what other hobbies will it lead to. Am I going to end up enjoying people watching at Costco like my grandma?

Hole in the Rock

I love this hike. It fits our family well. It doesnt take long, so nobody gets tired, it not very steep so even if T did want to walk he could do it holding my hand, and there is enough variety on the trail to keep it interesting.

Here is the dead cactus

skeleton that is always

the kick off that my kids

enjoy bc who knew cacti
had skeletons.

Here is little cave #1 that

obviously has bears or bats in it.

When they are done they think

they are on the top of the world.