Friends and Word Families

I like that the lessons for this week all focus on things we can do to be better friends.  This is a primary goal I have for my girls; yes, I want them to be smart, talented and accomplished but above all I want them to be good and kind.

On Monday we focused on including everyone and sharing.  These are difficult concepts, especially when you are 2.5 and it is essential to your wellbeing that you and only you are the sole possessor of every plastic Easter egg in the vicinity.  Heaven help the ear drums of anyone nearby if little sister stumbles in her direction and casts a glance at a forlorn half an egg that has been missing its mate for six months.  These are essential life lessons and could not have come too soon.

After introducing the topics, we got to practice while playing the games, doing the crafts and generally interacting with everyone all day.  I did a lot of verbalizing so the girls could tell when they were doing things that were keys to good friendship and when they were not.  For example, "Miss M, look how happy Littlest is because you shared your crayon" or "Miss M, look how sad Littlest is because you took the book she was looking at."  During lunch we watched the Daniel Tiger episode where they figure out how everyone can play together and then we read Anna Dewdney's "Llama Llama and the Bully Goat" before nap time.  I tried to point out behaviors in both instances that were keys to good friendship.

Today we got to practice in "real life" as we attended story time at our local library.  Both girls did great during the actual presentation but the last ten minutes of the program is devoted to free play with a variety of toys provided by the library.  I'm pretty sure Miss M took a little boy's ball while I was tending to Littlest but since I didn't actually see it and no one was complaining to me, I let that slide.  However, when I observed her knocking down another girl's block tower, that earned a time out and explanation of why that was not acceptable behavior.  Then I made her help the girl build the tower again before she could play with another toy.  Unfortunately the lure of the tower overpowered her and the second infraction saw us leaving.  I was quite impressed though, that she didn't have a fit about it.  I explained why we were leaving,  she apologized to the girl and left quietly.  It's not the most positive example but gives me hope that she can continue to learn from her mistakes as her ability to resist such temptation grows.

Aside from learning friendship skills, we also worked on learning some members of the -ad word family.  The folder game was great and both girls loved it.  Miss M got the hang of blending the sounds very quickly.  Later in the evening I made this little flip book (the onsets can be flipped up to form a new word with the rime) and she showed her daddy her new skill.  It's just a 4x6 index card, nothing fancy and super easy to reproduce at home.  She really enjoyed reading the words and asked to use it "all by myself" for several minutes before we headed up for bed and again this morning.  I'm going to make a few more for her for the -at and -it families and keep them in the car.  For now I am only going to do single consonant onsets and save blends and digraphs for a little later. I'm trying something new and I've attached a printable flip book for you to use with your littles.  Let me know if this works or not and if there's interest, I'll do more.


The friendship bracelet craft was another great fine motor exercise, especially for Littlest who worked very hard and very patiently for several minutes before getting frustrated.  She was actually able to get six beads on the pipe cleaner herself.  I love her determination.

Tomorrow is another school day and we will be talking about caring for others and saying sorry.