The Boy was proud of his penguin.

The Boy painting the penguin printout.

Since this week’s theme is penguins today’s art project was Penguin in a Snowstorm aka hand-
toddler-a-sponge-brush-
and-paper-plate-with-
never-ending-supply-of-
your-best-blue-and-
white-acrylic-paint-and-
watch-him-joyfully-go-at-
a-print-out-of-a-penguin-
then-give-him-some-
“snowballs”-aka-cotton-
balls-to-glue-on project. Other than accidentally getting paint on his hand and then trying to wipe it off with a sponge brush covered in more paint (to which he yelled, “MAMA! PAINT E-RY-WHERE! WASHCOFF!”, nearly ending his painting career forever), he loved it.

If you’re at all familiar with Starfall the title of this post should be familiar. Especially if your kid is anything like mine and likes to see Starfall fifty.times.a.day. And then, even when he’s not watching it, he’s walking around going, “BUH! I EH GO GETCHU BEE! BUH!”

The Boy posting a bird on his learning poster.

This week’s theme according to Letter of the Week was supposed to be the jungle. I couldn’t bring myself, in this weather, to talk about the warmth that is the jungle. So, we changed things up a bit and went with penguins and the color blue. The Boy loves this because penguins means we get to watch Happy Feet! And Happy Feet just happens to be the most potent form of toddler crack that this house has to offer. Only being rivaled byFinding Nemo, Elmo, and (collective parental shiver here) Barney.

That big, purple dinosaur that is responsible for such horrifyingly catchy (and stupid) tunes as, “Hey Mr. Knickerbocker boppity bop, I like-a the way that you boppity bop” (Did I just get that stuck in your head? Good, because misery loves needs requires company and there is nothing more miserable than a mom with a kid who loves Barney, but I digress). That big, purple kill-me-sort-of-annoying dinosaur is a regular in our house this week. Why? Because I made the mistake of letting Ben choose a DVD beginning with B. Before I got the flash of “OMG, HE MIGHT CHOOSE THAT BARNEY DVD RIGHT THERE! HIDE IT!”, he had already grabbed it and was running down the Children’s Library hallway hollering, “BARNEYYYYYYYYYYY!”

Learning poster – B Version.

See that ice? The ball? And bear? And bird? And bicycle…ish…thing? I made those and the rest. I can’t tell you how cool it is when my kid can look at those construction paper monstrosities and actually know what they’re supposed to represent. He does, however, continue calling the bicycle a motorcycle, which I blame entirely on his father for putting it in his head with a, “THAT’s a bicycle?! It looks like a motorcycle…sort of…thing.” Thank you, Mr. Helpful.

Just as last week, he’s flying through this full speed. B says Buh. 2 is…well…2. He’s got square down, penguin in Spanish, ice is cold and ball, bear, bird and bicycle (-ish thing) begins with B. The only thing he doesn’t quite have yet is color. It’s such an abstract thing that I can’t think of anything other than, “this is blue, that is blue, this is red” to help teach him what it is. The mere fact that he knows that blue is a color is awesome but I can’t say that I don’t worry a little. He picks everything else up so quickly, I wonder why not this.

With his vocabulary, it’s often hard to remember that he’s only a year and a half. He acts so much older and speaks so much older, it’s easy to forget that he’s still got quite a long time to learn these things and, sincerely, it’s not that big of a worry. He will pick it up, one way or the other.

For the past month or so, The Boy and I have been working with the Letter of the Week online curriculum and molding it to our needs. He’s been able to recognize all the letters of the alphabet since about 15 months, shapes and numbers since about 13 months. He has such a fascination with them that I decided we may as well jump on in. I figured, if he enjoyed it and learned something from it, awesome. If not, at least we have all the stuff ready for when he is. I didn’t want to pressure him and, to be honest, I was a little reticent at the idea of beginning any of this so early. I didn’t want it to feel like school. Luckily, in the first week all my worries flew out the window.

Monday of the first week, I put up the learning poster and he nearly (or probably did) wet his diaper with excitement when we put up the cow picture and the A’s. We mixed letter of the week with the toddler suggestions and ended up with emphasis on the letter with a side-emphasis of the theme (in this case cows). We couldn’t find many of the books she suggested at our library because they were checked out or they just didn’t have them, so we improvised a little. We also got one book in Spanish (a counting book) because, as much as I should, I don’t find myself naturally speaking Spanish to him in daily conversation. I thought it may help to remind me to speak in Spanish more often and, at minimum, expose him to the language regularly. In addition to the Spanish book every week, we’ve opted to add a Spanish DVD (our library is awesome), and we introduce the week’s theme and vocab word in Spanish as well as English.

The first week was awesome. He learned that a calf was a baby cow, that cow is vaca in Spanish, and ternero is calf. He can spout off 5 words that begin with A and can tell you the short sound A makes. He has memorized “Click Clack Moo”, and the “County Fair” story from the alligator book. He also made it very clear that “Two Cool Cows” is the lamest book ever – I think he’s just too young for it but, to be honest, I didn’t like it much either. Most importantly, though, he loved having the poster up in our living room. He’d go to it daily and holler “A. Ahhhhhhh! SQUARE! COW! VACA COW! CALF! BABY COW! ONEEEEEEEEEE! ONE SQUARE! A! ALLIGATOR BEGIN A! AAAAND APPLE! AAAAAND ASTRONAUT! AAAAAND ANT!” He’d walk around with the flash cards and tell everyone and everything he came across that flash card he was holding? It said ASTRONAUT! Not to mention how excited he got when he made the square cow and got to glue it himself.

He’s excited and I’m excited that he’s excited. It’s helped keep him a little busier which has helped keep me a little saner, too. I have a feeling we’ll be revisiting all this again next year, but he’s enjoying getting a taste of it now and it’s getting me into good habits.

Week one:
Theme: Cow/Vaca
Vocab: Calf
Letter: Aa
Number: 1
Shape: Square

Books:
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin – He loved it, knows it by heart.
Two Cool Cows by Toby Speed – Really, really not a fan but I think it may have been too old for him.
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman – The end has an apple pie recipe that I thought was cool. He liked that the story sounded like one great big recipe. He loves recipes.
Meet Mr. and Mrs. Green by Keith Baker – This is a book with 3 stories. “County Fair” was Ben’s favorite and probably the most fun. 100 Pancakes is probably not the greatest story if you’re anti-causing-your-husband-a-heart-attack.
Uno, Dos, Tres: One, Two, Three by Pat Mora – Great, great illustrations. He thought it was fun.
The Alphabet Room – We have read this nearly every night for 3 weeks so far and I see no end in sight.

Projects:
Coloring pages for A, a, and cow
Made a snowstorm by tearing up a sheet of white paper then gluing it (with a glue stick he controlled) on a blue sheet of paper

Square Cow

Cow Puzzle (I didn’t print it out, I cut out the pieces willy-nilly from construction paper, then covered the pieces in contact paper.)

Weather Wheel Done
Originally uploaded by jessiscubed

This is a great project for a cold day. If you eat frozen pizza, you should have all the necessary objects on hand to create this weather wheel. It gives Ben and I a reason to stare at the sky for a few minutes every day. It may not be nearly the most professional, but my kid is a fan anyway!

Weather Wheel Tutorial