Wordless Wednesday

In which we play games

In which we go to the library

Wordless Wednesday

Summer of Shakespeare

Connor's Summer of Shakespeare has officially begun!

Today he was using the glass table to hold his book while he was reading for maximum summer reading and relaxing efficiency.

He read A Midsummer Night's Dream and colored some scenes from the play.

He also wrote a brief summary.

He's going to be doing this with many of Shakespeare's best plays.  We will make sure he gets to watch a couple, too.

Book of the Month

These are Lex's new favorite books.  Connor really enjoys them, too, and every time he hears someone reading them to Lex, he stops whatever he is doing and comes to read them, too.

And I'm really not surprised, as they are by one of our favorite authors, otherwise known as the guy who wrote the Captain Underpants books.  You know, Dav Pilkey.



This book may be too dumb to win any official awards, but here it is, our favorite book this month.  Along with the next two:

and

These bunnies may be dumb, but they are hilarious.  Some of the jokes are in the words of the story, but just as many are in the pictures.

And even though the bunnies are dumb, reading these books over and over again has made Lex a little bit smarter, and a better reader.  Most of all, he is loving reading right now because of these dumb bunnies.

Dumb Bunnies for the win, y'all!

Bedtime Stories with Lex

Just recently, Lex decided that he could read all by himself.

And honestly, it was this decision that he made that gave him the confidence to do it on his own.  He didn't learn any new tricks or techniques or anything.  A few weeks ago, he would always say, "You read it Mommy, I don't know the words."  And I would tell him that he could read before I would read it to him.  I guess after hearing that enough, he went and decided that he could do it.  Even though he doesn't know all the words.  Because what kid in grade school (or who is three years old) already knows all the words?  So, he made up his mind that he could do it, and now he can.

He is spending tons of time pouring over books.  Usually when he is being too quiet, I start to worry about what kind of mischief he is getting up to, but lately, I keep finding him sitting quietly with a book.

It's nice.  But I'm not used to it yet.

One of his favorite books is Leonardo, The Terrible Monster by Mo Willems.  We don't actually own a copy of it, but we had it checked out from the library in Ohio all the time, so it was as if we did.  We checked it out the very first time we went to the library in Texas.  I think he's glad to have it around again.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a video of Lex (and Connor!) reading his favorite book before bedtime.


You're welcome.

Dragonbreath

Connor really loved the Captain Underpants book series, and we finally read all of them.  So, I asked our local librarian to recommend a similar book series for a five year-old boy.  And so she recommended that we read the Dragonbreath series by Ursula Vernon.

Like the Captain Underpants books, the full-page novel-type text is broken up with some illustrations.  Like this:

The books are silly and funny and hilarious.  We laugh a lot.  One of my favorite running jokes in the book series is that Danny Dragonbreath uses the local bus system to go to all sorts of places, like Mythical Japan and Mexico.  But the bus system only works that way for him.  His best friend Wendell, who is sort of a nerd, cannot figure it out.

Connor can read these books by himself, but he still prefers to have them read to him.  Which I understand.  It is easier to laugh at the jokes when you aren't working so hard to figure out what that one word in the punchline is.

The books are full of adventure, and both Connor and Lex love them. Right now, we only have one left to read.  I have a feeling we might be re-reading these books, and the Captain Underpants series again soon.  You know, after we finish the one remaining Dragonbreath book on our list.

In which we went to the Georgia Aquarium

I took the boys to the Georgia Aquarium while we were in Atlanta.  We spent almost the whole day there, and saw the whole place.  It was amazing.  Fantastic.  We saw so many unbelievable things!  That place was worth the trip down to Atlanta all by itself.

Here are the boys outside of the aquarium with a dolphin statue painted with an Atlanta Falcons jersey, and signed by the players from the team. Connor loved this. There were a good dozen other dolphin statues painted with other themes, but they didn't pay any attention to the others.

One of the most amazing exhibits inside is the Ocean Voyager exhibit.  It is HUGE!  Huge enough for four whale sharks and four manta rays.  Just in case this doesn't impress you, whale sharks are the largest fish on the planet.  They can grow to be as big as three school buses!



This one isn't quite that big. It's only the size of a single school bus. Connor already knew that the whale shark was the biggest fish in the world, so he was very impressed when we saw these.



These manta rays are each about the size of an SUV. Their wing spans are about 15 feet wide.

Also in this tank are some grouper.  I had no idea how big grouper are.  These ones are apparently "small" grouper!





One of the best things about this particular visit to the aquarium was that Connor is reading everything these days.  He was reading all of the signs all by himself this time.  It was so fabulous to hear him read the names of the fish that we were looking at to his little brother.  I was so proud.

This video is from the Tropical Diver exhibit.  I never feel like I can catch the beautiful colors of tropical fish in photographs, but they show up pretty well in the video.

Longhorn Cowfish

Red Piranha

Albino Alligators 

I think my favorite thing we saw was the Comb Jelly. I have never seen anything like it before. I didn't even know that they existed. A photo would not have done this animal justice, so I took a video instead.

Besides all this, we also saw two different types of otters, beluga whales, African penguins and the Dolphin Tales show.

Oh, the Dolphin Tales show.  We sat in the fourth row, which is the first row behind the splash show.  It was magical.  Simply magical.  There was a charming prince in a light up cape who sang with this amazing voice, there were evil sea monsters that sank his boat, mermaids that swam with the dolphins, and a big fight to defeat the sea monsters.  People were diving and flipping and riding the dolphins, who were jumping and flipping; there were special effects and lights and water sprays everywhere.  It was incredible.  The boys loved it, as did I.

The moral of this story is:  go forth to the Georgia Aquarium and be wowed. 

Picture books of the week

Lex's favorite selections: 

1.  Hocus Pocus.  This book is mostly wordless, and Lex loves that he can read it all by himself.  The illustrations are charming, and the conflict between the bunny and the dog is classic.  I love this one, too, really.

2.  Peepsqueak!  This book is great because Peepsqueak never gives up on his dream of flying.

3.  Squish Rabbit.  Oh so loveable and squishable and cute.


Connor's favorite selections:

1.  Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?  This is the perfect back-to-school book for little kids.  Connor thinks it's hilarious, and I agree that it is really silly.

2.  The Man in the Moon.  This book is the perfect fairy tale for little boys.  It has none of those pesky princesses, and it is both dark and mysterious and fanciful.  It's a great before-bed read.


More selections from Connor:

...but these ones are without pictures.  Connor likes to read picture books still, of course, but he has also discovered that chapter books are great, even without pictures.  We have read two of these books, and we are reading third one right now.  There is a fourth book in the set, and Connor just asked me to order it for him.  These books are based on Lego Ninjago characters, and they are each about 8 chapters and 80 pages long.  While he would probably be happy if I read them to him in just one before-bed stint, I've been breaking them up into two or three nights each.

Oh, and Cruiser has apparently learned the fine art of the photo bomb.

Happy 5th Birthday, Connor!

Today is Connor's 5th Birthday!

I haven't done a milestone post for him in ages...probably since last June 27th.

Height:  44 inches
Weight:  40 lbs 5 oz

He's so so so into Legos right now.  And reading.  He's starting to read on his own really well.  He can do all sorts of early reader books.  And we are working on his handwriting.  It's getting good enough so that I'm not the only one that can decipher it any more.  And when he picks a book for me to read to him, it's a longer chapter book with hardly any pictures.

Harry Potter.  He's into Harry Potter.  The first three movies are rated PG, so I agreed to let him watch them.  He's only seen the first two, though, because he liked the second one so much that he asked to watch that one again.

He still loves board games.  Monopoly is one of his favorites.  He has three versions.  Ohio State Buckopoly.  Dino-opoly (from the Chicago Field Museum).  The Disney version Monopoly.

This past weekend, we stopped at a yard sale on a whim, and he found a different version of Risk than the one he had at home.  He wanted it, so he helped me scrounge up $3 out of the diaper bag to buy it.  He was totally floored that the map on the board was different than the one he already had.

We are planning a Lego Heroica themed birthday for him.  Since that isn't a theme that you can find in a party supply store, we have basically had to come up with everything ourselves.  But it wasn't hard.  Connor actually had it all planed out in his head when he told me about it.

Happy Birthday, Connor!

Listening to Connor read a Comic Book to Himself

"A long, long, long, long time ago, when Jesus rode on a horse, before there were people, there were Legos. And they liked to play games. And the first game they played was Waldurk. And there was a blue guy, and a brown guy and a goblin. And the goblin got the cup. And he flipped over the goblin and got the golden cup. And now he is understandable with that wookie. He was so understandable. But then the wookie tried to attack him, and the blue guy shot an arrow and it hit him!"

Picture Books of the Week

This week's assortment of books is brought to you by Connor and Lex's love of all things fire truck.

Fire Fighter Piggywiggy by Diane Fox. One of many Piggywiggy books, but definitely our favorite, because in this one, Piggywiggy pretends to be a fire fighter!

Rescue Bunnies by Doreen Cronin. This book is funny. Even for adults. It has one liners from adult movies sprinkled throughout the dialog. Connor doesn't understand why I think certain parts are funny, but that's okay by me.



Alphabet Rescue by Audrey Wood, better known around here as "Letters on a Fire Truck." Kevin and I used this book to help Connor with letter recognition when we first got it. He knows all of his letters now, and I think that he likes this book so much because he learned so much from it. Plus, it has that all important fire truck thing working for it.

When we read this book, we often end up getting out at least one of our toy fire trucks, and then we load it up with all of our magnetic letters that stick to the refrigerator. It's a good time.

Picture Book of the Week

This is Connor's current favorite book. I came downstairs the other day, and he was sitting on the couch, reading it aloud to himself. I was surprised, and pleased!

I Put on My Helmet

I got an early reader book for Connor from the library called The Astronaut. He can read the whole thing by himself. He's been reading it to Lex.

One page is about the astronaut putting on his helmet.

Connor reads, "I put on my helmet."

Then, Lex puts on his helmet.

All ready for my space mission!

Isn't story time great?

This message is brought to you by the letter "B"

Connor is very interested in words and letters right now. His favorite things are the little refrigerator magnets shaped like letters...along with my laptop. I opened up a blank word document for him and showed him how to use the caps lock button and the enter key. Now he is typing up words left and right. For fun, he started copying all the words out of one of Lex's board books onto the screen. I found a few that were misspelled, like cnick and cneep, because apparently h and n look much the same to him.

No, the following pictures don't really have much to do with this topic. But I liked them. It's nice to see the world through a child's eyes. How much fun there is to be had with balloons and balls!

"B" is for Ball!

Don't worry John, I won't drop you when we float away!

Kevin's Bright Idea

My husband is very smart.

He decided that we should have Connor play the part of Santa on Christmas morning, and to help him pass out the gifts, he made larger name tags for them, all based on how Connor refers to people. I'm not sure what names Connor can recognize/read as of now, but I'll bet that he knows all of our names after Christmas!

Connor Can Read!

Connor really liked this book when we had it out from the library ages ago, so I was pleased when Kevin and Connor found a second, similar book during our last trip to the library.


Connor likes Dunk Skunk so much that we read it *all* the time. He even recited portions of it to me while we were eating lunch at McDonald's the other day. So, I was wondering whether he was reciting it or reading it when he was reading the book to himself the other day. But, then I noticed that he was pointing to the words when he was reading them. Then, he started reading the words out of order, and he was still pointing to the right ones. That's when I knew he was actually reading the words.

This happened two days ago.

Then, yesterday, he read the word cheese on a box mix for cheesecake. There was no picture of cheese anywhere on the box, so I know he read the word.

I'm so excited! We made a point never to test his reading skills when we were doing the word flashcards, because the program we were using said just to take it on faith that he was learning, because of course he was. Now that he is older and can demonstrate his skills at will, I'm so glad that we followed the program when he was little. I'm going to have him "help" me do the flashcards with Lex, probably starting in January when we tackle all sorts of things. I'll have to make a few new ones, though, since we will be starting Lex at a younger age than we did with Connor.

And, since we are talking about Connor and his current favorite books, here is another one that we got from the library and are reading a few times a day.

Update on Project "Teach Connor to Read"

I figured it was time to update everyone on our new little project.

Unfortunately, I don't have much to update.

Playing the word games is supposed to *only* be a positive experience for Connor, so we are supposed to put it on hold anytime it isn't or wouldn't be. For instance, when Connor is feeling under the weather and cranky.

So, we have only showed him his word cards a few times in the past few days, since he has only looked like he was up for it a few times in the past few days.

My little guy got his first diaper rash yesterday. I almost cried when he was in so much pain when I was cleaning his bottom yesterday. He kept crying, "mama mama," and I knew he was actually trying to say, "why are you doing this to me, it hurts." But his little bottom needed to be cleaned off. :( I really hope his tummy gets back to normal so that his little tush has time to recover.

I don't know how this blog entry about reading ended up being about heartbreaking diaper rash...but there you have it.

More on "How to Teach Your Baby to Read"

Summary: The Basics of Good Teaching

1. Begin as young as possible.
2. Be joyous at all times.
3. Respect your child.
4. Teach only when you and your child are happy.
5. Stop before your child wants to stop.
6. Show materials quickly.
7. Introduce new materials often.
8. Do your program consistently.
9. Prepare your materials carefully and stay ahead.
10. Remember the Fail-Safe Law.

The Fail Safe Law: If you aren't having a wonderful time and your child isn't having a wonderful time - stop.

The Cardinal Sin: To bore your tiny child.

Program Overview:

First Step: Single Words
Second Step: Couplets
Third Step: Phrases
Fourth Step: Sentences
Fifth Step: Books

Daily Program:

Daily Content: 5 sets
One Session: 1 Set (5 words) shown once
Frequency: 3x daily each set
Time Between Sessions: At least 15 minutes
Intensity: 3 inch red words
Duration: 5 seconds per set
New Words: 5 daily (1 in each set)
Retired Words: 5 daily (1 from each set)
Life Span of Each Word: 3x daily for 5 days = 15x
Principle: Always stop before your child wants to stop.