Day 2!

Whew!  Made it through day 2.  Morning circle still going well.  I really think I had been overdoing it before with my elaborate morning circle.  By the time we were done we were both so burned out that it was heard to transition into the next activity.  Max still won't sing the songs, but I've heard him humming a bit in the background.  I think maybe I will get some shaker eggs or something so he can participate more.

The white board schedule is working well.  Now that he is able to read most of the words it is easy for us to refer to and keeps us on task.

So then came puzzles and mazes for the math.  Heh.  I think I need a better strategy for puzzles.  It has been a long time since we've done puzzles together, and when I brought out his puzzle bin I was
greeted with"oh no, not puzzles again!".  Not a great start.  He wanted to play with the pieces,
combine multiple puzzles together and make his own pictures with them.  Normally I encourage this sort of outside the box thinking, but I really wanted him to put it together the right way.  By the end of it we were both miserable.  He ended up talking me into making and cutting out a custom Mickey  mouse puzzle, which was great until we discovered it really was too thin and wouldn't go back together after it had been cut out.

Anyway, I finally just put a pin in the whole puzzles idea and moved onto mazes.  Which turned out to be great fun.  We got a kick out of making our own mazes, with max at the beginning being chased by a monster, having to get home to mommy.  The mazes are very simplistic, I've seen him do more complicated ones, but I really wanted him to practice staying on the path... To add a little extra thrill, we used his wiggle pen, which vibrates like crazy in his hand and makes it more interesting for him.  I also drew extra monsters outside the borders that he had to avoid.

After lunch we played dress up, which was lots of fun.  Max has been reading shel Silverstein poems, and his favorite is called Backward Bill, in which a guy does everything backwards, including putting on his clothes.  So ewe had great fun finding absurd ways to put clothes on.

Next for the afternoon was health.  Which was looking at baby pictures and talking about what human beings need at different life stages and how they grow.  Getting max to look at pictures and videos of himself is never a problem.  So a blissful hour was spent sitting on the couch and watching videos.  It was a nice stroll down memory lane and max had lots of questions about himself growing up.   What was coolest to note was the interest he took in how our house has changed over the last five years.  New furniture, changes made in his playroom etc.

Last for the day was playing with clay.  Heh.  The photo I took was only a few minutes in.  I really should have taken an after photo, it was the biggest mess I have ever seen him make (which translates into that he had a fantastic time).  But it seriously took me 1/2 hour to scrub the clay up off the ma the was using.  I know flour based clay is best for kids and the environment.. But seriously folks, I found out today why they also use it for glue!