E is for Exhaustion

August 6, 2010

So today was an exploration of E.  Another difficult letter.  We talked about vowels and consonants, and when CJ asked what they were and what they did I was a little unsure what to tell him at first.  So I finally explained it as vowels are like the heart of words, they make the other letters work together.  Consonants are the arms and legs.  They are important but they need the heart to make them work.  CJ seemed to understand it.  I spent the day explaining all the sounds of the letter E.  Not easy!

So CJ loves writing in the carpet and today he wrote his name, which of course only consists of two letters.  Later in the day he tried writing his name on paper, and he just has so much difficulty holding the crayon properly.  Next week that will be our goal.  For Eliza, next week's goal is to follow directions.  I used the worksheets I made to see if they can match numbers to pictures and capital to lower case letters.  They both knew the answers, but Eliza just used the paper as a coloring page, no matter how many times I asked, encouraged or cajoled her to follow the directions.  CJ drew the lines but they were so light they were hard to see because he can't hold the the crayon tightly enough. 

So more on working the routine today.  Find letter on quilt, draw in the carpet, make letter poster, come up with words, and eat E foods.  For breakfast we had french toast, with eggs in the batter.  We had no E foods for lunch, because I didn't want to have eggs for every meal, and had trouble coming up with other E foods.  For dinner we made eggplant ratatouille, and fried eggs on top.  The kiddos really loved it.  I am looking forward to F day, since there are a lot of F foods we love!

We played some Excellent outside games, working in the garden, playing in the sandbox, and on the slide.  They we listened to some music and danced on the kitchen floor, which CJ and Eliza call the dancing floor.  They love Follow Me by Uncle Kracker, and now they both know how to make the ipod player play the song again, so we listened to the same song for an hour and a half!  They danced and had a wonderful time.  They were so tired by the end of the evening.

I was also exhausted by the end of the evening.  But I really needed a little time to unwind and review the week, so we sat outside on the porch with a beer and some music.  We talked about goals for next week and what we both think we need to work on.  It was quite enjoyable.  I was so exhausted today with the kids that I spent a lot less time today actively working on the letter E.  We still sang songs, and stuck to the new routine, I just didn't push it the way I have the rest of the week.  Next week my goal is to be more organized and active about the lessons.  I figure one slightly lazy day is ok, but I can't make it a habit. 

The kids loved finding E words, especially since there are so many sounds the letter E makes.  They had a tough time at first, but they loved using their elephant plates and eating, and using the word excellent all day.  They ended up making up tons of rhyming gibberish words that start with /e/ too.  It was hilarious.  One sentence was something like, "Everybody eats eggy endwiches."  They had us laughing so much.  Off to enjoy the weekend.  Taking the weekend off to work on science and not letters.  Going to play some math games and some rot your brain video games with the kids.  Rich got them an M&M wii game that they can play with their own remotes.  Fun family activities!  Have a great weekend everybody!