I feel quite virtuous today. I accomplished a lot, and spent a lot of time actively engaged in educational activities. We wrote the letter V on the carpet, and they both did well writing it, since it is fairly easy to make the shape. We sang the sound at least 5 times. We wrote our letter poster. The kids were really excited about this, since they had so many words to list. They listed victory, vegetables, very, van, veterinarian, Valerie, vowel, vanilla, veal, vacuum, Vincent Van Gogh (yes really), vapor as in water vapor which makes clouds, Vermont where Grammy and Poppa went on vacation, hey vacation starts with v too Mommy! I kid you not. So to explain, Van Gogh they know because we have a print of my favorite painting in the living room. Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, and one day when they were asking about it we talked about art, artists, and the artists that did the pictures we have in our books and on our walls. They really liked the Van Gogh book I showed them, and they remembered his name. CJ really loves The Scream by Edward Munch which we also have. Eliza says her favorite is Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, though she just calls it the funny clocks.
We worked on vocabulary in depth today, introducing lots of new words. We used pictures and letter cards to reinforce vocabulary words they already know, and to reinforce the letter sounds that go with them. CJ is getting really good at reading many sight words. We used letter blocks to make and read v words, van, vat, vet, veal. Then heal, real, and lastly read. They had trouble with veal but sounded out and read the others. CJ came up with van then helped me spell it. After a few they were done with it, but when we revisited it later in the day they had retained what they learned, and we read and made the words again. It was so exciting for me, and really validated for me what we have been doing!
After watching Dinosaur Train CJ told me all about velociraptors and their feathers. Later on they told me everything they had learned about volcanoes and how they erupt. We even reviewed weather, and they remembered how clouds are formed from water vapor. It was a veritable science party! While we worked on a matching game, matching upper to lower case letters, then separating vowels and consonants we listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, one of my favorite pieces of music. I love that when the kids listen to a piece of music they are able to identify instruments, violins, drums, flute and piano. Any instrument they know they are usually able to identify by sound. After the letter matching game we used color and shape cards to identify shapes inside of other shapes, and counted shapes in designs. We played Memory with four sets of matching cards. I then had the kids sort them into groups, and explain the attributes they used. They had to tell me what are the same about items that go together, and what is different about the two groups they made. One group ended up being vehicles, which I explained was a word that means something that moves people or things from one place to another. We listed all the types of vehicles and I explained the term transportation. I used this to tell them about our upcoming trip to Old Sturbridge Village to learn about how transportation worked a long time ago, before cars and vans like we have today.
So for breakfast we had vanilla homemade yogurt with vanilla almond cereal and vanilla milk. Vegetable bites were for lunch, radish, zucchini, broccoli, cinderella squash, carrot, red pepper, green pepper all coated in parmesan cheese and flour batter, baked till crispy. Vivid colors, full of vitamins and very delicious. For dinner we had veal, and I know that offends some people, but we love it and so do the kids. We had veal cutlets with mashed potatoes, gravy, and vibrant green and yellow squash and salad with vinegar. I thought about making vindaloo, but needed something easier than Indian food tonight. The kids helped me and Rich vacuum the house, since of course V is for vacuum.
I even spent some time talking to the kids about voting, and what that means in our country. I explained virtually every V word to the kids that I could think of, with varying results. The voting info sort of put vague confused looks on their faces, but explaining vessels and vehicles made sense to them. They pretended to go on a Viking Voyage on the ocean. They used their steering wheels to veer all over the living room, I mean Viking boat. Towards the end of that venture their volume level was a little too loud, and they were so tired they started to vacillate (which means to waver) on their feet. We read several new books and they went right to sleep. I would say they were vehemently verbose today, i.e. they talked nonstop, all day to the point that I was surprised they still had voices by bedtime. I think I will pay a visit to the virtual world now and play some mind numbing video games. Time to veg out and relax with a vodka tonic. Oh yeah, life is a wonderful journey.
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