Friday

S spent the morning with my mom.  He played Reader Rabbit Preschool Math for a while in the afternoon.  It lets him practice his math concepts and he just thinks he's playing a game.  He also finished cutting out some shapes he had colored yesterday.  The next step is to paste them on a sheet of paper to make a picture of two birds in a nest.  He wants to paste it on sky blue paper so I have to look for that color in my scrapbook stuff.  After dinner, we did our neighborhood walk to check on our caterpillars we found two days ago (yeah, we found them!)  and also found two roly-poly bugs (I poked one to show him how it rolled up, but said we shouldn't scare the second one) and picked a leaf to identify back at home...I knew it was a white oak leaf, but he didn't, and he was able to match it to a poster we have in his room.  Also, he checked on and watered his flower and it's not dying yet.  At bedtime, he read two books ; The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss and I Like Stars, a Step Into Reading book by Margaret Wise Brown.

Saturday

Samuel read Dog and Cat, a reader from the library.  I read him two poems by Jack Prelutsky, Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag, the beginning of a story from Winnie-the-Pooh, and the end of Porcupines by Sandra Markle.  He planted another weed he pulled from outside and the first one is still alive.  He wanted to check on "his" two caterpillars, and since I was short on time, I discovered a possible side benefit to studying nature.  Normally, our nature walks are leisurely strolls, but this time we had a purpose...get there and back in the shortest possible time.  So at about a mile round trip with a small rest in the middle, I definitely got my exercise in!  Back to the caterpillars - we saw an additional two smaller ones hanging on the same fallen branch as one of the bigger ones.  The other bigger one, we could actually see him munching on a leaf, just like in the Eric Carle book.

Sunday

We team-read Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss (he read the big words and I read the small words - big and small physically).  He played Reader Rabbit Preschool Math.  We baked a cake together.  I measured, he cracked the eggs and did some of the mixing.  He wanted a banana chocoate cake, so I bought chocolate cake mix, substituted mashed banana for the amount of water and used water for the amount of oil.  The batter was really good, but the cake wasn't such a big hit.  Next time, I may try adding chocolate chips and chocolate frosting to banana cake.

Monday - Friday

My home computer broke and I just got it back today.  My habit is to add things to a draft entry every night and I didn't write anything down anywhere else (and even if I had my house is such a wreck I probably wouldn't have been able to find it today when I got my computer back).  So this will really be just the highlights as opposed to the more detailed record I normally have.

At swim class #9, he actually swam about 2 feet without the teacher giving him assistance.  It was a proud day for both of us and he has renewed interest in continuing with classes.  He will start the next level this coming up week. 

The literature book that stands out in my mind was a picture book retelling of Little Babaji by Julius Lester called "Sam and the Tigers"  I thought the author did a great job of keeping with the feel of the original language but taking out any hint of racism that is sometimes brought up.  I used voices and tried to read the book as though I was telling the story instead of reading. 

On Thursday we showed up at the library on opening and they were excited that Samuel was the first one to get the summer reading program form (they know us well at our branch).  I told him this was the first year all the books could be ones he read instead of ones I read to him and he was so excited by this that he read 5 books that same day!  Since then (and I'm writing this on Sunday) he has not wanted to read a whole book through, although he has read a few pages each day.  I guess he overdid it!  He has to read 10 to get the prizes and be entered in the drawing for the bigger prizes.

Also, his "Your Big Backyard" magazine arrived and we read about lizards and ants and a few other articles.  And sad news on the caterpillars...the mowers came and when we checked the usual spot did not find a one.  I am hoping there are more around that we just did not see, but we didn't have time to look around that day.

And that's about all I can remember, although I am sure we did more.  Also, I only need two more comments to reach 100, so please leave me a comment and tell me your (or your child's) favorite beginning/easy reader.