We took a little break..

but we're back to it this week! I was tired, stressed, and Marshall was fighting me about school time every day. But we started up a couple days ago and I think a little break was a good idea. Marshall is always excited about Math, but even reading became easier this week. He stuck to it until the end! Yay! It's so much nicer not to have to constantly remind him to sit up straight and calm down, and eyes on the page and all that. Today I reminded him how well he has been doing and told him I would wait until he was ready to do it nicely. It worked and a second later he was focused!

Math has been a breeze. I still am really loving MWM and all the accompanying library books. He loves the reading component, it makes for good snuggle time with mom, too. He chooses to start with Math each day and when he's done he knows reading time is next. So far he's mostly learning about colors, sorting, classifying, etc. We've also been reading and doing activities to introduce the calendar and weather, which we do every day now. And today we learned sequencing of events: first, next, last and read about Jesse Bear's day. The books we've been getting from the library help introduce and reinforce what he is learning.

This week we also added a Social Studies theme. Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentine's this year, February 14th. So we're reading TONS of library books about Chinese New Year and culture. We did a Tiger puzzle yesterday (2010 is the Year of the Tiger) and learned some words describing people born in that year (supposedly). Today we read about the "dragon dance" in the Chinese New Year celebration and so he did a dot-to-dot printable I found of a Dragon. I had some more activities ready but the baby woke up from his nap.

We've been working straight through nap time, 2-3 hours, which means Marshall's attention span is getting longer and he can focus and get through it all. I think the schedule helps too though. Letting him choose what to do first (Math) then reading and he knows as soon as it's over we do more fun reading and projects (which he really loves). Right now it's a good set-up and we'll continue to add to our day. We seem to be running out of time but I'm nervous about how it will go if we do it while we have a toddler around. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we need to!