We had a very school-y looking morning. Some days are like that.
At the end of August the girls and I threw ourselves a tea party to discuss our plans for fall and winter. At their request, we designed what they call "American Girl Doll Circle Time." Don't ask me why it's called this, I don't know.
Each morning (theoretically):
Annabelle: Draws and cuts a shape from construction paper and writes a number as we count to 100 (triangles for multiples of 5, circles for all others). She also counts that amount of money and collects it in a special jar. The shapes are forming a snake? catapiller? up the wall along the basement stairs. When we reach 100 we'll have a "100th day of Kindergarten" party, as we did for Ally, and she'll be able to spend the money she counted and collected.
Ally: Selects single digit numbers from a beautiful cut glass pitcher (for Ally it's all about the presentation) and uses them to form 2 and 3 digit numbers which she records on a dated page and then compares, adds and subtracts. She also works on a cursive handwriting workbook she selected at the teacher's supply store.
All this takes about 15 minutes, as we enjoy hot tea or chocolate and discuss breakfast options.
For the rest of the morning they:
- read together some of Ally's old beginning readers (Annabelle's bound and determined to learn to read!)
- made some birthday cards we needed to mail
- Ally made lovely and yet creepy invites for her sister's and cousin's dolls to attend a Halloween party her dolls are throwing
- looked through a book about Ancient Greece to consider togas for Halloween costumes
- played online with their e-fairies (it's some new Disney gimick)
After lunch we met a friend to conduct some Girl Scout business. We have a fantastic all hsing troop and I lead Annabelle and the other Daisies. All together (Daisies, Brownies, and Juniors) we have almost 30 girls.
I had planned for us to then visit the rarely open nature center at a local park, but the girls nixed that idea and we ended up looking at Halloween costumes at the party store. DH gave each girl a costume budget because the catalog costumes they were drooling over were $$$, so Ally considered all her choices carefully (she's a very contemplative person). Ally's still considering her options, but Annabelle fell in love with the first one she saw and has sworn allegience to it (she's a very decisive person!).
Quick library run to select more books. Annabelle studies books of all kinds. It's what she spends most of her private time doing. I suspect she is more of a whole word learner than a phonics driven reader, but more on that another day.
Ally selected about a dozen books on different zoo animals. She is constructing a zoo for her dolls, complete with educational signs.
Will enjoyed about one page each of any board book I could put my hands on before he was off down the aisles again.
We all played outside as the pizza dough (for dinner) was rising. Will hosed off his booster seat, which was desperately needed. My sister comes to visit soon and she would have been horrified! The girls played with neighbor children.
After dinner we skipped reading Harry Potter in favor of watching the premier of Dancing with the Stars!
