Hands On

 Joe loves to learn, but he doesn't love to be taught. He expects to just know things without being told how to do them. While he enjoys his workbooks most days, learning to read has been a struggle. He just wasn't ready, and I wasn't going to push it. Last week we tried to learn some sounds and small sight words and it ended in frustration. 

 I recently saw this "build a word" thing on pinterest, and thought I would give it a try! Joe is a super hands on learner. He's smart, and his mind sometimes moves too fast for him to keep up. Manipulatives have been a huge help for him. So today I took out our little blocks and wrote out the "at" family words. He sounded them out letter by letter while he built them, and then he wrote them down. When I noticed that he was just memorizing their position, I rearranged them and had him read them again. It seemed to help, having something tangible to hang onto with a sound attached to it. It was incredible watching him finally catch on!

 The blue sky begged us to go outside for the afternoon. We wandered over to the park and spent some time swinging. It was lovely to get some sunshine and fresh air!

I finished off my night bathing the little boys who jumped in the tub one after the other. There was water everywhere by the time they were through! Sometimes I wish life would just slow down so that I could soak up my time with these growing kids of mine!