School Day

We started the day out today with hammering!  Who could have thought this activity would be such a hit :) Surprisingly, Link chose to do a few works that he has not been interested in doing since I put them out.  But first, we painted.  He has been wanting to for a while, but he always asks towards the end of Bumblebee's nap, so I haven't been able to let him.  Today, he asked right away.  Since we were using non-washable acrylic paints I decided to take him to the garage :)  I painted his dressing frame boards and he painted a little boat.

Before Bumblebee woke up, Link washed his acorns and did some cutting and glueing.  The acorn washing is another example of him doing an activity simply because it has to do with water.  That was all we had time for, but it was a good two hours.  Then, for the next few hours, Link pretended to be a bird.  It really tickled Bumblebee, who kept trying to jump the way his brother was; it looked more like a skip.  I really could not think of a way to give the poor boy wings to "flap" as he requested.  I ended up using one of my long sleeve T-shirts, folded up so that I could stick my sleeves through his short sleeves.  It gave him something to flap and worked for him!

For some reason Bumblebee decided he needed to rest a bit this afternoon.  So Link wanted to go back to the schoolroom.  He did the push pin activity briefly.  Then I decided to do the cylinder blocks, two together.  He immediately asked if he could help and took over. They are so easy for him to do, but it is not a careful thing.  He tries each one in every hole, though I'm pretty sure he knows right where they go.  Once he realized that putting the really small ones in the really big holes makes you "loose" them, he wanted to do that over and over so that I could watch him laugh at the top of his lungs.  He is so rough with them I was afraid they wouldn't make it though their first use.  He used them to shoot, to squeeze his shirt, spun them around so he could reach the other side, banged them together and generally was not careful with them.

Then instead of choosing an activity, he wanted his coin box from the top shelf so he could take the money out to "help his brother".  I convinced him to put the coins back, on the condition that if Bumblebee cried, we would "rush back to the store and put that money in the little bucket to help Bumblebee".  (He put money in the bucket to "help people" today.)

After that, he wanted to read a book because he noticed that his reading chair was in the school room.  Is my child the only one who thinks that Peter Rabbit is scary?  After I got through the first page, he jumped out of his chair and said he didn't want to read it because it was scary and had "that naughty bunny" in it.  He is a very sensitive soul :)