Short Bead Chains + 3 Boys in the School Room!

My first experience presenting the short bead chains was such a let down!  I was going to title this post "I Have the Whiniest Kid Ever."  Link was so excited when I said "Today you get to use your new bead chains!" We got through counting to about 8, and he said "Mommy, don't you know I don't like school?"  After taking turns with him a few times, I couldn't take the whining anymore and I finally just asked if he'd like to put it away.  He wanted to know if that meant school was over, but I told him he'd have to choose something or I could choose for him.  He chose the binomial cube, knob less cylinders, then he read me a few of his readers from LoE set A (he's on B now).  The rest of the day was a struggle.  Bumblebee was very interested in the 100 chain!

Baby in the school room!

Later, he mentioned again that he thought the bead chains were going to be fun, but they weren't.  After explaining that he would learn to skip count using them, he was interested again (he often tries to skip count, but can't.)

The next day, I let Link choose any color he wanted.  He asked for the long chains a few times, but I insisted that he had to show me could do the short ones first.  He was going to do them all!  He chose 1s, 2s, 3, and 5s.

I caught Bumblebee, who is about to turn four, taking short chains off of the cabinet several times.  At first I'd tell him no.  Then, when I realized that he was taking each off very carefully and folding it up to compare to the square, I decided to let him.  Then he said he wanted to skip count, but sometimes he'd skip numbers.  I decided to start him with the teen bead stair since he knows those pretty well, but still needs some work.  I'll work through the Group 3 section with him even though he hasn't started Group 2.  We finished up Group 1from Meg's album last week with the Memory Game of Numbers.  I need to check back with Gettman to see if there is anything that we skipped with Bumblebee.  He really gets the short end of the stick!  I need to start focusing more on where he is in the periods!  I'm not sure he's ready for Group 2, but I may at least introduce it.

You may also notice that there is an almost-two-year-old in the school room!  Boy does that make it difficult to stay in one place!  Beya has his shelves and really enjoys what is on them.  But he also likes to constantly see if he can grab something off of the other shelves.  He's only been joining us for the past week or so, so hopefully he'll learn soon and calm down a bit.  I have a feeling I'm going to have to start rotating his shelves now too!

This is all getting a little difficult for me to keep track of!  Bumblebee has learned all of his letter sounds and some counting, just from being around Link.  I haven't really focused on him at all!  I haven't even made sound boxes for him!  Don't ask me how he learned what he has, I'm amazed :)