Less Expensive than Disney

Finally, finally -- now that it's practically February -- I feel like I'm getting back into the swing of parenting in the winter.  We go Wii-free during the week, but if the boys are left to their own devices, they will play Star Wars until I break them up for clobbering each other with light sabers.  At which point Luke will retire to his bedroom to sulk and play Legos and Darth Vader will ask me over and over and over again to throw him the football.  It's taken me months to figure out what to do instead, and during those months I've confiscated the light sabers more than I care to recall.

Matthew Works

In Montessori, all of the activities are called "work," and I think there is something magical about this.  Sure, we grown ups have plenty of work to do and we'd often rather play, but kids?  For some reason, kids love work (except cleaning -- I have yet to figure out how to make that appealing to them).  Ask Matthew if he wants to do a puzzle and he is completely uninterested.  But make it work?  Make it important?  Put those puzzles on a plastic tray, let him carry the tray to the table to do "his work?" He'll proudly select the correct shapes to complete his puzzles and crow "Ta-da!" each time he finishes a  "work."  

Cameron's Words

As for Cameron, we've been doing lots of word activities lately, talking about homophones, anagrams, palindromes and rebuses.  Cameron has recently been bemoaning his lack of exciting news to share on the line at school -- "Everybody always has exciting news, like 'I went to Disney Land,' and then it's my turn and everybody is like, 'Oh, he's a kindergartener! He MUST have exciting news,' and OF COURSE, I don't!"  So rather than take him to Disney Land, I pointed out that 'sea' and 'see' are pronounced the same but mean different things.

Unbelievably, Cameron was so excited about homophones that he shared it for his news the other day and, as he tells it, it was a big hit.  (I am hoping that this is true.  I secretly fear that I am nerdifying my kid to the point that he doesn't even realize that nobody else is excited about homophones.  But then I look at my old classmates on Facebook and all the old nerds are super cool people now and all the old popular crowd don't seem quite as shiny and special as they used to.  Although some of the popular girls still appear to have really great hair - why, oh why, could I never get my bangs to stand three inches high in 8th grade?  But a lot of the popular guys are bald now!  But I digress.  My point is, so what if I'm making Cameron into a nerd?  He's gonna be an awesome grown-up.  And hopefully we're sending him to a school where maybe the other kids really do think homophones are cool!) 

Today, Cameron plans to share news about the rebus I made to tell him lunch was ready.  We'll see if his luck holds or if he's asking for a trip to Disney on the ride home.