I Love Learning!

A new pretend play that the kids really enjoy is dressing up to be vampires.  They each grab a throw blanket, wrap it around themselves and walk in a line.  They talk about how they are vampires and chase each other.  I don't think they realize that vampires suck people's blood because, luckily, that has not become part of their play.

Ballerina is coaching everyone on keeping their noses up to be vampires.  I have no idea why.

Here the girls are playing together.  Sweetie loves to tie up her unicorn, dragon and dinosaur with those bead necklaces.  She will do that for an HOUR while pretending and talking.  Ballerina loves the new butterfly wings she received for Christmas.  She had me help make the butterfly antennae headband to complete the costume.  When they pretend to be animals Sweetie almost always chooses to be a horse or a cat.

Ballerina has gotten very excited about learning.  She has been bugging me to have school at home so we can learn about things.  She wants to have a lesson on mammoths, dinosaurs, and crocodiles.  So I took her to the library.  She was SO happy to find book after book on all sorts of different animals.

She picked out a huge stack of books covering everything from ladybugs to baby seals to tigers to crocodiles.  She exclaimed, "I just love learning so much!"  She was so excited to sit down and read the books with me.  I also pulled out a Shel Silverstein poem book (Falling Up) to read with the girls and they love the silly poems inside.  And for fun I checked out Tea for Ruby at the library and the girls love it (it has the same illustrator as the Fancy Nancy books).

The other day Ballerina found a ladybug crawling around the house and she caught it.  She received a ladybug house for Christmas and was so happy to get the chance to use it (still need to order the larvae for it).  It was fun to learn with her that a ladybug is red in order to warn predators that it tastes yucky.  And she was excited to count her ladybug's spots and find that she had caught a seven spotted ladybug.  

Ballerina is also doing fairly well with reading.  She can actually read most of the words in "Go, Dog, Go!"  And she loves to try to sound things out and write them down.  It's interesting trying to figure out what she is trying to write...  She will often ask me to write a phrase down so she can copy it.  Her letters have improved so much since the beginning of the school year, although they are often backward or the words wind around the page.  I just love it.  I think it is darling.

Oh, and Ballerina calls sneezes "Bless you's."  And she will often run over to me to show me a picture of something that is "so cute!"  She is a big fan of babies and cute, cuddly animals.

I love having such a cute little learner at my house.