I got a bit behind on writing for the blog. Nathan and I have been spending our evenings after the boys are in bed taking in Arrested Development season 4. We got a free netflix trial for one month so we’ve got to take advantage while we can. Last night, we finished the 15th and final episode so I told Nathan I needed a break from tv watching.
We talked about the letter G in our house last week. To be specific, we talked only about hard G. We had a lot of fun so we’ll keep plugging along the alphabet. Here is what we did:
Saturday: G is for Goody’s
We took a trip to Sunriver, Oregon over Memorial Day weekend. One long standing tradition of our family trips to Sunriver has always been going to Goody’s ice cream shop. Since Elias doesn’t like ice cream, I bought him a chocolate covered pretzel instead. When I offered it to him, he stated emphatically that he did not want it. He did, however, steal the chocolate truffle I had purchased for myself. I was skeptical if he’d do more than take one small bite. However, after his first bite, he said, “MMMM!” and popped the rest of it in his mouth where he struggled to chew it for the next couple minutes. He enjoyed that truffle a lot!
Sunday: G is for Goliath
Since we were out of town and not attending church on Sunday, I thought it would be good for us to do our Bible lesson on Sunday. We did the David and Goliath story. Nathan read it aloud to Elias and talked with him about it. When we went to the pool in the early afternoon, we drove past the Sunriver community church and saw the parking lot was packed! That made us feel like sinners….I guess no one is perfect.
Monday: G is for Glitter
Elias has enjoyed using glitter in his art class so I thought it would be fun to do a project with glitter. However, the nice thing about art class is that you don’t have to deal with the mess! Since we were going to be at home, I went with glitter glue sticks instead of traditional glitter. I was going to have Elias accent a piece of art/picture with the glitter glue, but he had a hard time getting it out at first. Once he figured out how to squeeze the tubes and actually get some out, he mostly wanted to make big piles of it. So I just let him go to town on a blank piece of paper. He asked me to help him write his name and draw a few shapes so he squeezed while I moved his arms. But mostly, he just had fun trying something new!
Tuesday: G is for Gorilla
We read the book “Goodnight Gorilla.” Elias loves that book!
Wednesday: G is for Greg
We talked about Uncle Greg, who has moved to Ohio, and we painted a few pictures to send to him. I will not show them here so that they will be a surprise to Uncle Greg once I figure out what his new address is.
Thursday: G is for Guitar
We did a guitar art project, then I got out our guitar and played a bit for Elias. First, I cut out a guitar shape from a piece of cardboard and let Elias paint it with tempera paints. After that dried, we cut out a black circle and attached pipe cleaners for the strings. Then we got out the guitar. Unfortunately, I hadn’t played for a long while and I found that I had forgotten a lot of the chords I used to know. Luckily I was able to manage a couple songs to sing with him. I held the guitar and fingered the chords while he strummed. He was so excited to actually be playing.
Finally, Elias got to hold and “play” the guitar all by himself. He played for Simon who was quite interested in the sounds it was making!
On Friday, Elias showed off his guitar to Baba
Friday: G is for Garbage
I checked a bunch of books about garbage, garbage trucks, and recycling out from the library. We read them together. Some of Elias’ favorites were I Stink by Kate and Jim McMullen and Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and David Clemesha. We also read a couple nonfiction books about garbage trucks.