Week 3, day 3: Focus on language

No new material today.

Our typical morning work time was taken by a midwife visit. But we got a short work period in today, thanks to my husband offering to take his nap in the guest/storage/future baby room (can you tell we're a bit behind on baby preparations?).

Nugget's first stop was the Smelling Bottles. I enjoy the challenge of identifying each smell for her, so it's a bit of a game for me, too.

Nugget next chose the rhyming cards, which I'd reduced from 6 to 3 after she seemed a bit overwhelmed last time. She blew through those, so I pulled out the other 3, and then the final 3. She was totally on top of these today!

After that, she went to wet pouring. Finally! That kept her attention for quite a while -- back and forth, back and forth. She'd pour carefully and slowly a few times, then get incrementally faster and hold the pitchers further apart, until there was a spill. Then she'd clean it up, ask me why it spilled, then start all over again going slowly and carefully.... for a while. That was really interesting to observe. It was like she was testing the tolerances of the pitchers and her ability.

The next thing to catch her attention was the animal sound activity. She started with ending sounds, then flipped the scene to beginning sounds when she'd finished. Then back to ending, then beginning, and finally back to ending! I was laughing to myself at each flip by the end. She's definitely improving at ending sounds, although it's still a challenge for her to hear that last sound without a strong emphasis.

That ended our formal work time -- about 30 minutes. But once we started in on other play, she still wanted to do some I Spy (mostly beginning, with a few ending sounds). She also spent some time being various animals and trying to "find [her] sound" like we do with the animal activity. So I'd count a bit more informal work time today.

Overall, a nice, short work time to finish up the week. Still no real interest in Sensorial, other than the Smelling Bottles, even when I actively try to engage her. Kind of unexpected, looking at the typical sensitive period ages. Just another example that "typical" doesn't necessarily mean your kid, I guess. A typical classroom sample size of 30 is very different from a homeschool sample size of (in this case) one.

Oh, and I'd love to report on Nugget's growing food and drink independence thanks to the mini-fridge, but.... we had to return it. After a full day, it still hadn't cooled to a safe temperature. We've done some looking, and it seems that most inexpensive fridges aren't made to store perishables -- they just cool 20-25 degrees below room temperature to chill your soda. That's not really going to work if we want to keep cheese and meat in there. So... we're unsure about the next step. Have to give it some thought.