Bright Blue Hearts

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• The Phonetic Alphabet
• Pictures and Sounds
• Sorting
• Lauri Puzzles

Parker was super excited to get the salt pan out of the refrigerator this morning and start school. (Let me pause for a moment to explain why the salt pan lives in the refrigerator, taking up precious space that could otherwise be used by actual foodstuffs. If we left it out, the salt would get all clumpy, thanks to the inescapable humidity here in the Caribbean. Our refrigerator is full of things that most people--people who don't live in the Tropics, that is--store in their kitchen cabinets: cereal, sugar, flour, bread, crackers, chips, dried fruit, candy. If it can get stale, grow mold or attract bugs in less than a week, I stick it in the fridge. And most everything can get stale, grow mold and/or attract insects in a matter of days--more often hours--down here. The jungle is always encroaching, eager to take back the territory civilization has seized. There's a reason this small island (less than 20 square miles, the majority of that a national park) supports at least ten different landscaping companies. Weed whackers, chainsaws and machetes are always at work, keeping the jungle at bay.) While Parker got out the salt pan, which was nicely chilled, I grabbed the sandpaper letters off our school shelves; I think it's a good idea to keep having him trace the relevant sandpaper letter before practicing writing that letter in salt. Eventually we might skip the sandpaper letter step, but (like I wrote in my last post) we're not in any hurry here. Why start doing away with steps so soon after getting started on learning letters? After he'd traced the a and the t while pronouncing their phonetic sounds, and before I gave him the salt pan, I took out some index cards I'd prepared the night before for the "Pictures and Sounds" activity. Using Google Images, I found three pictures for each letter; each picture is of an object the name of which starts with the phonetic sound of the letter. For example, for the letter a, I found an apple, an alligator and an ant. I printed the pictures I'd found, then taped them--one each--onto index cards. With Parker sitting there, the a and t sandpaper letters on the table in front of him, I showed him a card, asked him to name the object pictured and then asked him to select the letter that starts the word he'd just said. (Man, did that sound Byzantine or what? Yet, I cannot for the life of me think of a less convoluted way to describe that process. Basically, it goes like this: "What's this, Parker?" "An apple, Mommy." "What sound does apple start with?" "Aaa, Mommy." "And which letter makes the Aaa sound?" "This one!")

Tiger starts with Tih!

When I showed Parker the picture of the ant, he pointed to the letter a, but then said, "But there's a Tih in ant, too." I agreed, explaining that the Tih comes at the end of the word, whereas the Aaa sound is at the beginning. Maybe I should have left it at that, but I couldn't help grabbing the n sandpaper letter to show Parker how that letter completes the word. Then I had him trace the n, and say its sound, and that's how n spontaneously became our next letter. After that I let him practice writing a, t and n in the salt pan. Just when I thought we were about finished with letters for the day, Parker started drawing circles in the salt, saying, "Now I'm writing Ahhs, Mommy." And that's how o became our next letter.

Getting salty.

Picture cards for a, t, n and o.

I found a great Valentine's Day-inspired math activity on Counting Coconuts. It combines sorting, counting and an introduction to graphs. To prepare the materials for this activity, all I had to do was buy some conversation hearts and make a basic grid with pictures of colored hearts along the "x-axis" (as in the photo below). Parker sorted the candy hearts by placing each in its appropriate place in the grid (orange hearts above the orange heart, one heart per cell, yada yada yada). When he'd graphed all the hearts, we sat back and looked at the result. I asked him which column had the most hearts, and which the least. Then I asked him to count how many of each color there were. Then we ate the hearts. Or attempted to eat them, I should say. Those were the worst conversation hearts I have ever eaten! They should taste like Necco Wafers (which some people don't care for, but I adore), but instead they tasted like medicine, or worse. And the white, pepperminty hearts had been replaced with bright blue, "blue raspberry"-flavored hearts! An abomination! Parker spit his out. I just sat there, heartbroken. I'd been really looking forward to eating those conversation hearts.

Postscript: I just read on the Necco website that they changed the flavors and texture of their conversation hearts in 2010, in an aim to make them "softer and more fun to eat." This is a tragedy; way worse than when the Mars Corporation did away with the brown M&Ms. Valentine's Day will never be the same.