Back to School and Fly Games

I never really quit teaching Alex all together.  We love the structure of having lessons here and there.  We got behind when Annie was born any way.  I think Alex is ready to tackle kindergarten material.

Have you seen the new Target commercials advertising the Back to School sales?

Very cute and funny. I love the 2nd Grade Teacher commercial because she loves glitter. I don’t love glitter, but for some reason it does bring learning to life.  I bought some new school supplies for home school today. I bought a lot of glitter glue. “So much glitter.” It didn’t seem like so much at the time. I will have to start thinking up ways to use the glitter glue…

Catching Flies

We have been struggling with out bursts from Alex lately.  We cannot seem to get him to understand how his attitude is disturbing and does not get him very far.  Then it came to me as I drifted off to sleep last night—a game based on the premise, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”  Otherwise known as, “Do unto others as you wish done to you.” 

I took yellow construction paper and divided it into 24 squares.  I wrote on 12 squares vinegar actions and 12 honey actions and cut those squares.  Then I folded orange and blue construction paper fan style and traced a couple of circles, cut them into 10 circles in each color.  I drew flies on the circles.  Then we turned all the squares face down.  I explained the meaning of the adage, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”  Then we took turns turning over the squares.  I asked Alex with if it was honey or vinegar.  If it was honey, then we could put our fly circle on top.  When all the squares were turned over, the player with more tokens on honey actions wins.  I wrote on the action cards actions things like, “please,” “thank you,” smiling, hugging, sharing vs. hitting, kicking, yelling, taking toys, grumpy. 

For the rest of the day, when he showed a bad attitude I said, “Alex, that’s a vinegar attitude. Show me your honey.”  The funny thing is the rest of the day, I caught myself with vinegar attitudes too. So I had to correct myself and show my honey.  I guess I know where his attitude originated.  It is amazing how children end up teaching their parents.