I read Tigerboy a book the other day. It was the first time that I’d read him a book instead of having him on my knee while I read to Smallest. Given he’s 9 weeks old I’m definitely slacking 😉
We have books coming out of our ears in this house. Smallest loves to be read to, and she loves to read books back to us. She’s got a pretty good memory for them as well. We were sent a couple of lovely first shape/ colour type books for review the other week, and she adores them. They are rather lovely. These ones:
Lots of great pictures to talk about, with words in sensible font underneath. I particularly like the Numbers book having an owl on every page to spot, although I’m not sure what pages on Feelings and Manners are doing in there, particularly with nice/ naughty as concepts. I try to stay away from the word naughty tbh, I don’t find it to be useful.
Having the books did make me start thinking about actually planning some education for her, so that’s a good thing, surely?
So far she’s been educated incidentally. It seems to have worked rather well in giving her excellent vocabulary and speech – she’s extremely, almost relentlessly, verbal. (Which is to say she hardly ever stops talking. And at the moment all of her speech is phrased in questions. “What did I say? What did I just do? Why did I do that?” If you don’t know, darling, I don’t think the rest of us stand much chance :/ ) She also counts up to 7 or 8, depending, which is due mainly to playing hide and seek with her siblings. We’ve got no stairs to practise our counting on sadly, as that’s another good tactic.
She loves to draw. Mark making we’ve definitely got sussed. The other day I started her copying ones and zeros – it did occur to me later that zero is actually a rather complicated concept and I probably should have stayed away from it to begin with, but done now. I would like some of the early Montessori bead materials, I might make equivalents from some Baker Ross beads instead.
Ooh, Baker Ross. I nearly forgot the fabulous bundle of crafts they sent us recently! 
They were country themed. We had African wooden necklaces, Scottish scratch art magnets, Welsh foam bookmark kits, St George’s Cross flag tissue kits and leprechaun masks.
Small loved them. Big loved them too, though bizarrely I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of her with them.
Of course, we don’t always use full craft kits. Sometimes just a pair of scissors and a piece of paper hit the mark. She’s pretty good with scissors, left handed here, although she does tend to swap them around.
So we do arts and crafts, writing, reading, counting and so on. There’s also singing, dancing, swimming, running, climbing, playing, watching, more reading, a bit more reading, some drawing, occasionally baking, and lots and lots of play.
Hm, maybe I don’t need to do that much in the way of planning after all, perhaps the incidental education will get us there after all. Although I should confess that I’ve ordered her a set of Bob Books
as I think she’ll enjoy them, and they might help her towards those first skills for reading in a relatively painless way. (After the experience of teaching Big to read, I did actually say I’d never do it again. I guess with two extra children I’m going to have to get over that phobia. Bob Books should be a relatively painless first step for me too 😉 )
Disclosure we were sent books from Random House and craft items from Baker Ross for review. Amazon links are affiliate links – if you buy via my link I get a small amount of money back. I’ve paid for the Bob Books. We provide our time and opinion free of charge.
. Furno is apparently THE hero to have. So one ludicrously happy boy, especially when Big immediately said they would share them both.
(courtesy of the 
), so we