My granddaughters were on Spring Break last week. Their parents flew to Colorado and left the girls with us for a glorious week! (Glorious for both the parents and grandparents!) Besides the coloring, painting, and pasting craft activities, we visited the Denver Zoo and two wonderful parks on the sunny warm days, and played in the snow on the not so warm days! On the cold snowy day, they used empty boxes from my books to build and decorate “rescue” boats, and had a lot of fun with imaginary play. We played hide-n-seek a lot, and I told and read many stories. They enjoyed Lego sets, Playdough, and listening to music. The TV never was on. They never needed to use their iPads. We were too busy!
There were a few activities that gave me extra pleasure, or rather made me proud. The older child, a first-grader, has had access to working in Two Plus Two Is Not Five and asked me about doing math pages. I tested her and used my baseline and record-keeping pages to note which addition and subtraction facts she already mastered. She had already memorized 64 and 52 respectively of the 81 addition and 81 subtraction facts. (81 excludes the zero facts.) I saw where her gaps were, and I had her do only pages covering facts not mastered yet. I left a clipboard and sharpened pencil in her room, and she’d work on it early in the morning before I was even awake. (The girls were on a very early E.S.T. schedule!) I’d check her work and she got to pick a sticker for each 1/2 page she did.
The other activity that I enjoyed with the girls was baking and food preparation. They helped make cookies, hot fudge cake, and snow man-shaped pancakes! (We got the idea for the latter from Little House in the Big Woods!) The older child has been learning to use measuring cups and spoons and about how four 1/4 cups = 1 cup. When we needed 3/4 cup of sugar, after she found the 1/4 cup, I asked her how many of these we needed to get 3/4 of a cup, and she figured it out correctly.
My house is quiet now, and a lot cleaner and neater, but I’d rather have the mess, and hear their laughter and voices!
