Glass Chickens and ABC's

I got to melt glass today. Finally. I've been trying to get out there for two weeks now. I made a slew of robin's egg hearts. And then I made a chicken. I'm looking forward to Friday when I can go back and take them out of the kiln and see how they turned out. Normally I just have to wait a few hours... waiting a few days is going to be pure torture.

Luke and I spent a bunch of time today looking for games that encourage reading/letter recognition. None to be found. Everything is numbers, colors or shapes. So I bought two packages of letter flash cards and I'm going to gesso one side of each of the cards (paint them too if I have to), and then we will have two of each letter and can do that matching/memory game with them. I think that will work because the kid is doing math when we play Sleeping Queens and Shrek Monopoly... he seems to love numbers and has an amazing photographic memory - he's memorized all the monopoly place names and all the chance cards already - you would swear he was reading them when he lands on them, but he's not. So games are working well as a learning tool - time to get going on those ABC's he's been refusing to let me teach him.

I also bought him a toy that is magnets that goes on the fridge and you put the letter in and it tells you what it is, and also sings the alphabet song. He must have played the alphabet song about 100 times in the car on the way home - and was trying to sing along with it. It really makes me mad because if I sing it, he just puts his hands over his ears and starts getting bratty. I guess I'll just take it as a sign I should never sing out loud - they say children don't care what you sound like, but apparently mine does. I would sing to him when he was a baby and he would just scream and scream. So now I will just do the motherly thing and buy him electronics that sing to him instead. Blech. Of course the toy isn't perfect - you put the U in and it say T, you put the A in and it says D. We will be exchanging it for a new one tomorrow - hope it works like it is supposed to or there is no hope he's going to learn that song before Kindergarten starts this fall.