So Amber was asking me a while back why I wasn't teaching Joseph. The other kids and I all looked at her wondering just what she meant. So we asked, "What do you mean?" She replied with a long list of things I should be doing with Joseph. Things such as: teaching him his colors, numbers, letters, and how to read and do math. All this, she claimed, should be done with flashcards. I tried to explain to her that when I dress him in the morning I say things like: Let's put on your blue jeans or Would you like to wear your green sweatshirt or red turtleneck? That's how toddlers learn their colors. As for numbers I say thing like: Would you like one or two crackers? or You have three books, should we read them all? She did not think this was fair at all. She claimed he was getting off easy. Granted he's only 3, but to appease her I bought an I Can Paste workbook for toddlers to show her that I was not a slacker mom. For his birthday we bought him a Mother Goose Fairy Tales sticker book. The thought was to read a fairy tale each day and then let him place the stickers on the page. He hated the stickers. They stuck to his fingers and he tried shaking them off all while hollering "au, au" (translation off, off). Michael's had a number of toddler workbooks, all meant to develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Gluing seemed the best option for Joseph at this time, but I wondered if it would be similar to the sticker incident. I bought the book anyway and today was the day to start in on it since we had the glue and scissors out for Spanish. The first page instructs the parent to cut out the pieces and have the child place glue on the page and place the pictures on the glue spots. Joseph is no where ready to squeeze the glue bottle, suck on it yes, but squeeze it no way. I cut out the clouds and then showed him the rainbow in the sky. I even pointed to the colors of the rainbow, saying each color. I made sure Amber was watching. I squeezed three dots of glue on the page and then showed Joseph how to press the cloud onto the glue. He dove right in, first smearing the glue a bit with his finger and then smacking the cloud onto the glue spot. He'd remove it and place it on the other glue spot; this continued until most of the glue was used up. Then he left the clouds to dry. We'll do another page tomorrow where he'll glue fish (I'll count them with him) onto an underwater scene. Joseph just had his first official day of preschool.
