Week in Review: October 4 - October 10, 2010

Henry completed all of his assigned workbook pages with great excitement on Wednesday and just a little prodding on Friday.

Perseverance is a must, I'm finding.  Our story time is a great example of this.  Henry has always enjoyed reading selections from the collection of Disney books that my husband's mother saved for him.  However, he was less than enthused when told to pick a book from our Good Books list.  More accurately, he didn't want anything to do with any of them.

I wound up negotiating two stories for the evening: one of his picks and one of mine.  We read "Peter Rabbit" on Wednesday evening: uninterested.  We read "Squirrel Nutkin" on Friday evening; uninterested.  Or, so I thought.  Last night, Henry retrieved The Complete Tales of Peter Rabbit on his own and requested "Nutkin."  I suppose there is something appealing to a three year-old boy about a naughty squirrel having his tail pulled off by a crotchety old owl.

Saturday was a great success.  We began our day by baking up a storm.  Henry and I made a loaf of honey wheat sandwich bread (in the bread machine), a pumpkin pie (and my first attempt at a homemade crust), three loaves of pumpkin bread, two loaves of banana bread, and a batch of dinner rolls.  Henry was very proud of the results.  And so was I!

In the afternoon, we prepared for our science walk by loading Henry's backpack with crayons, paper, a plastic sandwich bag, and a magnifying glass.  I taped a piece of clear contact paper to a dry-erase board to use as a specimen collector.  Then, with Jane in a sling, Oliver with a snack, Henry with his pack, and my husband with the camera, we set out into the great outdoors.

Henry's first find, a dragonfly:

Inspecting a pile of dirt left by something excavating a tunnel in the yard:

Collecting a flower specimen (and eating a dinner roll at the same time):

Looking for bugs on a piece of wood:

Checking out some seed pods on a plant:

Making a rubbing of a leaf:

We also listened for nature sounds.  Henry pointed out the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, birds chirping, and dogs barking.  He smelled blades of grass and flowers and pointed out the different colors around us.

The science walk was a lot of fun for the whole family.  Henry is already asking to do it again and, for now, science is his favorite subject.