C is for COOKIE

So, I realize that if you've been reading the blog for any amount of time, it probably sounds like I do all the educational activities with Oscar and completely neglect Allen. Aaaaaaaaaand... it's sort of true.

The thing is, Allen is not the type of boy that likes to sit indoors and do brainy stuff. He spends hours outside every day, pushing things, watching birds, making mud puddles, chasing his siblings with sticks, pulling grass, throwing dirt-- you get the idea. And honestly, as long as he is doing something with that little mind of his, I am just fine with it not happening via textbooks. Children are hard-wired to always be experiencing and growing. Thanks to his outdoor sojourns, Allen knows much about the care of chickens, the habits of the black beetle, and the intricacies of gathering tree fruit and berries. He is learning tons about biology, meteorology, physics, and growing his vocabulary. So I have been totally fine with letting him learn through play and not stressing academic stuff too much, and directing those efforts towards Oscar, who completely thrives on complex mental work.

Which is why it is so exciting that Allen has finally started to show interest in literacy!

He started asking what various printed words say and rearranging our collection of magnetic felt letters to make up pretend words. That was my cue to start introducing the phonetic sounds to him again! We had gone through a few letters a few months ago, but the interest wasn't there, so I dropped it. We picked up again with C yesterday.

Today, we did a C activity... with cookies! We made a batch of sugar cookie dough (and, always having to mess up something in the recipe, I accidentally added twice the milk and had a very soupy dough for a while there).

Found another "C" object!

I cut long strips out of the rolled dough, and then Allen and I shaped them to form C's. My kids were never very big on sand/salt tray tracing, so I thought this would be a good alternate tactile way to form the letter.

I never did get any pictures of the finished, decorated cookies! Tuesday is my main music lesson teaching day, so we had an assortment of students filing in and out of the house throughout the day that got to help the baked goods disappear fast! At any rate, Allen had fun and got a little lesson out of it, so that was my big accomplishment for the day.