Getting Ready for Christmas!

Robin is SO excited to be getting ready for Christmas. Today he wrapped presents, packed a box for mailing, made ornaments, and selected a gift for his sister. And apparently, for me!

Counting to 10

Robin is very smart, but he seems to have some difficulty translating what he knows into the right word coming out his mouth. This is true about colors, and letters, and numbers, all of which he basically knows, but all of which he has a hard time spitting out the word for in the moment.

Just this week he seems to be beginning to be able to smoothly start counting at 1 and get all the way through to 10 without stopping in the middle. I'd say he's about 75% doing that right now.

I've wondered and wondered if he might be colorblind (my grandfather and one brother are red/green colorblind) but last week when we were in the doctor's office they happened to have a book of colorblind tests sitting there and I asked him to look at it. He couldn't say the numbers they were using (like, 73 and 124) but he traced them with his fingers - he definitely could see them (which he couldn't if he were colorblind).

And we keep working on letters. Some he's quite clear on - others he has to guess the names for (but he gets them about 90% right if I give him multiple choices.)

Fake Blood

"We put peanut butter in a bowl, and put syrup in. And then mixed it. But then we put in soap and food coloring, red and blue, that's what the ingredients said, so . . . then Mommy mixed it up to make red. Then you put it in your mouth and drool it out and that makes blood! That's how you make fake blood!" We found a fun science project for today :-) Picture of Robin with plastic fangs and fake blood to come.

Flash Cards

Robin has gotten much better with his alphabet flash cards. His biggest challenge seems to be just recalling the names of the letters - he does fine if I give him multiple choices, but struggles if I just say, "what's that letter."

R O B I N

Driving home last night, Robin was drawing on his doodle board. I was not paying much attention until he told me, "Look, mommy, I wrote all the letters in 'Robin'!" And he had, except the 'B', but when I told him that he promptly added it.

I also realized recently that he knows his letters in terms of what sounds each letter makes. He just can't come up with the names of the letters when asked to identify them. He can usually identify them if given multiple choice options, though. Interesting, very interesting. Maybe this is also why he can't count past 4 yet? I mean, I think he knows numbers in the sense of recognizing that 9 is more than 5, say, but when he counts things he still asks, "what's next?" when he gets to 5 every time. So maybe there is something a bit idiosyncratic about his ability to verbalize names of symbols.

"Japanese Music"

Tonight playing around with the piano Robin noticed that the black keys made music that sounded "more like Japanese music, you know, from anime . . ." I thought that was pretty cool, as much Asian music is more minor or atonal than Western music!

Lego Ships

Robin has finally got the hang of making "Lego Ships" with Wolfy. He's not as interested in symmetry as Wolfy is, but likes his ships to have lots of guns and engines.

He works really hard to get Wolfy to play with him - and has a wonderful time being silly with Day.

Goals & 2 Wheels!

Robin is now riding a bike with two wheels, no training wheels! He's very proud of himself. We had noticed that he was balancing better with the training wheels so we suggested trying without - and he's off!

I asked both boys what they wanted to learn this year. Robin's list:

1. The alphabet (he actually went & got his flashcards and went through them once.)
2. To skateboard!
3. To play a real song on the piano.

Aikido!

Robin is now officially taking Aikido with his big brother. He is so proud and excited every Tuesday!

Robin's story

Once upon a time, there was a little kid. Then he went Geocaching. Before he got there, a monster came up. Then the monster chased the boy all the way to the Geocache. The boy picked the Geocache up and ran away because he had no time to pick what to take out of the box. Then he got arrested, because you're not supposed to take the whole box away, are you?!?!

Experiments

A recent set of science "experiments":

Art

Wolfy & I did some drawing while Matt took Robin down to the river (still gloriously frozen.) Day took a nap. When Robin got back, he wanted to draw, too. The big pale blue circle is God (see Wolfy's blog . . . Wolfy made God really big, so Robin made God bigger.) There's a grappling hook (upper right quadrant). And the blue zigzags are our river, the black zigzags are "Dooby's river" (i.e., the Potomac a few miles upstream in Accokeek.)