Monday, Monday

I know I should have some Father's Day photos but I really didn't take many and there weren't any of Mr. No with his Dad anyway since we didn't even see him because of his work schedule.  So it's on to Monday.  Monday morning to afternoon, it's just me and Mr. No trying to stay active and quiet while H sleeps.  We usually manage to have a pretty busy morning. Mr. No helped make our morning eggiecheese (which I didn't get photos of).  He's a master eggie cracker!  After breakfast, it was on to our Monday letter review with my really lame but effective and much loved by Mr. No alphabet game.  Since he likes it so much, we went out to Michael's to buy better letters and some poster board to replace the plates so it'll be a little longer lasting and more colorful.  Mr. No painted the new small letters and I'm still working on the tiles.

our game all set up...Mr. No has the letter bucket

 We set up our plates on the floor and were ready for round 1!  Mr. No has the bucket-o-letters.  First round, we look at and I say the name of the letter and he moves to it.  When we hit the end, I just hold up a letter of my choice and he names it to win. He wins a prize at the end...either a confiscated toy is returned, a new toy or a small candy like mini-pez or a lollipop.

using his round 1 prize as a token

 Round 2: I hold up the letter, he names it and then moves to it.  If he gets it wrong, he doesn't move.  Usually we do this round twice. Same ending as the last round.

Mr. No and Venom nearing the end

Final Round: I pick a letter and tell him the name without letting him see it.  He has to find the first one and move to it. Gets it wrong, he doesn't move.  End of this round, I say a letter (usually the one he had the most trouble with) and have him bring me one plate with that letter on it to win. Simple? Yes. But he loves it and he's good for 4 rounds of it.

While I was throwing together a quick lunch, Mr. No brought out the play-doh to keep himself occupied.  Okay, I admit I played a little.  I mean, who can resist play-doh? But I did use it to throw in a numbers recognition lesson thanks to the play-doh number bucket.

 
Today's lunch was not one of my best efforts but Mr. No seemed to like it.  He said it was a girl pirate and ate about 60% of it.  That's impressive for Mr. No but he does love his "fancy dancy" lunches.

Lunch!  not impressive but all that matters is that Mr. No liked it

After lunch, Mr No wanted to do his experiment again.  I knew it would be asked for again and again.  First we tried the pepper, milk and soap experiment just to throw in something newt.  It works a lot better when you gently dip your finger in rather than slamming your fingers to the bottom like Mr. No did.  At least it still worked and pepper all moved to the side.  I'm sure it's a little more amazing when you can actually see it move rather than pull your dripping hand out to see all the pepper stuck around the edges.  Oh well.

grinding the pepper...we only have freshly ground :P

Then we redid the baking soda, soap and lemon juice experiment and this time I have photos of all the steps. Yay!  This will be the 3rd day we've done this experiment and this time he wanted to make volcanoes! (bubbles over the sides of the cups)  It was a success!

Measuring it out all by himself

dumping in the soap

carefully pouring the lemon juice

sudsy volcanoes!

So that was our Monday morning! And somehow I still felt lazy. Then H woke up and we shot out to Michael's for our craft supplies.  I'm also making a good behavior "game board" that we needed supplies for.  His little magnet will move forward for good behavior and backwards for bad.  When he reaches the end (40 spaces), he can get a big prize.  There will be a few little prize spots on the board as well to encourage him.  Hopefully I'll have the new game and the good behavior board finished by next Monday. I need to buy some balloons this week so we can do air experiments next week.  I think Mr. No will really get a kick out of the balloon race one!

Updated Alphabet Game Photos!

The somewhat improved game.  Mr. No worked very hard on the little letters. The I is foam because I didn't like the I that came with the letter packet.