Day 12 - Playdough and Tyko

Yesterday was another great day. Both Lorelei and Emma are great independent players, but I was starting to realize that Emma benefits from structured play opportunities. It really shouldn't have taken me so long to figure out since she is the definition of a child that does better with structure. When Sabrina went down for her morning nap, the girls and I sat at the dining room table and did school work for an hour. They each have a workbook of basic skills. I sat in between them and directed. It is no wonder that home-schooled children can be so well educated given the low teacher to student ratio (unless of course your  last name is Dugger). Then we made playdough. Can you believe that this was my first time? It was very easy and turned out great. Of course it was a longer process than if I had done it myself, but I got to teach them about reading the recipe (actually Lorelei read and translated it), the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon and the notations for them, how to "read" a liquid measuring cup, how to level flour, etc... All great fun. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to tell them that we were doing math or not. I'm still thinking that one over. (Lorelei has an incredible math mind already. She was frustrated by a math page about tallies because she had never seen them in kindergarten and didn't know what they were. I explained and she counts by 5s and counts on so easily that it was just immediately in her repertoire, ready to use. AND/BUT she had already announced to me some weeks ago that she didn't like math. I hope to teach my kids the difference between liking math and liking math class!) The girls opted for a pink batch of dough. Then they spent the rest of the morning playing with it contentedly.

(concentric-ish flowers)

The whole family: 5 Pfefferkorns and 4 grandparents (more in the making- playdough grandparents that is not more children)

After a delicious lunch of the girls requests (Lorelei: Ramen noodles, Emma: chicken nuggets) we went to the library. I had all kinds of photos already in my head of the afternoon trip - non of which happened. What did happen was my children just about exploded all over the place they were SO excited. They filled our little table top with books before I realized what was happening. I had to physically reel them in from pulling any more books off the shelf. Lorelei was disappointed because I wouldn't let her check out two High School Musical novels.The reading was frankly easy enough, but come on she is barely in elementary school!

It just so happened that we were checking out just as a Japanese drum show was about to begin. Big, loud aerobic drumming. Lorelei was on the floor in the back of the room reading about the drums (way to go librarians for having the books pulled and right at hand!) Emma spent some of the time looking at the book with Lorelei and some of the time pounding on the floor with me. Meanwhile, Sabrina was making the rounds getting to know everyone else in the crowd and investigating if they had any food tucked away in diaper bags or purses. She came away with a discarded granola bar wrapper. Nice and sticky, too.