Our First Invitation

Here's what we did yesterday for our first Play At Home Mom inspired 'Invitation'. Nothing crazy. Some glass beads for Bug to play with (2y), and a "Letter C" crossword puzzle for Josh (8y), which I made online and printed. My goal with this was to ease them into the idea of the invitations.

When Josh woke up and saw it, his immediate reaction was "I don't want to do this." And I said "Okay." No pressure. I think he still, a year since being in public school, has an aversion to anything to looks like forced learning. I did not want to make him feel like this was anything other than fun.

When Bug woke up and saw it, he continued the pattern of placing glass beads on the dashes of the letter c. He loved it. He counted the dashes, he counted the beads. I believe the fancy term for this is "one-to-one correspondence". He made his own patterns with the beads on notebook paper, he counted those. He drew circles, and then he stirred the cup of beads with his pen, giggling at the sounds it made.

Josh wanted to play outside, and I casually asked him if he would put away his crossword puzzle items before he went out. "What?! What crossword puzzle?" He hadn't even looked at what was set out before declaring he didn't want to do it. That is a strong aversion! He was excited to do the puzzle though, even using the dictionary to look up a couple words he was unsure of how to spell. His neighborhood friend came by and they finished it together before going outside.

I'm calling it a major success.