Since we're moving, my day has been chooped up into 15 minute increments. Every 15 minutes, I set the timer. I clean, declutter, and do some packing. I do 3 rounds of this, then take a 15 minute "break." This is when I stop, take a deep breath, fix a few snacks, read a story, play a game with the kids, do a lesson with Jade, etc. Today we've re-read the story of Balto, talked about letters B, A, T, E, and G, discussed continents (briefly) and pointed out North America, Alaska, and the city of Nome, Alaska on the map.

I've been doing this for a little over and hour. It's 11, so I'm going to take an extra 15 minutes to have lunch. Then we'll be in for another 45 minutes to an hour of cleaning, then put Nova down for a nap, do another mini lesson, and more cleaning. Then a playdate from 3-5.

We've been taking exceptionally easy on the academic front. A bit of work of letter recognition and printing, just here and there. Counting by 1s and backward from 10. Number recognition. (ie, can you find the number 33 on the poster?) She knows 1-10, but is iffy beyond that. So we're talking a bit about the tens place and counting by tens. We've still got math/science nucleus on Tuesdays and storytime on Thursdays. Fridays there is our academy day, but I think the next few months that's going to be very laid back and more like a playdate.

Jade is enjoying playing games on the PBS kids site. Lots of matching and memory games. I don't mind letting her spend some time on PBS since I can see her critical thinking skills developing. It's kind of neat to see the lightbulb go on for her.

Jade's phonetic awareness is definately improving as well. She'll occasionally pop up with things such as, "Bed is like RED, huh mom?" or "Man is like Mad." Or "'i' is in music isn't it!" And then she'll sound the word out really slowly, and then try to think of other words with that same sound.