Just thought I'd share some new 'school' stuff that the kids are really into (scroll down for the links).
Princess really wanted to start cursive handwriting. Even though her printing is atrocious... she started trying to figure it out on her own, and rather than let her get into bad habits, I bought her a cursive book - and wow! Holy neat handwriting, Batman!
She made some lowercase t's at the top of the page that she turned into a woman getting her purse stolen - funny.
She did the same thing with printing handwriting, actually - she wanted to start before I thought she was ready, but she was so determined! My mom told me about the 'Handwriting without Tears' program, and that's what Princess has used for beginning printing and now for cursive. It really is a good program, especially for early or delayed writers.
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Thomas really needs work in the 'pre-writing' area. I bought a couple of other workbooks from the HWT folks for him, but his favorites are the Kumon workbooks. I don't blame them. They're pretty slick. We've bought him the tracing book and the easy mazes book. Tracing is misleading. It's not so much tracing as just pre-writing exercises. The fact that he'll sit and work at these is proof that they're interesting. He won't sit still for just anything! ;)
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A friend told me about starfall.com - which is a really great reading site. There is a lot on there, if you look. My boys are happy with the ABC's section - keep clicking on the sparkly arrows or letters and it takes you to a fun song or matching game at the end. It's really helped both boys' computer and mouse skills. Monkey picked up on it really fast.
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Also, my kids are LOVING the new They Might Be Giants DVD/CD. We're huge fans of their ABC album - the 123's are just as good! Hooray! There's even a cool animation made with felt! We walk around singing the songs all the time, especially 'High Five' and the one about 6 and 9. Good stuff. And how great is it that this is only like $13 for the DVD with the soundtrack on CD?!
Click on the covers to see them at Amazon - any other resources that you love that I should know about?
