Alligator Day

Though not nearly as exciting or tasty as Strawberry Day, Alligator Day proved to be fun for Audrey and myself. I was nervous to begin with because Audrey started the day at breakfast with a weighty question.

"Mom, what am I going to learn about today?"

I guess yesterday had an impact on her after all.

She has also been asking to use a new website I've been testing out with her. It's called Starfall and is somewhat like Hooked on Phonics. There are graduated categories from learning letters and their sounds all the way up to independent reading. Not only is Audrey (hopefully) beginning the process of learning how to read, but she is also learning how to use a computer mouse; something that I will probably regret at some point in the future.

One thing is for sure: I'd rather she spend an hour or so learning with me than spending Henry's entire nap camped out in front of the TV.

Today ran slightly differently. I have a feeling that the food really helped yesterday's cause. However, I also have a feeling that having any alligator food today would have had the opposite effect.

After lunch, I showed Audrey some pictures and videos of alligators online. After that we read a book called Fun Facts About Alligators!
I had a few coloring pages for her. One of which was going to be an alligator that she would color, cut out, glue onto a blue background and stick a googly eye to it. She wasn't interested.

The other coloring page I provided was a letter "A" tracing page with a cartoon-style alligator on it. After a few minutes of insisted that she didn't want to, she finally colored it. I asked her before she started what color alligators are. She told me green. However, when she asked what colors she should use, I told her she could use whatever she wanted since it was HER alligator after all. The resulting alligator is green, brown, yellow, orange, pink and purple.

After completing that, she wanted to look at some phonics letters. She chose A and L. She's getting pretty good at using the mouse, just needing help once in a while. She amazes me with how quickly she learns all the time!

Ben got home early today (which is an entirely different story that I will let him tell), so we spent the after-nap-noon taking care of errands. We dropped by the AmFork DI and I found some lovely treasures there in the form of children's books.
On a previous trip to the Provo DI, I had acquired some Christmas books, Dr. Seuss books, The Velveteen Rabbit, Goodnight Gorilla and a replacement copy of Love You Forever.

This time, I picked up (at significantly lower prices) Mother, Mother, I Want Another, Bangalee (A Serendipity Book), Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, The Runaway Bunny (I heart this one), Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (the inspiration for the movie), If You Give a Pig a Pancake and Chickens Aren't The Only Ones. I also found a few more Christmas books including a BEAUTIFULLY illustrated version of The Twelve Days of Christmas.

I'm afraid that I will never be happy to pay full price for a book ever again. The good thing about not having a whole lot of children's books is that it's much easier to find ones that I don't have!

In case you're craving a Henry Moment: We went to Chili's while we were out running around. While we were trying to give the waiter our order, Henry was reaching for a fork on the table. He pleadingly cried out with his own special diction, "FORK!" I looked up at the waiter, who had a look of complete shock on his face. I smiled and told Henry that he couldn't have the fork until we had our food. The waiter laughed, looking amused and slightly relieved. Ben enjoyed explaining Henry's little foul-sounding words to him.

Today hardly turned out the way I had anticipated, but I feel good about it in spite of it all.